Red Raven Games Above and Below Card Game

Product Information

He then rolls a die and compares it to the grid of numbers on the lower half of the new cave card-- the resulting number indicates which paragraph should be read to him from the encounter book. The player to his left turns to the indicated paragraph in the encounter book and reads it to him. Place the 6 star house cards face up on the table in a row. Shuffle the 9 key house cards and draw 4 at random, placing them in a row, face up, below the star house cards. The remaining key house cards are placed in the box and are not used for this game. Sometimes you might need a bit more help getting everyone recovered, especially if the village has a bit of a bed shortage, and this is where potions and cider come in. Potions move a villager from the injured area of the player board to the exhausted area. Cider allows you to move one villager from the exhausted area to the ready area (because everyone knows that being drunk means you're ready for work, right?) MYSTERY GAME: Players take the part of investigators, entering the darkened rooms of haunted Akrham mansions and other sinister locales to discover strange secrets, solve cunning puzzles and battle otherworldly dangers. Open the door and step inside - it will take more than just survival to conquer the evils terrorizing this town.

Above and Below is a mashup of town-building and storytelling where you and up to three friends compete to build the best village above and below ground. In the game, you send your villagers to perform jobs like exploring the cave, harvesting resources, and constructing houses. Each villager has unique skills and abilities, and you must decide how to best use them. Free actions can be performed on a player's turn without exhausting villagers. A player may perform as many free actions as he likes before he performs a normal action. After he performs a normal action, he may not perform any free actions. Buy From A Player For every round, there are two phases. Firstly, the Investigator phase allows the group of players to move around the board, encounter monsters, find clues and perform actions. Then, the app will generate a mythos effect in the Mythos phase, resulting in obstacles for the investigative team to overcome or even the appearance of new, terrifying monsters.

Components

Place a cider on the cider icon on the reputation board if it does not already have one. New Villagers That being said, Above and Below is beautifully presented, the artwork has a dichotomy of light and dark, quirky and gloomy; the colour palette is vibrant for above and muted for below. The writing throughout the encounter book is excellent, sometimes funny, and sometimes very dark and the choices players are presented with are usually interesting if somewhat limited. At its core, Above and Below is a narrative-driven tableau builder. Players take on the role of small tribes looking to rebuild their community after barbarians ravaged the countryside. With a starting band of three villagers, players will take actions to build new buildings, train new villagers, and harvest crops above and below ground.

Like other Red Raven productions, the writing of Above and Below is its strength, but the overall production is why you want to sit down at the table with a copy of the game. The artwork shines, the characters look like they have real personality, the player boards are excellent, and the card art and iconography are easy on the eyes. As part of an upcoming entry in our Publisher Profile series, I am playing games in the Red Raven Games catalog. I recently received a review copy of the first game in Red Raven’s “ Arzium” series of adventure titles, 2015’s Above and Below. ( Near and Far came next, then Now or Never arrived in 2022.)

Setup

Each building is worth 1 village point. This includes houses, key houses, star houses, and outposts. This does not include empty cave cards a player owns. Reputation The question is; can you build a thriving village above and a bountiful series of outposts below? Above and Below – The Game Metal Man: The metal man uses his own bed each day. He cannot use beds on your buildings. He cannot use cider or potions. All of the scenarios are short reads, so this isn’t Clank! Acquisitions Inc. territory, where you have to read three minutes of flavor text 20 times a game. The writing in Above and Below is excellent, and it’s even better because it is so brief. At the end of a short blurb, the active player is offered a choice, and then dice determine a success or a failure. Don’t forget that there is a vast tunnel that sits beneath the surface of your village, just waiting to be explored. This is where the narrative of the game begins.

Each player starts with three worker tiles, certain types of which allow you to train new workers and build new buildings/outposts. The Starting player assigns one or more of their worker tiles to an action space, unless they want to explore, in which case they need a minimum of two workers. After the action is resolved, the worker tiles are placed into the “exhausted” area of the player board (depicted by a crescent moon shape), and play moves on. Playing Actions

End of the Game

He may do this only once per turn. It is not possible to refresh the key houses or star houses. Pass