Under Falling Skies

01Discover the game

Under Falling Skies is a solo game of defense and research. Ships descend to your city while your workers work in an underground base. Each dice improves an action, but also makes the enemies of its column advance: a large number is therefore powerful and dangerous at the same time.

This chapter follows the box of Czech Games Edition, a standard game without a campaign or script. We first explain Roswell's discovery preparation, then robots and independent party possibilities. The hardware and campaign surprises remain closed. The overall difficulty is difficult, even if one can solve the threat: one has to plan the recovery, the energy, the research and the damage. One person plays about 20 to 40 minutes.

02Equipment

The standard game consists of five purple vessels and four whites, three track markers, seven wooden dice, one excavator, one mother ship tile, four sky tiles, three underground base tiles, three city tiles and the booklet. The seven dice are divided into three grays, two whites and two blues. The blues are robots, not workers to throw.

The first part uses only Roswell, two Base tiles, the three grey dice and two whites. The two blue dice, the other cities and the third Base tile are used for the following parts. Do not mix the tiles or the orange ship of the campaign with these elements. The search tracks, energy and damage are printed on the tiles; the rooms carry their values, modifiers and costs.

03The goal

Reach the top of the search track before your city is destroyed or the Mothership reaches its defeat line. Destroying many small ships helps to survive, but is not in itself a condition of victory.

You lose immediately if the damage marker arrives on the skull of its track or if the drop points of the Mother Ship reach the sky line marked with a skull. There is no last turn to finish the search after any of these events. Conversely, reaching the top of the search makes you win immediately, before going through a possible next enemy phase.

04Prepare Roswell

Align the four Sky tiles in the order of the official preparation: the darkest at the top, the brightest near you. For a discovery, use their easy faces, level of zero threat. Place the Mother Vessel at the top and a purple vessel on each of its five drop points. Put the four white ships aside.

Roswell Square blue face under the sky, then the Base A and B tiles on the faces identified in the preparation and corresponding to the Roswell symbols, A above B. Do not replace one of these faces with another city or other base at random: the limits of the tracks and the rooms would change.

Put the Search, Energy and Damage markers on their printed starting points, then the excavator on his departure. The digging path separates the rooms already accessible from those still buried. Keep the five workers near you. The robots stay aside for this very first discovery.

05The three phases of a handle

Place the workers' dice

Launches the three grays and the two whites. Place the five dice one after the other in five different columns of the base: at the end, each column contains exactly one dice worker. A room which occupies several cells extends over several columns; each placement still retains the constraint of one worker per column.

Most dice must be placed in the already excavated spaces. You can reserve as much as possible a dice at the dig, in a box in front of the excavator. For this placement, counts the number of steps of the path between its current position and this box: the dice must be worth at least that distance. This dice also uses the corresponding column.

Immediately after each placement, all the vessels in this column descend from a number of cells equal to the dice. All must be moved before solving the effects of their new cells, from top to bottom. The cells crossed do not trigger anything. An explosion box does not automatically destroy the ship: it makes it accessible to a future attack during the phase of the rooms.

An air defence room reduces this descent by a box. A devalued one in such a room therefore does not cause the ships to descend and does not trigger any box effect. Ordinary room modifiers, such as -1 on the action value, do not reduce the descent: do not confuse them with this anti-aircraft effect.

An arrow moves the ship to the designated box, unless it is occupied, in which case this arrow does not act. A symbol of descent of the mother ship causes it to descend immediately from a line. The ships caught up by this descent return to its tile to be re-launched afterwards. During this descent caused by a dice, do not re-sink the action printed on the edge of the sky; however, the skull of defeat remains applicable immediately.

If a ship goes out under the sky and strikes the city, push the damage track of a box and put the ship back on the Mothership. Only one vessel that descends very far deals a damage, not one damage per box exceeded.

After placing a dice white, revives all the dice that are not yet placed. This revival is mandatory if dice remain ; we do not keep some results in reserve. The already installed grays do not move. Placing the last white last can therefore avoid an unnecessary revival, but t

Solve rooms

After the five placements, activate the rooms in the order of your choice. Remove a worker when its effect has been processed, or when you renounce to use it. A specified energy cost must be paid to obtain the effect; if you cannot or do not want to pay it, the dice is withdrawn without effect.

