Stats:
No. of players: 2-4
Amount of time to play: 60-120 min (depending on the scenario)
Age requirements: 14+
Set-up time: 5-10 min

The Undercity is a cooperative, dungeon crawling adventure game with a seven scenario campaign for two to four players.

Undercity Rules Description:

Undercity takes place in the Iron Kingdoms. You take the role of one of four heroes and venture through seven scenarios. As you gain experience you can spend it to add abilities and increase the power of your hero.

You start each scenario by setting up the board with the proper walls, Event cards, villain action cards and enemies. Then you choose your hero, take their Feat deck and you ready to go. If you are playing with two players, each player controls two heroes. Feat cards allow heroes to roll more dice, reroll failed rolls, move further or other useful things. You start the game with three face-up Feat cards.

At the beginning of each round you draw an Event card. Events may help you or make your situation worse. The event card is the timer for the game. If there are no cards in the Event deck at the beginning of a round the game is over and the players lose.

Next each player takes their turn based on their hero’s initiative. A player’s turn is split into three phases; Spawning, Activation and Villain Phase. In the Spawning phase you roll to add one villain to the map.

During the Activation phase your hero may move and take an action (in any order). Usually their action is an attack. Your movement can be a hold, walk or charge. Taking a hold move keeps you in the same space, while walking lets you move up to one space, and charging moves one or two spaces. If you charge, you are limited to only melee attacks.

When you attack you roll 2d6 and add your hero’s Accuracy. You need to meet or beat your target’s defense. If you hit your target, you roll 2d6 and add your weapons Power. If this is higher than the target’s Armor you inflict one wound.

A few things may modify your rolls. If you hold when making a ranged attack, you can aim. Aiming adds another d6 to your roll to hit. If you charge, you add a d6 to the first damage roll you make. Feat cards and hero abilities can also add dice to the different rolls.

Other actions include reviving an incapacitated hero or a stat challenge. No matter what action you take, after your hero is done activating, you draw one Feat card. If this gives you more than three you must discard one.

In the Villain phase, you activate villains by drawing a Villain card. You might activate ranged villains or a certain number of blue villains. Each villain card indicates which hero they will attack, if they will move and what weapon they use. They roll to hit and damage just like heroes. Once your damage is greater than your health you are incapacitated. Each time an incapacitated hero’s turn come around they lose two wound tokens. If at any point you have no wound tokens you are passed out and out of the game.

You gain one experience point (XP) every time you defeat a villain. Between each scenario you may spend XP to gain abilities. Any unspent XP are saved for later.

If you meet the scenario goals you win. You lose if the Event deck runs out, all heroes are incapacitated or passed out or a hero is passed out after a scenario and the party cannot revive them.

Quick Review of The Undercity:

The Undercity is a fun, episodic adventure game with interesting scenarios and solid tactical game play. It moves quick and combat is easy to pick up (especially if you are familiar with WarMarchine).

This game looks fabulous and the components are top-notch. The miniatures and cards look great and are well made. There are two books, one for the rules and another for the scenarios. The rules are well written but some rulings and necessary information are in the scenario book or stashed in the glossary. So definitely read both books and the glossary before you start. This video also provides a lot of useful information.

I like how the Feat cards add to the uniqueness of each hero. The heroes all excel at different tactics and the Feat cards really add to the feeling that each hero is different.

The variety in the scenarios is refreshing. Though most still revolve around combat, when villains enter and their goals differ from scenario to scenario. There are not cookie cutter quests you are sent on and you need to adjust your tactics to the scenario you are playing.

Being able to gain XP and additional abilities is great. It is one of my favorite parts of RPGs and being able to grow your hero makes for interesting decisions. It also adds to the replay value of the game. There are even these awesome character tracker pdfs so you can keep your hero’s information between games.

This game is close to getting a 6 rating but there are a few things that keep it at a 5. First the villain activation is a bit fiddly and takes a bit to digest so that the villain turns flow as well as the hero turns. The other thing is the game is a bit too easy. After playing through the first three scenarios a couple times not a single character was incapacitated. There are rules for making the game harder but maybe it should be more difficult right out of the box.

The Undercity is an excellent adventure game and I can see this getting 6 rating after an expansion or two. If your group likes dungeon crawls pick this one up. It can also be really useful on a night when you don’t have enough players (or a DM) to play an RPG.

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 4 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6