How to play Umbrella Academy: The Board Game – Allies and Feuds

Welcome folks to the latest instalment of our how to play Umbrella Academy blogs. Last week we covered a large portion of how the game plays, so make sure you check out the list below:

• General overview
• Hazard cards
• Skill cards
• Advantage cards
• An interview with designer Jack Caesar

With the Gamefound launch now live, today we’re looking at allies and feuds. After all, the Umbrella Academy is all about making friends with your siblings… and then immediately arguing with them!

ALLY CARDS

Saving the world isn’t always easy, so you should take any help you can get! Distributed in the Hazard deck, you’ll find two ‘Ally in Trouble’ cards. These cards can potentially be drawn as part of the ‘Crisis Phase’ when you add new Hazards onto the board. If you manage to destroy the ‘Ally in Trouble’ card, then you can draw a random Ally card from the Ally Deck.

There are six Allies included in the core game… and wouldn’t it be lovely if we expanded those during the Kickstarter? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Anyway, the six Allies are: Pogo, Spaceboy, Rumor, Séance, Kraken and Number Five.

A little like a character’s unique Skill cards, the Allies have different abilities that can help in your quest to save the world. Let’s take a look at one example below.

If you draw Spaceboy as your Ally, then you can use him to discard cards and draw a new hand. This is really useful if you realise you haven't got the Battle Tokens required to defeat a Hazard or Villain. Plus, as you'll see in a moment, abilities like this are useful for clearing Feuds too.

Part of the joy of Allies, is that they won’t appear in every game (due to the random nature of how Hazard cards work) so when they do arrive, it can totally mix up the gameplay. Plus, if you’re really lucky, you could get two Allies appearing in the same game.

FEUD CARDS

The contrast to Ally cards – which help you in your mission – are Feud cards, which do the exact opposite. If you’ve read the Umbrella Academy graphic novels, you’ll know that the siblings don’t always see eye-to-eye… and not just because Spaceboy is really tall. This is represented in the game with Feud cards!

At the start of the game, you draw two Feud cards from the Feud deck and shuffle them into your stack of Skill cards. This means that during the game, you could draw a Feud card instead of a (far more useful) Skill card. Typically the Feuds will force you to change the way you would normally play, e.g. Phobia means you can’t play Advantage cards, while Anger Issues stops you moving if there’s a Villain at your Location.

As well as more generic Feuds, there are also character-specific Feuds too. With these cards, you can’t move to the same Location as the character you have the Feud with, i.e. if you’ve got a Feud with Spaceboy, you can’t move to the Location where Spaceboy is.

So, how do you get rid of Feud cards? Well, some cards will describe how to remove them. For example, if you’ve got a Feud with Spaceboy, you’ll need Spaceboy to move to your Location and apologise sweetly. However, you can also discard Feud cards if a fellow Player uses one of their Skill card abilities.

As a result, Feud cards are all part of the puzzle you need to solve in order to save the day. Clear them quickly, and you can get on with the important stuff!

UMBRELLA ACADEMY: THE BOARD GAME IS LIVE ON GAMEFOUND. YOU CAN BACK THE PROJECT HERE.