Last year I completed my goal to play of
Scythe solo 10 times, after playing the
Lost Ruins of Arnak solo 12 times the year before for the
Deep Dive December Challenge. This year I chose the solo only game
Under Falling Skies. Since there is a multi mission campaign mode included in the base game, it seemed like the perfect time to try that out. Even though the complexity of the game probably warranted more than 12 plays, that's what I stuck with. The campaign said it takes around 10 plays to get through depending on how well you do and what difficulty level you try. Having only played the base part of the game a couple times previously, I played one basic game before jumping into the campaign on an easier difficulty.
The game is essentially the classic arcade game Space Invaders in board game form. Instead of just moving artillery back and forth trying to shoot down ships, the player has to use a set of dice in various room spots to not only shoot down ships, but also research a solution to defend the earth from the invaders. From the BGG Page:
"Aliens have arrived to conquer Earth. Enemy ships fill the skies. Humanity retreats to underground bunkers located below cities across the globe. Stand against the common threat! Fight the invaders city by city. Build a team from around the globe to save your planet and defeat the aliens!"
It's quite a puzzle to work out when and where to place dice. When you choose an action, you are also choosing which enemy ships will descend. Bigger numbers give better effects, but they also cause ships to descend faster. You also have to consider when you place one of the two white dice because whenever a white die is placed, all unplaced dice have to be rerolled. This can literally cost you the game as the motherships descends, reducing the available spots in the sky that the ships can be placed on before hitting and damaging your city. Each city also has a unique ability that can affect how dice and/or ships operate. As you get into the campaign, you also get characters that give you a one time use ability to assist you in your mission. What's even more amazing is that every board piece, character, and city is double sided. This offers the ability to adjust difficulty through the sky tiles being harder place ships on and increase the research requirements. The characters and cities help balance the difficulty on their opposite sides with better abilities.
Due to lingering sickness for the final third of the month, it took me up until today to complete my twelve games. I was able to successfully complete the campaign and look forward to playing through it again with all of the content I didn't get to see in the first play through. What's amazing is just how much game is packed into a small to medium sized box. In each of the first three of four chapters, you set aside two cities and characters that you don't play with. So I still have a half dozen characters, cities, and missions I've not played yet. After playing through the campaign, you can combine everything and build your own one off games in a variety of ways.
Comments
Post a Comment