⚙️ Game Mechanics
How this game works - core systems and player actions
📂 Categories
🏢 Publishers
📖 About This Game
ARC - The Underworld is a tactical sci-fi game brought to us by award-winning wargame designer James M. Day. In ARC - The Underworld, you are transported into the maelstrom of battle in which United States Special Ops forces combat a new type of enemy: an ancient race that clandestinely thrived underground, undetected...until now. Players will select a team of either individual ARC operators or Rezex aliens, equip them with custom loadouts of weapons and gear, and then go head-to-head to accomplish different missions. Here's a quick look at the game's setting and back-story.
After erupting from the surface of a distant planet, one small fragment of rock orbited the Sun for 150 million years before colliding with the Earth eons ago. The alien organisms in the rock made a home on their new planet, evolving deep beneath the Earth’s surface and following a very different trajectory than the surface dwellers. After a catastrophic underground event destroyed their access to their main source elements, failing resources have forced them to venture openly to the surface.
Recently, a series of unexplained deaths and abductions, coupled with the total loss of communications from the small rural town of Crawford, prompted the ultra-secret Alien Response Command (ARC) to deploy an ARC-Light team to investigate immediately and, if necessary, control and contain the situation.
—description from the publisher
ARC - The Underworld presents a unique gaming experience that combines the small-unit combat of tactical games, offering:
- Utilizes character blocks w/labels and counters.
- Card Assist gameplay with Action and Character cards.
- Two fully asymmetrical forces with different weapons, tactics, and strategies.
- Dynamic play with great replay value. 13 scenarios, playable individually or as a serial campaign game.
- Four double-sided maps representing three distinctly different play areas with street level, the town’s sewers, and the Rezex’s lair.
- Active Terrain
- Three counter sheets
- Action cards include 61 unique Combat, Defense, Move, and Force types, in a 150-card deck.
- Utilizes a polyhedral dice-comparison system to resolve combat and game activities.
Components:
- 65 Wooden Blocks
- 188 Cards
- Stickers for the blocks
- Five Player Aid Cards
- Four Double-sided Maps
- One Playbook
- One Rulebook
- Twenty dice (4-sided, 6-sided, 8-sided, 10-sided, 12-sided)
- One 4" Box