Cities tasks you with building a neighbourhood in a City.
Also, make it look pretty.
You’ve been tasked by the city council to put together a plan to transform a whole neighbourhood 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 Game Overview
Quick Rules Summary
This is a fairly in-depth game so here is just an overview of what you do and why.
Players take turns taking a ‘thing’ from the board and placing a worker in the space they took it from.
Depending on what they took depends on what happens?
City Tile – Place it in your neighbourhood.
Feature Tile – Place the features in your neighbourhood.
Building Pieces – Placed in the neighbourhood, can be stacked up.
Scoring Card – Keep in face up. (Gives you a personal goal to achieve such as having building’s configured in a certain pattern.)
City Achievement – If you completed the goal, the players to complete these first gain more points.
After all players have placed their meeples, reset all the bits on the main board for a new round.
How do you win?
After the 8th round, players score.
Score points for achievements and scoring cards scored.
Score points for the size of connected water areas in your neighbourhood and he water features on them.
Points for certain other features.
Most points wins.
Main Mechanisms
It’s technically open drafting… But because you place your meeple on the place you drafted the item it has a worker placement feel.
There’s also tile placement along with pattern building and set collection for scoring.
Theme
It’s interesting building a neighbourhood within a city rather than the city itself.
It’s also nice to be adding the decorations to these areas, it helps it feel closer to that micro level of city building.
Setup
Shuffle cards and put tiles and bits in places. It’s not that bad.
Components & Artwork
They’re Ok. The buildings are nice and stack well. The iconography is functional and the art of the feature tiles are very clear.
Ease of Teaching
Everything is open information so players can be talked through their options before drafting.
Similar Games
Any city builder like Foundations of Metropolis, Tower Up or even Suburbia. They all have that pattern building/comboing element added too.
Cities Review
Positives
Decisions are very tight. You often need 2-3 things per turn and won’t be sure which will be available on your next turn.
The city building and pattern building puzzles are fun.
It looks nice, especially the 3D element of the colourful buildings.
There are a load of different cities in the box, each with different play styles.
Negatives
Not sure it competes with other city building games.
Summary
A fun game that gives you a lot to think about, including what other city building game you could be playing.
Jesta ThaRogue