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. You have your own personal village board, and you slide the villagers on this board to various areas to indicate that they've been given jobs to do. Will you send Hanna along on the expedition to the cave? Or should she instead spend her time teaching important skills to one of the young villagers? I polled a number of friends before writing this piece, particularly my solid network of Ryan Laukat fanboys and fangirls who adore the designer’s other work. It sounds like my thoughts on Above and Below align with theirs; the next two games in the Arzium series are better, and in many ways Sleeping Gods seems like Laukat’s magnum opus. This fast-paced game is full of adventure, but the investigators only have one main goal: close the portals to the other dimensions before the ultimate Ancient One awakens.

After the Hunters have made their moves, Dracula is able to perform his own actions and put his nefarious schemes into action. Moving in secret, Dracula must avoid the Hunters and create an army of vampires to escape his fate. He may do this only once per turn. It is not possible to refresh the key houses or star houses. Pass

If any player owns a house or outpost with this symbol and there is currently not a good on the card, place one of the appropriate goods there.

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. Above and Belowis 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. You have your own personal village board, and you slide the villagers on this board to various areas to indicate that they’ve been given jobs to do. Will you send Hanna along on the expedition to the cave? Or should she instead spend her time teaching important skills to one of the young villagers?

End of the Game

Realizing the potential for your village, you will need to lead your village to greatness and develop your villagers to meet their full potential. Now, players may move one villager from injured to exhausted, or from exhausted to ready for each bed he has on his house and outpost cards. A villager cannot sleep in two beds (the villager wouldn't be able to move from injured to ready by using two beds). Collect Income

To play the game, players must choose from sixteen different investigators to make up their winning team. Throughout the game, players will get different opportunities to upgrade their chosen character using various skills, items, weapons, and spells to increase their chances of saving Arkham. There are six special villagers in the base game. They are the Liquid Woman, Glogo, Cave Cat (two of these), and Metal Man (two of these) villagers. At the start of the game, place these villagers face up near the play area. They can only be obtained through specific encounters in the explore book. Each of these villagers has special rules. After reading the description, the reader describes the two available choices like this: "Run and hide-- explore 3 or 4. Stand and fight-- explore 7". The story telling element in Above and Below is, for the most part, great; the only issue I have with it is that the resolution of any given encounter has no flavor, you either gain rewards or you don’t, which to me is a little half-hearted. Maybe Tales of the Arabian Nights has just spoiled me.

If playing with four players, place the two starting villagers that do not have a hammer symbol in the grass area with a moon symbol--the "exhausted area". (In the first round of play, each player will only be able to use one villager. The reader reads the entire paragraph, including any choices below the description (in BOLD CAPS) AND the associated explore numbers. The only thing the reader does not read aloud are the possible rewards after each explore number (in parentheses). An encounter paragraph might look like this 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.

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. First, the player slides one of his villagers from the ready area of his player board to the exhausted area of his player board. The villager must have a hammer symbol. Place the coin tokens, good tokens, cider tokens, and potion tokens near the side. This is the supply. Place one cider token on the reputation board in the area with a cider symbol.

Will you take someone with you on the cave expedition? Or does your villager have skills better suited to another important job? Whatever your reason is, it’s up to you to kill him before any of your fellow players get the chance. The question is; can you build a thriving village above and a bountiful series of outposts below? Above and Below - The Game Then you found it! The perfect place to make your new home. But as soon as you had the first hut built, you discovered a vast network of caverns underground, brimming with shiny treasures, rare resources, and untold adventure. How could you limit your new village to the surface? You immediately start organizing expeditions and building houses underground as well as on the surface.