They’re Coming!

​

Right from the off, it is the tension in this game that gets you. This brilliant 9-card game is so simple to print out, create and learn. You will be playing within minutes and loving it instantly.

​

Once you have laid out the cards showing your vertical vista, the impending doom of the mothership landing will hit you. As attack ships lower at almost uncontrollable speeds, the mothership lowers one space per turn, slowly edging closer to your base and the end of humanity as you know it.

 

Roll for the Earth

​

Once the simple set up is complete, you roll your available dice. The choices seem limited and trivial at first, but after a few turns, you will start to agonise over where to place each one. You need to excavate deeper to give yourself more options, but you must stop the fighter ships attacking as your defences are very limited. But the aim of the game is to research a weapon powerful enough to stop the mothership; however none of this can be done without getting energy first!

​

It is a brilliantly simple and well-engineered game that will captivate you throughout. It took me a fair few plays before I won a game, and even then it was a very close affair. Every roll matters. You will wrestle when it’s best to use your re-roll options like a child toying with their last un-opened present on Christmas day. You want to open it now, you cannot wait to see what’s inside! But when you do, you know its over. That’s it. No more presents. Re-rolls are always important in dice game. It’s the way to navigate the luck in a game that needs to present itself as strategic. You want more re-rolls to remove the luck, but not so much that it just becomes a process. Under Falling Skies has found the sweet spot here perfectly. But I would like more presents!

​

All of the cards are double sided, offering a more complex version on the back. You can turn over one or as many cards as you like adding layers of difficulty as you go. I like to flip one card per play in a campaign style giving myself three attempts per game. I score myself three points if I win on game one, Two for the second, and so on.

​

The Print and Play World

 

This game has received a fair bit of hype within the print and play world and for good reason. It has now been given a full print run whhcih you can buy here. This pelases me as this is what the print-and-play market is all about.

​

Print-and-plays open up new games to so many more people. It gives new designers and artists the chance to try their games out on a wider market with limited costs to all parties. Then for the ones who create something special like here, they can use this as a springboard into a wider publishing world. Kudos to Tomáš Uhlíř. I wish you and your brilliant game all the success in the world, if there is anything left of it that is!