Stats:
No. of players: 1-2
Amount of time to play: 60-180 min
Age requirements: 12+
Set-up time: 5-10 min

Too Many Bones Undertow is cooperative dice-building RPG board game for one or two players.

Too Many Bones Undertow Rules Description:

Too Many Bones Undertow is a stand-alone expansion for Too Many Bones. You play as one of two Gearlocs (gnome-like creatures with large pointy ears). Duster is an assassin with a pet wolf and Stanza is a bard.

There are five different adventure paths to embark on based on the tyrant you are trying to defeat. You can play a campaign by going after three Tyrants back-to-back-to-back.

Your adventure is broken into days and each day is broken into four phases. In the new day phase you increment the day counter. To start the encounter phase you draw an encounter card and choose how to deal with it. If you successfully defeat the encounter, you go to the rewards phase. After you gain rewards or fail an encounter you go to the recovery phase.

The meat of the game is the encounter phase. The encounter card presents you with a scenario and a couple options for dealing with (or avoiding) the situation. Often you end of fighting some baddies. But you choose your path and are able to see the rewards success will bring.

Combat takes place on a small 4×4 grid. After determining initiative for all combatants you place your hero and the baddies on their starting spots. You may only have four baddies on the grid at once. Extra baddies queue up, waiting their turn to enter the fray when one of their allies falls.

When the initiative reaches your hero you roll dice based on the hero’s Atk and Def stats. You may also add any Skill dice they have not used this combat. Your Dex stat determines the number of those dice you can keep. Moving on the grid costs one Dex per space and means you’ll keep less dice for fighting and defending.

Once you roll the dice and choose the ones you are going to keep you resolve them. Atk dice one or two inflict wounds or miss. Def dice provide one or two points of armor or miss. Skill dice have a myriad of effects from damaging foes to healing or buffing allies. Rolling misses isn’t all bad either. You have a backup plan that lets you spend banked misses to trigger some advantageous effects.

On their turn, the baddies may move up to two spaces on the grid. Then they roll and keep all their Atk and Def dice. When hitting and sometimes when hit, they may have skills that trigger.

Rewards include loot and training points. Each hero can hold up to three pieces of loot. You spend training points to increase your stats and skills or to add new skills.

After a certain number of encounters you meet up with the tyrant. If you defeat then you win. In campaign mode you must defeat three in a row.

Quick Review of Too Many Bones Undertow:

Undertow is a fun, cooperative adventure board game. It lets you tinker with how you build your characters each time you play. The combat is like a tactical puzzle you solve but must do your best to plan for the randomness of the dice.

The components for this game are incredible. The chips are 11 gram poker chips. The cards are plastic and the player mats are like mouse pads. Saying they are top-notch is not an exaggeration. The art looks great and matches the theme. The rules are vague in some areas and some are covered more thoroughly on YouTube. They could be organized better too. I highly recommend reading the rules watching the videos (especially the one about playing Stanza) then read the rules again. Either way you will probably be googling a handful of times when first playing.

I have not played the original Too Many Bones, so I am not sure what Undertow adds to the system. But I enjoyed a lot about the expansion. Getting to choose your reaction to encounters and leveling up your Gearlocs are my favorite parts. Like I mentioned above, while it is fun to try out both Gearlocs, playing one over and over and changing the skills you add and level is even more fun.

Like the Gearlocs, the tyrants play differently too. They are all challenging but you can change the degree of difficulty by choosing different tyrants to face.

The game ramps up nicely, slowly adding tougher or more baddies each day. That said some baddies are very tough if you face them before leveling up. The backup plans help make up for the randomness of the dice, but sometimes the randomness of the baddies can make encounters seem impossible.

While there are lots of great things about Too Many Bones Undertow, you should know the learning curve is steep. The game is not overly complicated, but there are a lot of details you will need to look up. What does that baddies skill do? What does this symbol mean? How does this Gearloc skill work? The more you play the less you need to look up. But you should be aware of the learning curve.

Too Many Bones Undertow is a fun RPG/adventure board game for one or two. It has a learning curve but the theme and gameplay are very good and the components are amazing. If you enjoy tinkering with hero builds this game is great for you.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 5 out of 6
Player Interaction 4 out of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 5 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6