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So what exactly is Cities? It’s got tiles – square not polyomino, but they have polyominos on them. It’s got little worker meeples that you put down each turn to choose a thing to add to your development. It’s got stackable building pieces in three colours that you will most likely make some skyscrapers out of. And it’s by Phil Walker-Harding (designer of Gingerbread House and Barenpark).
So is it a polyomino game? A worker placement game? A city building game? Well... no... or rather, yes it’s a bit of all of those things, but most importantly it’s a drafting game – and if you like the crunchy choices associated with a draft this will likely be for you, but if you don’t I am not sure the other elements will sufficiently mitigate the core.
You have 4 meeples a round and you are going to use them turn by turn to select one of each of a scoring card, land tile, buildings pick and counter pick. Four of each in each of these four categories, 3 open of which 1 may be better, and 1 blind.
The land tiles go down in your player area to build a 3x3 grid and depict different combos of park, water and building lots (in 4 colours). The building pieces go on matching building lots to create stackable skyscrapers of varying heights; the smaller counters mostly go on parks / water to provide a scorable set-making mechanic. And finally the scoring cards give you individual scoring conditions typically revolving around building skyscrapers of different height/colour combos or the size/number of parks and water spaces. There are also 3 common scoring objectives, with a race-to-completion mechanic, depicted on the common city tile – 8 cities in the box to choose from.
You have 1 starting land tile, 4 meeples per round, 8 rounds per game. Then scoring and the most points wins.
So where’s the game? Sure there is some puzzle about positioning and placing different elements to maximise yield against your, ideally synergising, scoring cards. And there is the race for common goal completion. But the real crunch is the drafting.
Early rounds will require scrambling for land but as the game shakes out its much more about weighing up the order of priority on what to draft, the risks of what to leave and who might grab what you want. This really is the central conceit around which everything else hangs.
So is that satisfying? Umm... sorta... There are some sound decisions – priority balancing, the satisfying stacking of building pieces, the balance of trying to get the most out of an imperfect array of scoring cards. It’s pleasant enough – and the kids certainly seem to enjoy it. The problem for me is that there are just more interesting alternatives out there – Azul, Cascadia, Calico, Sagrada, King/Queendomino... and most recently, Harmonies. Ok, so there’s some range in my alternatives and most of these lean harder into the puzzley and positional elements and less into the draft. So perhaps this is on me – I just like the puzzle more and if I liked drafting even more then Cities would win.
Certainly the production values are strong overall and the art and design is poppy. Though again, I find it a bit busy for my tastes and while I like stackable buildings the plastic feels a bit cheap. Must say the pastel shades for the meeples and other wooden are lovely though.
Cities does play briskly and doesn’t outstay its welcome. Its a great family game and a good filler for more serious gaming groups. Cities is a perfectly good game, probably very good if you really like drafting. Would it be my first choice from the list above - nope – but if I had played those out or had a penchant for lighter city themed draft/puzzles you would do well to pick this up.
