Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City – The Board Game

“Wake up choom, we’ve got a city to burn”

Except you’ll be wanting to control as much of Night City as possible in this latest offering based on the video game IP from CMON. Gangs of Night City has a smattering of different genres at its heart and blends them together with success most of the time.

Worker placement and area control is the core of this game, but there are a lot of variables mixed in to add some spice to proceedings, such as the deck building in your gangs combat cards to aid your turf war, or the resource management of your “eurodollars” and contraband, which you use to recruit familiar characters to your gang and rack up your street cred. This game is a ‘jack of all trades’, but each element of the mechanics is light enough to learn quickly and tie the game together as a whole. There are better deck builders, engine builders and worker placement games out there in their own fields, but Cyberpunk generally blends them together with a little less depth but a nice amount of variety.

City of dreams

Theme is a large aspect of the appeal of the game with the board a direct replica of the in game map from cyberpunk 2077 and its various districts, and there are main characters, npc’s and cameos aplenty for those already familiar with CD Projeckt Red’s fictional dystopian city.

Many times during play my gaming group got excited about a character from the video game’s side missions becoming available to join your gang! Having Jackie Welles or Judy Alvarez aiding your plans adds real character to proceedings.

There are 5 asymmetrical gangs to choose from, each offering a different approach to gaining street cred (which replaces victory points in Night city) with the first gang to reach the street cred threshold will control Night city, and win the game. Feeling aggressive? Try out the Maelstrom gang and build a deck of powerful combat cards and take territory by force. If a more passive playstyle is your thing, try out the Voodoo boys and gain street cred from netrunning and stealing corporate secrets from the elite of the city.

On the whole the gangs as a whole feel well balanced against each other and if the players use their gangs special abilities wisely they can always fight back when a rival attacks your territory. The 6th Street gang for example get a bonus in their next fight after being attacked by a rival making attacking them a riskier proposition.

One issue we found on our playthroughs however was that gangs all have their own starting district on the board meaning some combinations of gangs can leave a player under pressure very early, whilst another gang can end up unopposed for a few turns in contrast.

The side bits

Each gang provides the player with 12 high quality miniatures (4 solos, 4 techies and 4 netrunners) with which to perform 2 actions of a possible 5, with a wildcard allowing you to repeat one on your turn. These actions activate your miniatures in moving and performing actions in the city’s districts to gain resources, start a turf war, aquire street cred or recruit a powerful edgerunner for the remainder of the game.

The player board can then be refreshed with a pass turn allowing one of these actions to be performed again next turn and add to your gangs numbers, anywhere in the city you have a hideout built.

This system works well, as you feel like you always have something to do on your turn even if it means you are setting up a raid on an opponents territory for next time and doesn’t leave much downtime for other players.

Finally you can add the games very thematic side stories into a game, where at various milestones on the score track you will be given a new mini goal to shoot for with the winner getting a reward. We found these to be a bit ‘hit and miss’ with some being great and one in particular messing with the rest of the game massively. (Here’s looking at you Night City Police Department!)

There is actually enough content to the game to not bother with these stories too much if you prefer and just fight it out for street cred to the finish line. There is a large variety of contraband and characters to purchase for your gang and you’re unlikely to see repeats too often.

The game itself is very nicely produced, with the miniatures being full of character and high quality. The board and cards are striking and colourful, full of art from the game which will feel instantly familiar and recognisable to fans.

The game components are fine and functional thick card, and we had no issues with the quality or quantity of them during any of our games.

Verdict

Cyberpunk Gangs of Night City is a very solid, enjoyable game which mixes a few board game genres together with a strong theme. Other games considered “best in genre” will outshine cyberpunk in their own fields, but the many different approaches to play and multiple paths to acquiring street cred you can take, does make up for the “lightness” of some of cyberpunk’s mechanics.

The theme will be a big selling point if your gaming group is into the world of cyberpunk, however even if they aren’t, there’s a lot to like here. We scored the game a 75, but you can add at least 5 onto that if you love the videogame and take 5 away if you didn’t.

Overall the artwork, mechanics and miniatures all pull together to make gang wars fun, thematic and usually competitive to the end of the game.

Eager to share your own thoughts on some of your favourite board games? Just fill out our quick and easy application here to become a zatu blogger!

If you liked this blog on Cyberpunk 2077, you can click here to buy it today. Let us know your thoughts on our social media channels @/zatugames