A 9-Card Print&Play Solo Game

Tomáš “uhlík” Uhlíř

 UNDER FALLING SKIES
Tomáš “uhlík” Uhlíř
Components:
• 9 cards
SOLO 20–40 min • 7 six-sided dice (ideally 12mm)
ACTION DICE ROBOTS
As the invading mothership descends on Earth,
humanity has been forced to shelter in underground
bases to hide from the bombardment. As the leader REROLL
of your base, you must develop a weapon to destroy • 11 tokens (ideally 8mm cubes)
the aliens while also expanding your base and
ENEMY SHIPS
dealing with the enemy ships. TRACKERS

REINFORCEMENTS

SETUP
1 Set up 7 cards above each other to form 1
MOTHERSHIP
a continuous image (See the picture on the right.)
2 Set the card with the energy and research tracks
where you can easily reach it. 3

ne side and difficult (with in the top right corner) on the other.
n subsequent games, you can increase the difficulty by flipping any number of cards to their difficult side.
6

RESEARCH TRACK
2

4
3 Place 5 green enemy ships on the starting spots
on the mother ship card. ENERGY TRACK
4 Place 4 white tracker cubes on their starting
spots (marked with a small white square) on the
research track, energy track, damage track and
one on your base as an excavator. 5
4
5 Five dice (3 black and 2 white) should be kept
nearby.
6 Leave the 2 blue robot dice and 2 red enemy UNDERGROUND
ships aside for now. BASE
 GAMEPLAY
Your goal is to develop a weapon to destroy the approaching alien mothership before it gets too close
and before your base takes too much damage. You win by getting to the last space on the research
track. The game plays in rounds, until you either win or lose.

Each round consists of three phases:

If the space where the arrow
1 Place dice and move ships.
points is empty, move the ship there.
2 Resolve rooms.
Note that a ship that moves to a different column will move again when yo
3 Move the mothership.

PLACE DICE AND MOVE SHIPS

1
ove the mothership
At the card
start of the one roll 5 dice (3 black and
round,
w closer to your base.
2 white) and place them one at a time on the
is is available
bad, because theinmothership
spaces your base. moves closer. But it gives you some control over the mothership effect th
White dice have a special function: When you
e explosion
place one doesn’t have any
of them, you immediate effectall
have to reroll when
the the ship lands on it, but it allows you to shoot down th
remaining dice that have not yet been placed.
ur base
Eachtakes
time1youdamage.
place a die, all enemy ships in the
die’s column descend toward your base. They
move a number of spaces equal to the number
shown on the die. If the final space has an icon,
resolve that effect. (See the explanation on the
right.)
When a ship reaches the lowest space of its
column, your base takes 1 damage. Move the
damage marker accordingly and put the enemy
ship on the mothership card (to be respawned
later).
Die placement has a few restrictions:
• Each space can contain only one die.
Example of already excavated rooms:
• You can place only one die in each column.
• Dice can be placed only in excavated rooms,
except for one die that can be placed in a
room or tunnel to move the excavator.
(The space under the excavator is not yet excavated.)
Continue placing dice until you place all five,
resolving enemy movement after each die. Then
proceed to resolving rooms.
Once you’ve placed all five dice, resolve them
2RESOLVE ROOMS one at a time in any order you choose. After
resolving a die, set it aside.
excavator
USING ROOMS:
Unlike the other rooms, this effect
To be able to use a room’s effect, you have to applies as soon as you place the die:
spend the indicated amount of energy. If you
When you move enemy ships in
don’t have enough energy or you don’t want to
this column, they move one space
spend it, remove the die with no effect.
less. If you place a 1 here, the
Effects are explained on the right. enemy ships don’t move.
The strength of the effect depends on the value of Add the die value to your current
the die (the higher, the better). energy. If the total is more than 7,
If the room has a modifier above it, the modifier set energy to 7.
applies to the die when you resolve the
Shoot down all enemy ships
room’seffect. However, enemy ships descend
on explosion spaces that have
according to the die’s unmodified value.
a number less than or equal to
A room with multiple spaces can be used only if your die value. Put the shot-down
every space has a die. All of the room’s effects are ships on the mothership card (to be
resolved with the value indicated by the sum of respawned later).
the dice in the room. If the room has a modifier,
apply it only once. Advance on the research track. To
advance to the next space, the die
value must be greater than or equal
to the value shown on that space.
You can advance multiple spaces if
the value is at least as high as their
sum. (To move through space 3 and
energy
land on 1, you need a 4 or higher.)
consumption
Construct a robot. Take a blue die
and set it to the value of this room.
You need to spend 3 energy and place two dice on this room to be able to use its effect. In the example
Place the blue die in any un-
occupied space of any excavated
room. This blue die becomes a
robot.
A robot can be used just like any
MOVING THE EXCAVATOR: other die during the Resolve Rooms
A die can be placed on a not-yet-accessible space step, once per round, except during
to move the excavator. the round in which it was placed.
The die value has to be the same or higher than After use, the robot remains on the
the length of the route from the excavator to the board – decrease its value by 1,
die and moving the excavator always costs one and rotate it 45° to show it has been
energy, regardless of the number of spaces it used. (Rotate it back at the end of
moves. the round.) You can choose not to
use the die, in which case it remains
So if you spend one energy and the die value is on the board and keeps its value. If
high enough, replace the die with the excavator you use a robot that is already a 1,
token, otherwise only remove the die. remove it instead of decreasing it.
When placing dice, you still place
one die in each column, ignoring
the robot dice. You can choose to
remove a robot at any time. Robots
never move enemy ships.
 (3)
(4)
(3)

(1)
(2)
To move the excavator ahead 4 spaces, you place a 4, 5, or 6 on the space the excavator moves to. Note

s to the mothership card. (3) The leftmost and rightmost columns are empty, so ships must be placed in those

3 MOVE
THE MOTHERSHIP
• Resolve the glowing symbol under the arrow
on the mothership card. (See the symbols
explanation on the right.)
• Then move the mothership down to the next
Yourships
row. If any baseare
takes 1 damage.
in this row, move them to
the mothership card.
• Finally, Move the excavator
respawn all enemy theships
indicated
on number
the of spaces back along the track. (Remove any robo
Move
mothership the tracker on the research track back the indicated number of spaces.
card.
Put one red enemy ship (if available) on the mothership card.
RESPAWNING ENEMY SHIPS:
The red ship works the same way as a normal ship, except that if it’s shot down, it will be pu
Place ships one-by-one on unoccupied starting
spots according to these rules:
• Green ships are placed before red ships.
• Place ships only in empty columns, if possible.
• If every column has a ship, choose a starting
spot with the most empty spaces between it
and the column’s top ship.
If there are multiple options, the choice is yours.
If you run out of spots, leave any unspawned ships
to be spawned next round.

GAME END
ays, either when the mothership descends to cover the skull symbol, or when your damage marker moves t
marker to the last space of the research track.
Based on the successful PnP version,
CGE is releasing Under Falling Skies
this year with lots of great new
content:
• New graphics
• Cool miniatures
• Campaign mode
• 20+ unique cities
• Game-changing missions

Illustrated by
Kwanchai Moriya