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
REROLL
bases to hide from the bombardment. As the leader
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 TRACKERS
dealing with the enemy ships.

REINFORCEMENTS

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

The cards are double sided, being easy on

one side and difficult (with in the top right
6
corner) on the other.
For your first game, use the easy side.
In  subsequent games, you can increase the
difficulty by flipping any number of cards to
their difficult side. RESEARCH TRACK
2
Each adds +1 LEVEL (up to LEVEL 8).
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 5
4
one on your base as an excavator.
5 Five dice (3  black and 2  white) should be kept
nearby.
UNDERGROUND
6 Leave the 2 blue robot dice and 2 red enemy ships
BASE
aside for now.
 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
2 Resolve rooms. there.
3 Move the mothership. Note that a  ship that moves to
a different column will move again
when you place a  die in its new
column.

1 PLACE DICE AND

MOVE SHIPS
Move the mothership card one
At the start of the round, roll 5  dice (3  black and row closer to your base.
2  white) and place them one at a  time on the This is bad, because the mothership
available spaces in your base. moves closer. But it gives you some
White dice have a  special function: When you control over the mothership effect
place one of them, you have to reroll all the that happens at the end of the
remaining dice that have not yet been placed. round.
Each time you place a  die, all enemy ships in the
die’s column descend toward your base. They move The explosion doesn’t have any
a number of spaces equal to the number shown on immediate effect when the ship
the die. If the final space has an icon, resolve that lands on it, but it allows you to
effect. (See the explanation on the right.) shoot down the ship later by
When a ship reaches the lowest space of its column, activating a  fighter with a  die of
your base takes 1  damage. Move the damage a sufficient value.
marker accordingly and put the enemy ship on the
mothership card (to be respawned later). Your base takes 1 damage.
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.

excavator
 2 RESOLVE ROOMS Unlike the other rooms, this effect
applies as soon as you place the die:
When you move enemy ships in this
column, they move one space less.
Once you’ve placed all five dice, resolve them one
If you place a 1 here, the enemy ships
at a time in any order you choose. After resolving
don’t move.
a die, set it aside.
Add the die value to your current
USING ROOMS:
energy. If the total is more than 7, set
To be able to use a  room’s  effect, you have to energy to 7.
spend the indicated amount of energy. If you don’t
Shoot down all enemy ships
have enough energy or you don’t want to spend it,
on explosion spaces that have
remove the die with no effect.
a  number less than or equal to
Effects are explained on the right. your die value. Put the shot-down
The strength of the effect depends on the value of ships on the mothership card (to be
the die (the higher, the better). respawned later).
If the room has a  modifier above it, the modifier Advance on the research track. To
applies to the die when you resolve the room’s effect. advance to the next space, the die
However, enemy ships descend according to the value must be greater than or equal
die’s unmodified value. to the value shown on that space.
A  room with multiple spaces can be used only if You can advance multiple spaces if
every space has a die. All of the room’s effects are the value is at least as high as their
resolved with the value indicated by the sum of the sum. (To move through space 3 and
dice in the room. If the room has a modifier, apply land on 1, you need a 4 or higher.)
it only once. Construct a  robot. Take a  blue die
and set it to the value of this room.
modifier 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
energy
other die during the Resolve Rooms
consumption
step, once per round, except during
You need to spend 3 energy and place two the round in which it was placed.
dice on this room to be able to use its effect. After use, the robot remains on the
In the example above, the total value is four board – decrease its value by 1,
(1 + 6 – 3 = 4) so you would resolve both effects and rotate it 45° to show it has been
with this value. used. (Rotate it back at the end of the
round.) You can choose not to use the
MOVING THE EXCAVATOR: die, in which case it remains on the
board and keeps its value. If you use
A die can be placed on a not-yet-accessible space to
a robot that is already a 1, remove it
move the excavator.
instead of decreasing it.
The die value has to be the same or higher than
When placing dice, you still place
the length of the route from the excavator to the
one die in each column, ignoring
die and moving the excavator always costs one
the robot dice. You can choose to
energy, regardless of the number of spaces it moves.
remove a robot at any time. Robots
So if you spend one energy and the die value is high never move enemy ships.
enough, replace the die with the excavator token,
otherwise only remove the die.
 (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 that you can place the die even
on a tunnel space. Next round, you will be able
(1) The mothership effect places a red ship on
to use the newly excavated rooms.
the mothership card. (2) When the mothership
moves, the green ship in the top row returns

3 MOVE
to the mothership card. (3) The leftmost and

THE MOTHERSHIP rightmost columns are empty, so ships must

be placed in those starting spots. (4) The
• Resolve the glowing symbol under the arrow remaining spots are each the same distance
on the mothership card. (See the symbols from their column’s topmost ships, so the red
explanation on the right.) ship can spawn in either spot.
• Then move the mothership down to the next
row. If any ships are in this row, move them to Your base takes 1 damage.
the mothership card.
• Finally, respawn all enemy ships on the Move the excavator the indicated
mothership card. number of spaces back along the
track. (Remove any robot dice in
RESPAWNING ENEMY SHIPS: the way.)
Place ships one-by-one on unoccupied starting
spots according to these rules: Move the tracker on the research
track back the indicated number
• Green ships are placed before red ships. of spaces.
• Place ships only in empty columns, if possible.
Put one red enemy ship (if
• If every column has a  ship, choose a  starting
available) on the mothership card.
spot with the most empty spaces between it
and the column’s top ship. The red ship works the same way
as a  normal ship, except that if
If there are multiple options, the choice is yours.
it’s shot down, it will be put aside
If you run out of spots, leave any unspawned ships instead of being respawned.
to be spawned next round.

GAME END
You can lose the game in two ways, either when
the mothership descends to cover the skull symbol,
or when your damage marker moves to the skull
symbol on your base.
You win if you get the research 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