The Sky's the Limit
Welcome to another Monday Morning Meeple! Last week, the new solo game from Czech Games Edition, Under Falling Skies, landed on my doorstep thanks to a BGG competition I won back in July. This game has been generating a lot of chatter over on the Geek and its original print and play incarnation has seen a good review over on Shut Up and Sit Down. I've managed to squeeze in a few games to test it out and will give some thoughts below. Destroyer of Worlds for the ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game also dropped, so we'll see what this boxed adventure contains.
I was also hoping to look at some Commander Legends today, but (un)fortunately we sold all our prerelease weekend stock, so I wasn't able to obtain any! Very good news for the store though. We've got more boxes arriving this week, so I hope to be able to grab one then. Maybe I'll open it on video if I can resist the temptation to just rip into it straight away...
New games on the table...
After winning a signed copy of Under Falling Skies over on BoardGameGeek in July, my prize finally turned up last Tuesday while I was at work. I quickly set about reading the rules on Tuesday night and got it to the table on Wednesday for a run through the introductory game in which you defend Roswell from an invading alien mothership and its hordes of descending fighter ships. It plays over a series of rounds in which you'll first be placing dice in the rooms of your underground research/defence bunker while the enemy descends from the skies. After the dice have been placed the rooms in which you have put them will generate various effects, allowing you beat back the enemy while trying to achieve your end goal. Then the mothership will descend towards your destruction, activating whatever negative effect is associated with the row it enters and spawning new enemies to once more flood the skies.
It this sounds a lot like Space Invaders you wouldn't be far off the mark. This solo game plays a lot like that classic video game mixed with the hard choices of the XCOM series of games. The overarching aim is to max out your research track before either the mothership descends far enough to obliterate the city your trying to protect or the fighters deal enough damage to destroy you. To achieve your goal, you'll be placing dice in a series of rooms in your ever developing underground bunker in order to generate different effects including producing anti-aircraft fire to slow the descending alien ships, generating energy to power other rooms, using fighter jets to shoot down enemy aircraft and carrying out the necessary research need to win. At the beginning of the game, only a few rooms are available to you, but your bunker can be further excavated each round by using one (and only one!) of your dice to move your excavator meeple further along, opening up new and generally better rooms for later rounds.
Where the game gets tricky is in the clever mechanic surrounding dice placementâwherever you place your die, the alien ships in that column will descend a number of spaces equal to the die's value (less one space if it's place in an anti-aircraft room). This makes for some difficult choices throughout. Perhaps you need to place that 6 in a research room, but doing so will send an alien craft on a bombing run, damaging your city further. To add further stress, the columns down which the alien ships descend have various symbols in them. Only one of these is goodâan explosion symbol that, should a high enough numbered die be placed in a fighter jet room, might allow you to shoot down the enemy. The others are worse, allowing the enemy to shift columns or the mothership to descend further towards your inevitable destruction. However, this latter action can be used beneficially, as when this causes the mothership to descend it skips over the associated action in its row, allowing you to negate a potentially damaging effect.
To further complicate matters, your dice pool is made up of white and grey dice. Whenever you place a white die, you are forced to reroll your remaining dice. This means that there is never an easy combination of dice placement, allowing you to chain together dice for great results. On the flip side, it does mean that a terrible initial roll can be mitigated by allowing you the chance to get a set of better results.
One thing for me about solo games is their replayability. I've got to want to keep coming back to them for more. The difficulty a lot of the time is that solo games are generally puzzles, often with some randomisation process in to try and keep them fresh, but can often be worked out to the point where you become aware of the most efficient means to solve them. How then does Under Falling Skies fair with this in mind? Well, the answer is very positive (bearing in mind I've only had chance to play through a few games). You see, the box comes with three different cities tilesâRoswell (the starter city), New York and Washington. These other cities come with different special powers, but also increase the research track, with Washington being the hardest. In addition, they also change the layout of your underground bunker, using the three double-sided bunker tiles to produce different arrangements of rooms and providing different puzzles to solve.
