Red Dragon Inn 9: The Undercity, the latest expansion to the highly-touted Red Dragon Inn board game published by Slugfest Games, invites even more adventurers to the famous tavern to test their mettle in brew and brawl!
Designed by Geoff Bottone, Jennifer Kitzman, Jeff Morrow, and Sam Waller, the Red Dragon Inn 9: The Undercity board game also includes a new tavern to use in the Pub Crawl variant as well as the ability to play 2-person RDI with Otto, an automated third player!
So, fill your flagons as we begin to check out Red Dragon Inn 9: The Undercity!!
Red Dragon Inn 9: The Undercity Character Overview
Red Dragon Inn 9: The Undercity introduces a riotous group of new characters to add to the frivolity and chaos that is a game of Red Dragon Inn. Usually in the gameplay section, I outline the general rules of play and flow of the game and Stake our CLAIM, but this time I’ll focus on highlighting a little bit about each of the new characters. That way you’ll get a feel for how they all function and hopefully one (or more) will speak to you!
Dale the Mycologist
Dale utilizes his Planter Box to grow Mushrooms over time. The Planter box can hold up to four Mushrooms, and their Growth levels are marked with a Rake token. These Grow every turn at a minimum, with some cards prompting Growth as you play them.
Some cards will have an additional Harvest cost you can pay that will allow you to discard Mushrooms equaling that value to get an extra or replacement effect. Lastly, if Mushrooms get to their highest level, you’ll have to Gather them at the end of your turn. This will sometimes come with an extra effect of its own!
Dale is really fun if you enjoy planning ahead and have a plodding, methodical approach to playing the game. You can time out your Mushrooms to have really big swings of effects all at once, which is an absolute blast when it happens.
Jett the Courier
Jett is one of my favorite characters in Red Dragon Inn 9: The Undercity. You will be managing Jett’s Momentum track; he’s the fastest courier around and sometimes he runs so fast he loses his hat. Playing cards can require you to Gain or Lose Momentum, and some will allow you to spend Momentum to gain an additional effect.
There is a really satisfying ebb and flow to Jett’s deck. I especially enjoy playing cards that cause me to lose all of my Momentum when I don’t have any left, because it feels like I’m getting away with something. I didn’t see anything against that in the rules so…am I getting away with something?
Petra the Devious
Originally I was going to say that Jett was my favorite character, but then I remembered Petra! She is one of the more complicated characters of the bunch, mostly because you’re juggling a handful of different things. One is her Hellfire track, which cycles around as you play cards, causing a nice effect when it finishes a revolution.
Players will mostly be annoyed with you, however, thanks to your Schemes and Plotted cards. Harkening back to Yu-Gi-Oh trap cards, Plotted cards are placed down in front of you. They’ll get discarded at the beginning of your next turn, but if you have a Scheme face down, you can activate it like a Trap card, resolving its effect. They’ll never know what’s coming!
Doctor Terci
If you’ve ever wanted to play a barber – medieval barber, that is – now is your chance! Doctor Terci has a seemingly never-ending slew of full-art Patients that need assistance. As you play cards, you will earn Medical Supplies that you can use to treat those Patients. When they’re all full-up, you can bring them into your hand as a playable card.
Sometimes you’ll run into situations where you are strapped for a particular Supply, but with how quickly hands cycle in Red Dragon Inn, I didn’t find that to be too much of a problem with the Wilds that are in the deck. And while there are some Patients that require 3 Supplies to complete, there are plenty that only need one.
Beastsergeant Ygella
You don’t need any special decks or side-hustles for Ygella; the main mechanic that she has is a Pet-subtype on her cards. These will come into play occasionally, sometimes by revealing cards from your deck until you reveal a Pet card, or regaining a Pet card back to your hand from the discard pile. There isn’t anything extra to keep track of here, but timing your cards right in order to get the most benefit out of those Pet cards is beneficial.
This is probably the most straight-forward of all the characters in Red Dragon Inn 9: The Undercity; there is usually at least one character that is primed for beginners or first-time players, and Ygella is it in this expansion. She plays very similarly to some of the characters in the base game.
Staking Our C.L.A.I.M. on Red Dragon Inn 9: The Undercity!
So do are characters featured in Red Dragon Inn 9: The Undercity deserving of a spot in your RDI Character Trove? Definitely! Just when I think Slugfest has tapped all of the fantasy tropes, they come right back with something new, fresh, and inspired.
It should be noted that Petra can also be played in Boss Battle mode, which is where you can team up against the Boss as a group. This is a really fun mode that scales with the number of players in the sense that the Boss gets more Actions on their team to balance it out. This is also where you’ll utilize those vibrant Potion tokens which can be spent to regain Fortitude, remove Alcohol level, or gain some Gold.
If you also have Red Dragon Inn 8, the Star Mole Drinking Hole is another Tavern for you to add to your Pub Crawl variants. This is something I have access to at the moment, so I’m afraid I can’t comment on the variant, or how this new Tavern plays within it.
That being said, this expansion doesn’t feel too “samey” with all of the other content out there; it fits right in without missing a beat.
Red Dragon Inn 9: The Undercity: Three Cheers for RDI!
I played Red Dragon Inn at my first Gen Con back in 2018, completely on a whim, and it’s been a favorite to introduce at game nights ever since. Red Dragon Inn 9: The Undercity, offers a slew of fun new characters that aren’t too complex to handle; I feel like there was a period of time where the mechanics were getting a bit cumbersome and now they’ve been reigned back in a bit.
If you are already a fan of Red Dragon Inn, then this expansion should already be on your radar. If you’re new to the game, then this is a great expansion to couple with the base game. Because of its approachability in terms of mechanics and the originality of the new characters, we are happy to award Red Dragon Inn 9: The Undercity with the Nerds on Earth Seal of Awesomeness Award!
You can pick up a copy of Red Dragon Inn 9: The Undercity from Amazon, or right at your FLGS!
[Disclaimer: Nerds on Earth was provided a copy of Red Dragon Inn 9: The Undercity from Flat River Group in exchange for an honest review.]