Red Raven Games Above and Below Card Game

Product Information

The player also gains the grove card, placing it adjacent to one of their buildings in their village. Build: you may use one of your builder workers per turn to build a new structure, which is chosen from a pool of displayed cards. If you put mushrooms in the first slot, for example, all subsequent mushrooms must be put in that slot. Looking back at the art he’s done for both his own games and for other designs, Laukat seems to enjoy deep, rich colors (particularly blue, green, and gold), and it’s on full display here, to great effect.

It will then present the player with a choice of possible responses (flee, interact with the character, offer money, accept item, etc. The cider token allows you to move a worker from the exhausted area back to the ready area on your player board. Petit bémol dans les choix d'explorations: je ne vois pas l'intérêt d'indiquer le score exact à atteindre aux dés pour réussir.It’s not uncommon for us to goad players uncertain of what action they want to do into exploring, just so we can hear another story and see if they can successfully push their luck into a big prize. You instantly feel like you should try to do your best for your villagers since they’ve been through hell already. You’ll be awarded victory points for every good that is in the advancement track at the end of the game. Players begin the game with their home village board, three villagers, a starting building and a few coins.

You’ll be given a choice and a lot will depend on which villagers you brought on the expedition, and who you’re willing to sacrifice to succeed. Players may send two or more villagers into the mysterious underground caverns in hopes of finding fabulous riches and new places on which to construct outposts. The successes that your workers earn determine your overall success level (or failure) for the encounter, and any prizes (coins, goods, etc) or penalties are awarded. 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. We actually played our neibours version of this game and liked it so much decided to get our own copy.

If a player is producing a regular supply of a particular type of good, the player may wish to wait, as victory points will be earned for each good. The game was usually humorous and fun, but there was, as gamers would often comment, not much “game” present. So, while it may be beneficial to steal from someone in terms of rewards, you will likely lose reputation by doing so. 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. You must declare which of the options you are rolling for as well as which worker and if you fail you either get nothing or if there is a lower lantern condition, gain the rewards for that.

There are eight slots along the bottom of a player’s board where goods may be placed once harvested.There are five actions that you can send your villagers off to do and on each turn you choose one of the actions to execute, after which they will be sent to the exhausted area on your player board to recuperate for next round. It’s incredibly earnest and even with all of its faults, Above and Below manages to get by with a wonderful sense of place and provides some light entertainment if you’re willing to succumb to its charm. Other buildings have a recurring resource, meaning when you harvest that resource it will refresh at the end of the round. Furthermore, because the value of the reward seems to always correlate with its difficulty, 98% of the time you’re going to be choosing the most difficult choice you think you can succeed at, irrespective of what that choice actually is in the story. You might run across a traveling salesman, for example, and your options may be to steal from him or to barter with him.