But it doesn't end there. Oh, no! Under Falling Skies also has difficulty levels, referred to as the Threat Level. Each of the sky tiles has two sides, one easier and one harder. You can flip any number of tiles to increase the Threat Level, from one to all four. Doing so increases the values on the research track, making your goal that much harder to meet. And that's not even everything.
The game also includes a four part campaign for when you've mastered playing through the stand alone cities too. So far, I've managed to play through games using Roswell (pretty easy) and Washington (much harderâI lost my first game!), but haven't yet had the opportunity to dig into this continuing story-based element, which unlocks more cities and bases for you to use as you play through it. Given how much I've enjoyed the game so far though, I'm definitely looking forward to giving it a whirl!
Overall then, I'd highly recommend Under Falling Skies if you're looking for a high-action, puzzle based solo game that features plenty of replayability. It's great to fill 30 minutes or soâperfect for lunch breaks while you're working from home or to be enjoyed in an evening with the beverage of your choice! We've got copies on order for the store, so we hope to see it landing on our shelves in the next few weeks once it is on general release!
In the bookshelves...
New onto the RPG bookshelves is Destroyer of Worlds, the new boxed set adventure from Fria Ligan (or Free League) for ALIEN. You don't see many boxed adventures these days outside of the starter sets that are becoming pretty ubiquitous for newer RPG systems. This release reminds me a lot of the old boxed adventures and campaigns from TSR's heyday back when 2nd Edition AD&D was a thing...
Anyway, before I get lost in the mists of time and happy memories of youthful roleplaying, let's have a look at what's in this box. Inside the well produced cardboard outer there are seven pregenerated character sheets, two map handouts, a huge poster map of the Ariarcus Colony and Fort Nebraska ammo depot and weapons testing facility, two packs of linen finished cards that provide the story elements, personal agendas and weapons profiles, and an 88-page adventure module. The adventure centres around colonial marines. The PCs will be playing marines tasked with hunting down four fugitivesâalso marinesâwho have stolen classified intelligence, all while a Union of Progressive Peoples (UPP) invasion begins to take place. Oh, yes, and there are xenomorphs a plenty. Things go from bad to worse throughout the adventure and what starts off as a relatively simple op quickly goes south, ending up in a hasty retreat in the face of insurmountable odds. Make sure your players have some extra characters on handâthey're going to need them...
The adventure falls into the Cinematic category of adventures for ALIEN. For those that don't know, there are two forms of play in this RPG: Cinematic (or one-shot) and Campaign play. While I believe that the latter is possible with a carefully paced narrative, emphasising a slow burn storyline, I am strongly of the opinion that Cinematic play is the best. Your players' will want aliens in there games and this mode of play gives them that in droves.
The one thing that I do find a little disappointing about this adventure, and the same goes for the previously release Chariot of the Gods, is that it forces you to use the included pregenerated characters. Because each characters has an agenda that directly relates to the storyline, there is no real leeway written into the adventure to use it with characters that the player's generate themselves outside of some extensive work. This said, if treated like playing through a movie or TV episode, the use of the pregenerated characters does work and they are well written, providing plenty of roleplaying hooks and juicy background. As a result, there should be something for all players in the mix.
Bearing this slight flaw in mind then, Destroyer of Worlds looks to be a good adventure, putting the marine characters through hell over the course of around three sessions of play, if the scenarios suggested play through time is to be believed. I've so far enjoyed the ALIEN scenarios that I have had a chance to play so far (thanks to Richard H for GMing!), so I'm looking forward to getting a chance to play this one soon. However, I imagine it won't be for some time, given the next game I'll be playing in is going to the Star Trek Adventures.
That's all for now!
That's everything that I've managed to delve into this week. Next week looks pretty quiet on the release front (at least for what I am interested in) bar the new release of Commander Legends for Magic: The Gathering. I'll be taking a look at the new booster packs and the Commander decks released on Friday. Plus, I will be taking a look at the Star Trek Adventures RPG in advance of the new campaign I'll be taking part inâa book that we've just restocked in store too!
In the meantime, let us know what games you've been playing! Is there a new release that's captured your attention, or is there something on the horizon that you're dying to get to your gaming table? We'd love to hear about it!
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