The value of a room is the dice, modified by the printed number if there is one. A room of several boxes requires that all are occupied by usable dice. Then add their values and apply the room modifier. Two separate rooms cannot add their dice to reach a threshold.

The Energy rooms bring this track up from the value of the room, without exceeding its maximum. Tunnels and anti-aircraft cannons do not produce additional action at this stage.

A room of Hunters destroys all the ships currently on an explosion box whose number is less than or equal to its value. The others, even very close to the city, are not affected if they are not on a suitable explosion. The destroyed violets return to the Mothership; the whites shot leave the board and become available again in the white reserve.

A search room moves the marker forward: adds up the costs of the successive boxes you want to cross, without exceeding its value. The unused surplus is not kept for another room. The order of resolution can therefore change the result.

For the dice placed in the unexcavated ground, pay an energy and move the excavator to its square. The road travelled becomes excavated. This dice is used only for digging, not for the effect of the room where it was waiting.

Acting the Mothership

First, go down its tile of a line. The ships that it catches return to the tile. Then take the action of the line reached, at its drop points: back off the excavator, lost search, arrival of white ships, damage or defeat, depending on the symbol. A step back does not exceed the initial position of a track.

Finally, release the ships waiting, purple before white. First choose the columns without any ships. If all are occupied, use the point of drop furthest from the highest ship of its column. The equities are at your choice. A drop point already occupied does not receive a second ship; those who cannot appear remain on the Mothership until a next run. If all the whites are already at stake, an effect cannot create new ones beyond the four. available.

Add robots after discovery

The robots are installed by the corresponding rooms, at the value of the room, with a maximum of six. Immediately place the blue dice in a free box already excavated. A new robot is exhausted: turn it aside and do not use it this time. Its installation does not cause ships to descend.

A robot remains in place from handle to handle, without being launched. In the dice phase, always places a worker in each column, even if it contains a robot. If a worker has to occupy the box of a robot, remove the latter. During the room phase, an available robot can participate as a normal dice. After use, decreases its value of one and then exhausts it; to one, it is removed. At the end of the room phase, straightens all the exhausted robots.

There are only two dice robots. You can remove one voluntarily to reinstall it otherwise. A robot buried by the recoil of the excavator is removed. In a multiple room, an exhausted robot does not fill its box for a new activation.

06Two examples of calculation

One column contains two ships. You place a four in an ordinary room: each descends by four, then their new cells resolve from top to bottom. If this room carries -1, it does not change the descent. Its subsequent action value will be three. In an air-fighting room, on the other hand, the same four sends down by three.

For the research, imagine that the next three boxes cost 1, 3 then 1. You have two separate rooms of values two and three. Activated two allows you to cross the box on one, but the remaining search energy is not stored. The room of three then crosses the three square: you do not reach the third square. Only one room of value five could have crossed the three strokes. Two plus three therefore does not automatically equal to five usable together.

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07Winning and resolving the threat

The victory comes as soon as the search reaches its peak. The last high thresholds require the multiple rooms at the bottom: survival without digging is usually not enough. The skull of the damage and the skull of the mother ship lose immediately, even if you were going to win the next phase.

After Roswell easy, choose the level of threat by returning randomly as many Sky tiles as the desired level: zero to four. The booklet presents one as a standard difficulty. The other base cities have their own powers and impose the two corresponding underground tiles; uses their indications rather than a free mix. A damaged city is a possibility of revenge after defeat, not a face to be used silently to improve its departure. The campaign is separate and will not be used in any way. open only after mastering the standard game.

08Frequent errors

• Place two workers in a column, or treat a robot as an additional worker to throw.
• Apply an effect on each box crossed by a ship.
• Resolve a room before the five workers are placed.
• Keep unplaced dice when a white dice is required.
• Add two independent research rooms.
• Kill a ship that is not on a suitable explosion or forget that a violet is returning to the Mothership.

09Tips for starting

Look at the ships before the halls: a very good energy gain does not work if its placement destroys the city. Use the greys to fix the good results before a white one revives the rest. Small values often allow to slow down a dangerous column.

Prepare the energy needed before solving costly actions and keep an opportunity to dig when the sky allows. Robots facilitate multiple rooms, but they decrease after use; anticipate their replacement. After a defeat, look for if it comes from too slow a search, from a lack of energy or an abandoned column, rather than considering only the last jet of dice.