Cities

• Designers: Phil Walker-Harding and Steve Finn
• Publisher: DEVIR
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

You’ve been tasked by the city council to put together a plan to transform a whole neighborhood in the city. You have the opportunity to build new housing, office buildings, parks, and leisure areas near the waterfront. It is in your hands to make the city a better place.

Cities is a city-building game in which you draft the best projects and arrange them in your own playing area. Designed by Steve Finn and Phil Walker Harding and illustrated by Jorge Tabanera, it allows games for groups of 2 to 4 players, ages 10 and up, lasting about 40 minutes. With action and resource draft mechanisms, it will give you the opportunity to visit the cities of Sydney, Venice, New York, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, Lisbon, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires. Can you design the most magnificent neighborhood?

The game is played over eight rounds (or four rounds in a two-player game). Each round, players use their workers to collect 1 scoring card, 1 city tile, 1-2 feature tiles, and 2-4 building pieces. City tiles are made up of park spaces, water spaces, and building spaces. Building pieces are placed on building spaces of the same color to form buildings, which can be 1-4 stories high. Whenever a player fulfills an achievement, they place one of their discs on the achievement board. At the end of the game, players add up the points they have gained from all of their scoring cards and achievements.

Place the main board on the table, and then choose one of the city achievement boards and place it just above the main board.  Shuffle the city tiles, feature tiles and scoring cards separately and place them in the supply.  Each player takes all the bits in their player color.  The four starting tiles are placed on the table and, in reverse turn order, each player chooses one to start their neighborhood.

The game is played over 8 rounds, and at the start of each round, 3 scoring cards are dealt face up to the top of the board and one additional scoring card is placed face down. Likewise, 4 city tiles are placed on the board, 3 face up and 1 face down.  Six feature tiles are then drawn, 5 face up and 1 face down.  Finally, building pieces are drawn from a bag, arranged in 3 groups: 4, 3 and 3 – as seen in the areas at the bottom of the board.  The rightmost space in this row is left empty.

In each round, players will take turns choosing a lot from the board, and when they choose something, they will place one of their workers in the vacated area.  Players may only make one selection from each row, though they can choose from the rows in any order they like.  The current starting player goes first, and after he makes his selection, he places the starting player token in the rightmost building piece area (the one which has no buildings placed on it in setup).  Each row has a mystery item (either face down or buildings to be drawn from the bag) – the player who chooses this option may not look at it until he has committed to choosing it.

• If you take a scoring card, place it face up near your neighborhood
• If you choose a city tile, place this tile fully adjacent to any other tile in your neighborhood.  The tile can be rotated and there is no restriction on what may be adjacent.  Your neighborhood cannot exceed a 3×3 grid.
• If you take a feature tile set, you place the feature tile(s) onto spaces in your neighborhood of matching type.  If you cannot place a feature tile (or choose not to place it), simply discard that feature tile.
• If you take a group of building pieces, you may place buildings onto building spaces of the same color or buildings of matching color with a maximum height of 4 buildings.  If you choose the rightmost space in this row, you draw 2 buildings from the bag and you take the start player token for the next round.

After each turn, check to see if you have fulfilled any of the city achievements, and if so, place one of your scoring rings on the highest available point value for that achievement.  When all players have used all four of their workers (and thus taken one option from each of the four rows on the board), the round ends.  Set up the board again and repeat for a total of 8 rounds.

At the end of the game, scores are calculated.

• Points for city achievements
• For each area of orthogonally connected water spaces, score 1/3/6/10 pts for 1/2/3/4 unique feature tiles in that area
• For each area of orthogonally connected park spaces, score 1/3/6/10 pts for 1/2/3/4 unique feature tiles in that area
• For each monument tile, score 2 points
• Score each scoring card based on the rules on the card

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player with the most points from achievements.

My thoughts on the game

I’ve always been attracted to city builder games, and when you throw in the name of Phil Walker-Harding, whose games generally appeal to me, this one was a must try!  The game itself is simple at its core; draft one set from each of the 4 components each round and make them fit together as best you can.

You are free to choose the order of your acquisitions each round, and there are some interesting strategies that can arise from this.  Some people like to grab high value scoring cards when they come up, and then try to make their city to match the criteria on the card.  Other times, players might go for city tiles first so that they know which color building spaces they have to use.  (Remember that if you cannot play a feature tile or building piece (onto a matching colored square), you are forced to discard it.  

There is an interesting race in the game as you try to get the things you want; but knowing that players are limited to only one choice per row – you might be able to leave things to the end of the round if you know no one left to choose from that row wants the thing you’re after… Going first definitely has its advantages here, but you’ll end up with the worst building piece lot (2 random pieces).  I find that going first is often worth enough to take this choice earlier in the round if there isn’t much visible on the board to entice me.  Of course, the designers know this, and as long as there are face-down options in the rows available, you’ll never be quite sure what you might get!

If you squint, you can see the steam rising from his head…

Speaking of things visible on the board – man, everything about the game is great for me except the board design.  It is super busy, and while I get that they are trying to portray the hustle and bustle of a busy city – it’s really distracting to the eyes – at least to me.   Otherwise, the game really nice on the table with everyone building up their area with stacks of buildings and tiles in their parks and lakes.

The rules are quite brief.  The entire front page has the parts manifest and the overview, and this means that the entirety of the rules comes on just three small pages.   Despite their brevity, the game is quite simple and the rules explanation is pretty complete.  There isn’t a lot of room for examples, and they save space in the rules by using the back of the box as the illustration for the scoring example in the rules.

The different city goals give some variety to the game, though just for scoring purposes.  I like the variety and otherwise I enjoy the puzzle in the game of placing tiles and buildings in the right place.   As you pick up eight different scoring cards each game, you’ll always be looking for something different and having to come up with a new strategy every game.

So, since we’re talking about SdJ this week – I’ll go ahead and say that this might be my current front runner for an award next year.  Given the current jury choices, maybe more for the blue pawn than the red?

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Mark Jackson (1 play): There’s a really nice balance here between hate drafting stuff your opponent needs and maximizing every one of your picks to increase your score. I enjoyed my first play of the game and would be happy to play again.

Steph: Bored after 3 plays.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale Y
• I like it. Mark Jackson, John P
• Neutral. Steph
• Not for me…