Urbify

• Designer: Kalle Malmioja
• Publisher: Looping Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 12+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Our city is prospering and growing at a dizzying pace, and building permits are continually being negotiated in the main city council departments. Several political parties govern in coalition and use their influence and personnel to carry out the most successful construction projects, and thus end up being the most popular and beloved party in the city. Who knows, maybe that will catapult them to more ambitious political projects?

Each player takes on the role of a political party that strategically influences each of the 4 city councils (economy, transport, culture and tourism) to obtain the best building licenses, and thus gain prestige when building them and different benefits when inaugurating them. The player whose political party has more prestige when the construction of the city is finished, will have won.

To setup, the town hall board is placed on the table and each player puts a scoring token at 0 on the scoring track on it.  The two types of tiles are shuffled, and 6 I tiles are placed face up in the slots at the bottom of the board. Each player takes an influence board, and puts one cube at the start of the five tracks on their board.  The four tracks at the left mark the four different types of influence that a player has.  The angled gray track represents Development – which is usually derived from building abilities or by spending one point of each of the four influence types to generate a development point.  Each player also starts with 4 meeples (Politicians) as well.

In the game, players take turns choosing an option depending on whether or not they have any meeples left in their reserve.

(1) If they have meeples on their board:

• they can send them to the city hall – either 2 meeples to a single area or up to 3 each going to a different area.  You can never have more than 4 in a single area.
• They can choose building tile, paying the necessary council points and meeples; place the tile in the city (orthogonally adjacent to a previously placed tile) and obtain prestige points.  The city is limited to a 6×6 footprint.  Replenish the empty space with the next tile from the stack.

(2) If they do not have meeples:

• they can resolve one of the four city councils to obtain council points – choose any area where they have at least one meeple.  The active player and all other players with 2+ meeples get one influence point of that color per meeple. The active player gets a bonus influence point.  Anyone else who had only 1 meeple gets no influence but does get 2 prestige points as consolation.  Anyone who had the maximum 4 meeples gets a bonus prestige point in addition to the four influence they received.  All meeples from this area are returned to their owner’s boards.
• they can inaugurate the buildings they have built in the city, removing their meeples and gaining the different benefits that each building gives as noted in the yellow box at the bottom of the tile

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The game ends when all the buildings have been placed in the market.  When that last tile is placed, the current round is completed, and then two more full rounds are played. In these final two rounds, players are able to do any of the four possible actions, even if they have meeples on their board. 

There is a bit of final scoring as each of the five influence levels are scored. 4 points to a player if they alone have the highest influence or 2 points to all players who are tied for the most. Do this for each of the five influence tracks. The player with the most points wins. Ties going to the player with the most combined prestige at the end of the game.

My thoughts on the game

I’ve played the game a number of times now, mostly 2-player, and I do like it at that player count.  There is a nice back and forth to the movement of workers and how that affects what you can do on your turn.  Keeping an eye on the meeple situation of your opponent also is useful as you can make better plans knowing what options are available to your opponents.

The puzzle of tlie-laying/city building is a classic one, and one which I have always enjoyed. Here, trying to get the right meeples onto the tile and gaining enough influence points is its own challenge, and then once you have the tile in your hand, figuring out where to put it on the map to maximize its scoring potential is the next level.  There is a small amount of hate drafting / hate placing possible, and it does feel good to know that you’ve taken a spot that your opponent coveted by beating them to the punch.

It will take a few games to get a grip on the timing.  Newbies constantly want to gain influence while they still have meeples on their board – and it takes a bit to figure out how to time your plays to get the majorities you want at the times that you want in City Hall.  Also, many a plan has been thwarted because I inaugurated a building to take advantage of a good situation on the board, and then realized that this meant I took meeples back onto my board, and now I had to do an action with them on my next turn…

The rules and components – mostly solid.  One quibble; the player aid is the same area where you are supposed to put your meeples. Which means, when you have meeples there, you can’t read the player aid!  I will also make mention that we felt that some of the action icons on the tiles weren’t intuitive; but there are nice full descriptions in the rules, and we just make sure to read the action aloud each time a new tile gets placed in the market.  This doesn’t change the fact that the iconography could be better, but just read the rules with each tile and everything will be fine.  I have actually made two color copies of the last two pages of the rules so that there are multiple copies of the building reference for all players to refer to as needed.

Urbify is a clever game that gives you a great deal to puzzle over in a small package. The restrictions on how/when you can take certain actions is different than a lot of other tile laying games, and it provides a nice twist on that genre.  I hope to get this to the table a few more times this Spring to try to improve my urban planning…

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale
• Neutral. Mark J
• Not for me…