Between Two Cities Essential

Between Two Cities Essential Edition is a tile laying game set in the early 1800s. In it, we are each playing famous master city planners tasked with redesigning two cities. And each tile falls into one of seven categories of building/space. But cities are big projects and going it alone would be a massive task. So we are pairing up with other professionals with whom we can discuss ideas and innovate – one for the city on our left and one for the city on our right.

In a tile-laying town planning twist, this is not a strictly co-operative game. At the end of it, there can be only one winner. And in another strategic switch-up, only the lowest scoring city we have each worked on is going to count!

This new Essentials edition of Between Two Cities preserves the core base game, but includes the previously separate Capitals expansion. As such, whilst there have been a few rules tweaks, the components mentioned below are included in Capitals already. So if you have both the base game and the Capitals expansion, this Essentials edition is not…well…essential!

Plotting And Playing

This is a close drafting, tile laying game played over 3 rounds. And you will each be picking and passing tiles every round in order to build your city in a 5×5 grid. You’ll pick one tile for each of the cities you’re working on, and each tile type scores differently:-

• Shops (yellow tiles) score incrementally when connected in a row or column with points depending on how many shops are in a straight line (note that each shop only scores once!)
• Factories (grey tiles) score based on how many you have in each city, so the more you have, the more each are worth (but note impact on Houses – below). The city with the most factories gets 4 points per factory, then second most gets 3 points per factory, and all other cities get 2 points per factory.
• Taverns (red tiles) score higher the more types of tavern you have in your city. And you can collect more than one set in a single city (but each tavern will only count towards one set).
• Offices (blue tiles) score incrementally but can be anywhere in your city and do not have to be connected to each other. Note that if you can place an office next to a tavern, that office also earns a bonus point!
• Parks (green tiles) score incrementally when connected together
• Houses (brown tiles) score 1 point for each other building type in your city (excluding houses). But if you place a house next to a factory (grey tile), it will only ever be worth 1 point even if the other houses are worth more
• Civic Buildings (purple tiles) score you points based on what is built around them, and each one is different! Each one has 2 preferred neighbours and one they would cross the street to avoid! But buddying up next to a less-than desirably wont cost you negative marks. It just won’t score big 6 pointers eithers.

Lush Landscapes

With a randomly selected landscape mat showing a natural feature to be built around in each of your 5 x 5 sized cities, grouping is geographical and unpredictable! The mat itself must form part of the 5×5 grid and your tiles must be placed on and around it such that the whole city never extends beyond 5×5. Bridges can help (or hinder) in terms of buildings that score (or don’t!) when they are adjacent. But any building group not connected by a bridge will be considered divided at scoring time!

Districts

Districts is another element to the game play in Between Two Cities. If using this optional advanced variant, you will gain points via mixed pair majorities in connected district types.

To play the District variant, three pairs of randomly drawn District cards are laid down as additional scoring objectives for the entire game. Only the largest mixed pair district in each city counts towards the District scoring objectives in play, and the point rewards for 1st and 2nd place can make a big difference.

Hello Jamey

Now, if you have ever wanted to invite Jamey Stegmaier to play a game at your table, you have the chance! There is a basic two player mode which can feel more aggressive. It is a head to head pick and pass style where the impact of what you take and leave is intended to hit the other player directly every time. But the advanced 2 player rules in Essential include Jamey as your friendly third player! He will help (or hinder!) in building one city with each of you in addition to the city you build with your real-life competitive constructor.

And this mode is also in addition to the two automa modes which come in simple form (where the two automas build a city as “maximally” as possible, and full. But the Automacity gets the automa mat instead of a landscape mat that you still use when building LeftVille and Rightown cities with each of Automarta and Autommaso).

Quality Componentville

Perhaps not technically a game component, but the rule books are great. Okay, so it isn’t a complicated game, but the scoring does require some understanding, and these (with the reference cards and symbols on the tiles) leave no real doubts. The wooden building tokens and the tiles themselves are lovely – thick, chunky, and built to last with little artistic details that are unique to every one.

Final Thoughts

We already owned and liked Between Two Cities, but the integration of the Capitals content makes this game better for us. The puzzliness and replayability has been ramped up. There are more placement trade-offs to consider as well as numbers to crunch.

The asymmetric landscapes break up our respective city spaces, and unique Civic Buildings where success depends on what is built around them are great additions that give us a little more to think about every time we draft a tile, and leave others to be picked by the other. It can of course mean games take a little longer than before. But this was already a game we could play in around 20 minutes, so a few extra seconds to benefit from added replayability and crunch is a price we are willing to pay! I still can’t decide if the game is now beyond “filler” and has become a “main” game for us, but either way we are enjoying it.

And I should say that I have played co-operative games and semi-co-operative games before. But they are usually more complicated role playing, social deduction based games. In contrast, Between Two Cities Essential takes the conflicted work together/succeed alone dynamic and distils it into a fast playing, tile laying, family friendly game that works really well.

Partnering up also has another bonus; the simultaneous action phase in this game definitely reduces downtime between turns. Indeed, when you add more players, games don’t seem to take that much longer. But, when there is a delay, because you need to have one eye on what your opponents are doing, one eye on what you want, as well as one ear listening to your partner, there’s always something to consider whilst waiting for others to finish placing their tiles.

And because you can’t discuss what tiles you are each going to pick during the drafting phase, you won’t know what is coming back your way. So you need to plan ahead as much as you can! And if you and your partner each want you to place a different tile in the city you share…….well, it’s building bargaining time!