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Cities
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Description
You've been tasked by the city council to put together a plan to transform a whole neighborhood 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 is a city-building game in which you draft the best projects and arrange them in your own playing area. Designed by Steve Finn and Phil Walker Harding and illustrated by Jorge Tabanera, it allows games for groups of 2 to 4 players, ages 10 and up, lasting about 40 minutes. With action and resource draft mechanisms, it will give you the opportunity to visit the cities of Sydney, London, New York, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, Lisbon, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires. Can you design the most magnificent neighborhood?
The game is played over eight rounds (or four rounds in a two-player game). Each round, players use their workers to collect 1 scoring card, 1 city tile, 1-2 feature tiles, and 2-4 building pieces. City tiles are made up of park spaces, water spaces, and building spaces. Building pieces are placed on building spaces of the same color to form buildings, which can be 1-4 stories high. Whenever a player fulfills an achievement, they place one of their discs on the achievement board. At the end of the game, players add up the points they have gained from all of their scoring cards and achievements.
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 3×3 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.
The German bears are wandering through the garden, picking mushrooms for your whatnot cabinet. Wait. What? Ha ha, not really! But the designers of Barenpark and Floriferous, Delicious, Herbaceous, and other beautiful puzzly games have come together to create CITIES published by Devir Games. Welcome to the world as envisioned by Phil Walker Harding and Dr Steve Finn!
My Zatu chum has reviewed the game generally (here), but I have been allowed to pop a spotlight on the two player experience. And as my husband and I play mainly at 2P, we were very excited to luxuriate in our favourite player count!
I should say that I have a sweet spot for Dr Finn’s games – each one I have played has been a hit for me in terms of solo gaming. As a #greedygamer, I indulge in fast playing, pretty solos, and honestly, I haven’t been steered wrong by him. Phil Walker Harding is also a sure fire thing for fun, family games. So when the twain came together, I was expecting light but fun puzzly things, and I have not been disappointed.
I won’t go into the main rules and game play, but I will say where the 2 player experience differs. Essentially, you get to do twice as much – placing 8 meeples each round instead of 4 (with a maximum of two per row). And you can play a longer game by making a larger city grid (5 x 3 instead of the standard 3 x 3). Aside from that, everything else is identical.
Final Thoughts!
We really enjoy Cities at two player. It’s not a heavy game or a long game. It’s light, it’s fun, and it does a lot of things which we like. There’s set collection, pattern matching, variable scoring objectives, and worker placement. It’s super accessible – we were playing after a quick flick through the rules – and it absolutely does not outstay its welcome on the table. If anything it goes too fast! And so the ability to extend your city in two player mode is very welcome indeed! The designers behind it are known for their easy to learn, puzzly offerings and this falls into that category like a hand in a glove.
With multiple meeples going down in a given round, you’ll sometimes know what is left for you to take by the time your turn comes. Well, that is if your opponent has hit the same row twice and left you the only two open spots. Although you may be thinking there’s no good stuff left, there’s a big advantage to their hastiness! This means that you can leave those rows and focus on cherry picking from the others. After all, you know what you are going to get from the ones they have already targeted. And unless you need to pick one of them to secure a city bonus which is worth more the faster you can achieve it, you can go for the best of the untouched rows to boost your chances of victory. There’s also always the option of tailoring your picks to hate draft something away from your opponent!
Having different cities requiring unique public objectives, as well as the myriad randomly drawn scoring objectives, means each game has a different drive. Whilst the actions remain the same, the outcomes and priorities will always change, and that’s a familiar freshness that suits us. We don’t have time to deep dive into heavy games most of the time. So, picking this off the shelf is easy and works well when we wants some puzzly head to head gaming.
It’s easy to grab too as the box is bright blue and super eye-catching. Even the whimsical font used makes me smile! And if I had a crystal ball that worked, I’d bet good money on seeing expansions in the future – even more cities adding even more variety!
Having also played at 3 and 4 player, Cities definitely works at every player count. I’m super sad there isn’t a solo mode, but I guess we can’t have everything! It just means that I’ll need my partner in crime to play this one. And that’s no bother as he is always up for a game of Cities!
Likes
Superb component quality
Fast playing but extended for 2P
Mixture of open and closed information
Light with fun decisions
Dislikes
No solo mode.
Scores
Component Quality: 4
Complexity: 2
Replayability: 5
Player Interaction: 3
Overall: 80%
Zatu Score
You might like
- Great core drafting mechanic.
- Pacey gameplay
- Variable common scoring and scoring cards helps replayability
Might not like
- Can be frustrating when scoring cards clash.
- Positional puzzle is sound rather than impressive or fresh.
- Positional puzzle is sound rather than impressive or fresh. - Better alternatives out there