Last week Mike and I got together for a first game of Gangs of the Undercity. This is a game / concept that we have been talking about and then developing for several months. We have both been huge fans of Gangs of Rome for a long time, and it was during one of our games set in Rome that we got to thinking that the concepts of gangs carrying out missions for faceless patrons who were competing for control of the city while avoiding being lynched by the crowds but rather using them to there advantage to slip around the city undetected would translate well into a game set in a real medieval city, or a fantasy city like Lankhmar with it’s competing guilds and powerful patrons.

We have developed a new set of fighter and equipment cards together with rules for new gods and city districts. These can all be downloaded from the website or the Gangs of the Undercity Facebook Group.

We choose a simple scenario for our first game. We had 100 points to spend on fighters and equipment, our gangs set up within 6″ of opposite table sides with a removable artefact in the centre of the table that needed to be stolen and taken off the table.

My gang deploys to the west of the market place. The gang members can be easily spotted as they have cut out bases carrying there health and Id.

These are the four members of my gang. The Id number on the base of the miniature corresponds to the order that the cards are laid out, so for example the third card from the left is Thomas Shipondbain and the miniature representing him has an Id Marker ‘3’. The miniatures we used for Gang Members were all from the Citizens of Dark Alley set and they are based on special 25mm round flagstone bases with cut-outs from Sally 4ths Flagstone Base range.

The four fighters in my Gang cost 87 points, we were playing a 100 point per side game so I had eleven points left over to buy some equipment to go in my equipment pool for the gang.

The objective of this scenario was to retrieve a Silvered Sword from the offerings in front of the statue in the centre of the board. Come nightfall the Vampire Count planned to seize it and destroy it under the cover of darkness, but until then he had placed a guard armed with an endless supply of roof tiles, on the watchtower to attach any that came within in range. One of my gang members can be seen moving up through the bridge, and three bases of ‘the crowd’ are moving around the town centre, going about there daily business.

One of Mikes gang members, Susie Mardale, who had previously blended with the crowd, is seen emerging from the crowd just in front of the statue. This is a great way to move around the city, escaping detection. At the point she emerged, she was attacked by the watchman on the tower but escaped injury.

At the other end of town, another of Mikes gang members, that he had previously equipped with a bow has climbed up to take a vantage point on the roof.

Sally manages to seize the sword, as Samuel moves in to challenge her for it. The counters by there bases indicate that they are ‘equipped’ with an item, but there opponent does not know what item they are carrying. The flip side of the counter has a number which corresponds to an equipment card.

Thomas, part of my gang is in a bad way, he has been shot at a couple of times by Mikes marksman on the roof and is down to one health. He is attempting to blend with the crowd.

Agnes, a cunning member of the Thieves Guild has disguised herself as a fishmonger. She has now moved in to a good elevated position and reveals that she is also equipped with a short bow.

At the start of the game Mike had played ‘Poisoned Chalice’, which had greatly weakened my fighter, Christopher, and now to add insult to injury his cultist moves in for the kill.

Before my injured ganger could hide in the crowd, Mikes Dark Priest moves in and finishes him off!

Realising that the only chance to turn the tide of the encounter was going to be blending with the crowd and then emerging from a crowd base within range of Susie who was well positioned to exit the table next turn, Samuel moves into contact with the nearest crowd base and disappears.

In Gangs of the Undercity (like the base game Gangs of Rome), character activation is done by drawing coloured pebbles. On this occasion the Fates favoured Mike and on the last turn of the game, Sally slipped out from the safety of the crowd, within a move off the edge of the table and was off to her gangs hideout with her newly won bounty.

This was the first game that Mike and I had played with our Gangs of the Undercity adaptation of Gangs of Rome. The game was a lot of fun and very atmospheric, the concept of gangs and crowds and slipping in and out of them, the crowds moving around the table and sometimes reacting to crimes going on around them worked really well. The buildings and scenery that we used were 3D printed from Iain Lovecraft’s recent Dark Alley Kickstarter. We imagined our medieval / fantasy city to be akin to Lankhmar, but the concept could easily be applied to many periods and genres.

The Gangs of the Undercity rules adaptation can be downloaded from here.

The fighter miniatures that we used were from the Citizens of Dark Alleys set. The crowd bases were populated with figures from Sally 4th’s ‘The Villagers’ range.

If you are interested in being part of the Gangs of the Undercity community, please join our Facebook group by clicking here!