Cities USA

• Designer: Phil Walker-Harding and Steve Finn
• Publisher: DEVIR
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4uTmiWZ
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

A great American city awaits your vision! Step into the shoes of an urban planner as you take on the challenge of transforming a bustling metropolis into a modern masterpiece. Raise gleaming skyscrapers, build bridges connecting roads and shape green spaces and water fronts to create a city that stands the test of time. Each decision matters; every building, every street, every neighborhood is a piece of your legacy. Gather the right materials,outplan your rivals, and claim your place as the architect of the future. Smart planning equals stunning results.  In this completely independent version of Cities you will find the essence of its predecessor but with new mechanics, such as skyscrapers, bridges and highways.

Place the main board on the table, and then choose one of the city achievement boards and place it just above the main board – each has unique achievements that will apply for this game.  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. Each player also gets 3 bridges.  Randomize the 8 skyscraper top pieces and place them on the spaces near the bottom of the main board.

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.  After you place tiles, check to see that your roads/bridges have continuity – if not, you must use your bridge pieces to connect the roads or bridges to the rest of your network.  One end of the bridge must always touch the center of the placed tile.
• 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.  Building feature tiles can cover construction sites or food truck sites.
• 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.  You can only build on colored building spaces, you cannot build on construction sites nor food truck sites.  You can also take a skyscraper top from the area you chose buildings from if you have a 4 story building in a color that matches one of the available tops – this lets you make a 5 story building. 

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 building, score 0/1/2/3/5 VPs for height 1/2/3/4/5
• Score each scoring card based on the rules on the card
• Score feature tiles (2Vp per food truck, yachts/benches score if they are in an area of a specific size, swing/slide and ferry/beacon score 1VP each, but 5VP for a pair if adjacent)
• Take penalties for construction sites and dead-end streets: -1/3/6/10vp for 1/2/3/4+ errors

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

Cities is one of my favorite take and make games as I love the drafting style – you get one thing from each row, but it’s up to you to choose the timing of when you choose from each row… If you read your opponents well, you could end up with a great selection for the round.  Even though there is a new scoring condition added to each player’s area each round, the game avoids AP in part because there are so many things in play that it becomes impossible to try to track them all.

This new version keeps many of the rules from the original.  The roads on the tiles are an addition, and these roads help cleave your city into neighborhoods.  They also give you an extra thing to consider when choosing and placing a tile because you ideally want to keep your roads connected – you’ll initially place bridges but then later take penalties for dead ends.  Further, as many of the scoring cards involve neighborhoods, you’ll want to keep your areas broken up in the most ideal way.

The game also adds a bit of a race element with the 5th floor penthouses.  All players can see which penthouses are available in setup, and then the first player to choose the group of buildings (when they’re able to build the penthouse) can take it.  Each one is worth a nice 2pt bonus for that (and it’s a full bonus because it is just an extra piece you can take from the building action space), and IIRC, a few of the bonus cards also involve 5 story buildings.

The new cities all have goals which are pleasingly thematic and incorporate real-life aspects of those cities.  A big thumbs up for those.

Cities USA feels a lot like the original but with maybe a “bit more” all around.  The bonus cards seem a bit more involved, especially those which score neighborhoods.  The map building is a bit more involved because now you need to worry about the roads.  The building building is a bit more involved with the 5th floors.  The feature tiles have a bit more to their scoring… Is it all an improvement?

I guess it depends on what you’re looking for in the game.  For me, I feel like Cities USA is not as elegant as the original and also a bit less accessible.  This is definitely a version of the game that will only be played with other gamers around here.  For newbies, the original Cities is already a bit of a stretch, and the extra parts to Cities USA moves it firmly out of that space.

If you like Cities, you should really give this one a try to see which version you like better.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

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

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4uTmiWZ