Entering The Undercity

I've been curious about the Iron Kingdoms boardgames, wondering how close it played to Warmachine. I picked up The Undercity, figuring that if nothing else I was getting two Freebooters out of it - after all, I do love Freebooters.

Well, I finally had my first game. The rules were actually a lot simpler to understand than some boardgames I've played; I'm not sure how much of that is simply due to my familiarity with it's Warmachine DNA, how much is thanks to well written rules, and how much is down to it really not being all that complicated.

Anyway, there were two of us so I picked Milo, Pog and Doorstop, while my friend played Canice and Gardek.

Ch. 1 initial setup.

Doorstop went in aggressively right out of the gate, taking damage to confirm kills.

Gardek was not far behind though.

Building up some early momentum.

Canice quickly knocked the boss for two damage, and Doorstop finished the job.

All characters ended the chapter in the peak of health.

But with only five experience each we decided to hold off buying any upgrades.

Personally I thought the game was a bit simplistic; there was very little movement and the players don't seem to need to make that many decisions. However that might just be because it's only the first chapter; perhaps later chapters will require more involved decision making.

Nevertheless it was fun. The enemy spawning system is interesting because it means you never really run out of enemies, but the enemy activation system means even being outnumbered - while disadvantageous - is not overwhelming. The hero abilities and Feat cards system means the heroes feel powerful and there's always things you can do, options you can take, but the balanced stats mean that you don't feel too powerful - at least not from the start - because you do miss attacks and you do get hit and take damage. I also expect the game to get more exciting as the difficulty ramps up.

I'm a little concerned that there's only 7 chapters (iirc); it feels a bit of a waste to play though the campaign once then put the game away, and I don't feel that I would be tempted to replay the same campaign. I'm hoping I would be able to find some homebrew missions if I looked around online though, so the game might have more legs than it initially appears to.