Underleague Review – When a Metal Spider Ripping a Rat’s Head Off Leads to a Dull Dice Roll

Disclaimer: Underleague was provided for free from Cogwright Games, although the writing and opinions of this article are my own.

Underleague bucks the trend of family-friendly board games and delivers mature, balls-to-the-wall violence. I mean just look at the box cover it’s got a blood-drenched metal spider ripping the FREAKING head off a giant rat!

In Underleague, you’ve left all your ethics and morals behind to become a collector of exotic animals. Not for any noble or conservational reasons, but to fight them in the back alleys of Helgarten for entertainment and victory points.

Each round starts with you drafting three of these creatures and then drawing a hand of strategy cards. From here, you’ll use betting chips to bet on the animals to win or lose, use strategy cards to buff up creatures, and then fight them by rolling dice. At the end of the round, your goal is to be the first player to get 20 victory points.

There are a lot of interesting mechanics at play within Underleague. So let’s jump in and take a deeper look.

A card for a card

Underleague has one of my favourite mechanics in all of board gaming. Paying for a card using other cards in your hand. Here, you’re paying for strategy cards, using other strategy cards, and it works as well as anywhere else. Leaving you with the tough decision of figuring out what to sacrifice to play a card.

But that’s not the only interesting mechanic involving these cards.

There’s also betting.

Before each round really gets underway, you’ll place five betting tokens on the creatures in play. Then at the end of the round, each bet you got right lets you draw a strategy card.

These small interactions were what I enjoyed about Underleague. As it gave you options to manipulate the creatures in different ways to get different bonuses. For example, if you drafted a weak creature, to begin with, you can bet against it and still get a reward despite it losing.

Unfortunately, outside of the awesome artwork, that’s all the good I have to say about Underleague. Because as soon as the fighting begins, the game reduces all the fun you’ve had to a dice roll.

And not a very fun dice roll at that.

Compared to another combat betting game Cheaty Mages, Underleague is a letdown. Usually, despite the strategy cards, it boils down to which creature is stronger – as they get to roll more dice – or luckier.

If we weren’t living in a world of Magic the Gathering, or Zombicide, this would be fine. But we are. These games have perfected the art of card play, and dice chucking respectively, yet it seems Underleague has learnt no lessons from them.

Instead, the combat feels bland at best and unfun at worst.

Building your own deck

Underleague is not lacking in content, with 30 creature cards and a 250-card strategy deck, there are more cards here than buns in a bakery. However, content doesn’t mean much when it’s not backed by good gameplay and here, the deck is too large and too random to provide meaningful strategy.

Although, there are competitive rules for building a personal 70-card strategy deck. The learning curve to build one is so tall and steep it makes Olympus Mons look like a molehill. There really should be some pre-built decks, or a set of starter decklists to help you get up and going.

I mentioned it before, but it bears repeating. The artwork in Underleague is the stand-out feature. Its grungy vibe inspires thoughts of back streets, and the monsters all carry a ferocity to them. There’s a level of maturity to this game that you don’t see often in board games.

However, Underleague falters when it comes to graphic design. Things that should be obvious such as creature and card type are difficult to take in at a glance.

Underleague is a mish-mash of ideas that don’t all come together completely at the point of gameplay. When all is said and done, it’s rolling a lot of dice and betting on chance. Which while in keeping with the theme, doesn’t make for a compelling board game.