Undermining

[Zarniwoop]

Components:


As can be seen above,(Thanks to asdoriak @ Boardgamegeek), the components of this game are excellent. The colours are vivid, the artwork superb, the UMV Mini's are just Cute, the player boards well thought out suiting the theme well as well as providing what you need to play. The cards are maybe a tad thin and I did feel the need to sleeve these, as I suspect repeated use may start to tarnish these.

The player aids are too small, the writing is in a very small font and is white on a dark background making it hard to read unless you hve very good eyesight. The player aid provided by Sanders in the File section on Boardgamegeek is much better with all the information you need to play the game.

Gameplay
Players compete to extract resources from the mine to either upgrade their UMV or complete contracts to earn Star bucks. In order to achieve this on their turn each player has 7 actions they can take using one of the initial 3 Action Points.

1. Drill - Allows you to drill one of squares adjacent to your UMV, if the square is a Rock piece it is turned to rubble and if it is a rubble it is removed from the game. If you get additional drill bits this gives you an extra drill for each Action Point spent, so with one additional Drill bit you would be able to either drill 2 adjacent sqaures or remove one rock. Any resources are stored in the containers (your UMV starts with 2)

2. Drive: Allows you to move your UMV 2 spaces on the board, with each additional Rocket you get to move one more sqaure for each action point spent. So with 1 rocket you would be able to move 3 squares. On the surface UMV's can move freely and occupy the same squares but underground UMV's can not occupy the same space nor move through other UMV's unless the player spends 2 battey tokens but they have to have enough movement to end on a free space.

3. Portal - Allow quick movement around the board, you can only move between "Open" portals, ie no UMV's or tokens sitting on them. The Portal on the surface is always classed as open.

4. Recharge - Allows the player to charge their UMV's batteries (1 per action point spent)

5. Contracts - Whilst at the Refinery on the surface a player may spend resources from their warehouse to complete a contract (1 per action point spent), taking the top star buck from the pile underneath as payment. (These reduce in value on each stack).

6. Build - Whilst at the Refinery on the surface a player may buy and attach upgrades for your UMV.
Container - which adds an additional storage to your UMV.
Drill Bit - Increases your drilling by 1 for each Action Point spent.
Rockets - Increases your move by 1 square for each Action point spent.
Reactor - Increases you total action points by one.
Each UMV has 5 slots (4 slots in a 5 player game) in which to place these upgrades

7. Unload - Whilst at the Refinery on the surface a player may unload their containers into their Warehouse, unlimited resources can be stored in the warehouse.

If you managed to drill an Alien Tech token when you take the unload action you take a card from the deck. You can use this alien tech at ny point on your turn and they give you various bonuses to aid your minining efforts. These include extra dilling, extra movement, unload anywhere, teleport and extra battery charge all of which enhance you ability to pluder the resources on the mine.

The game turns play very quickly and there is a lot of competitive play available here as everyone attempts to get to all the good "stuff". You can go for early wins buy completing  contracts for the higher payouts or go for upgrades early to enable you to dig more, deeper and faster.

Scoring
You count up all your star bucks, you get 1 for each resource you have left in your warehouse/cargo and you also get a sliding scale of points awarded for how many upgrades you managed to build and you also get 1 point for each unused alien tech card.

Conclusions
This game is just pure fun, it plays very quickly and is easy to teach. I have played this with 2 & 3 players and everything works really well with these numbers. Obviously the more players you get the better this game will be as there will be more competition for everything.

In all the games I played the scoring was close, even between people who upgraded a lot vs people who just went for contracts early.
This is a well balanced game, which is quick to setup and play with lots of fun. I enjoyed this game and it already has seen a lot of play and I can see this being a popular game with my group.

The only negative I have is that the rulebook whilst very pretty and simple to follow could have inluded details of the alient tech cards, with maybe some extra details, list of the resource names with pictures as this would make it a more useful resource.

[Zarniwoop]

Some additions to my review after questions from a user on Boardgamegeek

Thank you for the review. I have a few questions:

What games would you say are similar to this?

Well thankyou for taking the time to read my review and I am glad you liked it.

As to which games are similar to this, I have to say that with my limited experience and exposure to games I'm hard pressed to think of one I own or have played that is similar but I am sure there will be others who read this who may be able to jump in with some comparisons for you.

What sorts of decisions do you make in this game, and what makes those decisions interesting or engaging?

In what ways can players interact with one another?

The types of decision are:

Do I upgrade or Fulfill a contract, upgrades are good they increase your ability to extract the resources or increase you speed in/out of the mine or allow you to take more actions per turn or allow you to carry more resources. In order to do this you spend resources which could be used to fulfill a contract. Fulfilling a contract early gets you the higher star bucks rewards which is great but this does mean your spendingf resources that can be used to upgrade.

When you are minining do you clear rubble ready for you next run with an action or do you move back to the surface with your goods.

Do you clear a portal to help you get back quicker but making it easier for someone to mop up any resources you have left behind near that portal.

Do you portal back to the surface as your last action or sit there blocking someone from getting deeper into the mine quicker or beating you to the surface.

When you move in the mine do you park in a spot to get you nearer something nice but in a place to block someone else from getting it before you next turn.

when you upgrade do you go for more storage to carry more goods to sell, do you go for speed or do you add drills to do more for each drill action.

There are a lot of choices in this game, all of them have there merits and bear in mind the upgrades are limited to 4 of each type, so there is always a chance you can miss out on a particular type.

The game is rules light and simple to play but there is depth of strategy here, as well as ways you can hamper your opponents forcing them to make different choices.

To whom would you recommend this game, and to whom would you not?

This is a good gateway game I feel, it would appeal to gamers and non-gamers equally. The board is two-sided and the other side has a more complicated mine with more oppotunities for the UMV's to get in each others way.

As mentiond before there is a lot of decisions you can make, making for different strategies to win which would appeal to people who like a bit more to their games.

This is a great game for a start/finish to a gaming evening as it plays really quick, the turns come round really quicklu in this, especially as you start to get a handle on what you need to do.