1906 San Francisco

• Designer: Perepau Llistosella
• Publisher: Looping Games
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 12+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Early morning, 18th April 1906, the city of San Francisco awakes shaken by a massive earthquake of magnitude 8.6 on the Richter scale and by a huge fire that started afterwards. Even today, it is still classed as one of the worst natural disasters in the USA.

In 1906 San Francisco, you are a property developer for the rapid reconstruction of San Francisco during the five years after the large-scale destruction. Get plots of land and earn money for rubble removal so that you can construct buildings, plan urban development for essential services, and improve the city for its modernization

To set up, place the appropriate number of land plot cards on the table, covering them with rubble tokens as indicated.  Six Action cards are splayed around these cards with the round board being at the top.  The Development Board and the Urbanism cards are set up on one side of the board, and the Objectives and Permit cards on the other.  Note that three of the Objective cards are laid out as public objectives – which all players will be able to score.

A starting player is chosen, but this is only to determine the draft order in Turn 0. Players in turn choose one of the action spaces on the bottom of the round board.  The player who is rightmost (and gets the least money) will take the first turn once the game starts.  Players also get the benefit for the year as seen on the round board – in the first round, they get a building from their supply as well as getting to choose a Permit card from the market. In general, players will move their marker to the next card clockwise around the board, taking any available space.  They will get options based on that space, and then once all players have taken a turn, the turn order will again be in right to left order from the card the markers are currently on.

Again, on a turn, the player whose pawn is rightmost on the previous card must move to a free space on the next card.  They can then take the action shown on that space OR they can take the money shown at the bottom of the space OR they can carry out any other action on the card but pay $2 for each step between your pawn and the desired action.  As a final option, one player can choose to pass, getting nothing from the turn, but being guaranteed to go second in the next round.

Examples of the actions are:

• Earn money – take $ shown
• Obtain a permit card – take one from the market, do not refresh until the end of the round
• Take Objective card – this is a personal objective
• Gain a building from the supply
• Clear Up – pay $2 to move your marker up one row on the development board. For an extra dollar, also remove a rubble token from a card space
• Urban Development – pay $2 to move your token to the right on the Development board
• Build – you must have a free building, money to pay the building costs as shown on the year board, and permit cards to match the space you wish to build in.  If you use 2 permit cards, you may earn an Urbanism card and get a free Urban Development action.  Additionally, you can also take  a $3 clear up action as part of your build if you need to remove rubble from the space you are building on

When all players have taken their action, play moves to the next card, and so on.  This continues until the end of the year – that is when the pawns get back to the spaces on the Round board.  All players will earn the money listed on their space as well as taking the benefit for the particular year.  Make sure to move the round marker to represent the passage of time.

The game ends if the year marker reaches 1915.  The game can also end if a player builds their 8th building.  This player receives the Best Builder objective card.  The game continues to the end of the current round (action card) and then ends.

Scoring is done on the reverse of the Round Board.

• Points from common objectives
• Points from personal objectives
• Points based on the location of your Development token
• Points from Urbanism cards
• Points for money – 1 VP per $3

The player with the most points wins. Ties in favor of the player with more buildings.

My thoughts on the game

1906: San Francisco is another well produced game from Looping Games that fits a rather complex game in a super small box.  This game is actually a reprint, having originally come out in 2018.  Most of the changes appear to be cosmetic, though the publisher did tell me that they rebalanced the goal cards a bit.  As I had actually never played the original, I don’t have anything to compare to.  This new version also adds a solo game (which is a nice touch).

The action choice system is quite nice here, and it is the focal point of the game.  Players constantly have to figure out which action they want to take this turn and balance it with the resulting turn order choice in the next.  In the most severe of circumstances, you can even pass on the current turn and take no action – but this still doesn’t guarantee you everything in the next turn as you end up second in turn order in the following round!  In any event, as long as you have money, you’re probably not truly shut out because you can always pay to take an action on a space further away from where you place your pawn.

There is a nice challenge in the card collection – trying to get the right number and colors for your building.  You don’t need to have an exact match, but you are certainly rewarded if you do. Getting the Urbanism card/free Urban development action is a really nice bonus that makes it worth your while to get the right set of cards. 

The board is tight (physically, as the cards are not super big) but the game space is also tight as players are constantly fighting for position on the cards and for building spaces.  The public objectives also lead to competition for those aspects, but players can branch out as well with their personal objectives.   These objectives as well as the random order of the action cards each game give a nice sense of variety to each play.  

As with many of the Looping Games in this series, I’m amazed by just how much game fits in a small box.  This has made a few road trips since I acquired as it provides a really nice game experience in a small volume, and that’s nice when your packing volume is limited.  

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

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