Suburbia Second Opinion

In Suburbia players take on the role of planners in charge of their own boroughs as they plan, build, and develop it into a sprawling metropolis. Expanding their boroughs one area at a time to increase their income and reputation allowing them to construct more impressive structures and increase their population to become the most successful and popular borough in the area.

Basic Gameplay Overview

Suburbia is played over a series of rounds where players take turns expanding their boroughs or reinvesting in existing areas till the ‘one more round’ tile is pulled from the final stack of tiles. The goal of Suburbia is to have the highest population at the very end of the game. But growing your population is a balancing act with keeping your income and reputation.

Each player starts with their own board but with matching starting tiles in the same layout. Then on their turn, each player has one of four actions they can take. The first option is to buy a tile from the market. The market consists of a row of 7 tiles where 5 of the slots have an added cost on top of the cost on the tile, meaning if you want the tiles that have more recently been revealed from the stack you have to pay a premium or risk another player snatching it up before you can.

The player chooses the tile they want by paying the combined price and then placing it into the borough, following any symbols on the tile itself, surrounding tiles, and other tiles in your borough to see how it affects your income, reputation and population. On other player's turns, you may benefit from or be hindered by the tiles they place based on tiles in your borough.

The second option is to buy one of the three basic starting tiles. These are the same as the tiles you started the game with and come at a lower value than most market tiles. To take one you pay the cost on the tile, and then choose a market tile to pay the cost for that slot if any and discard it. Then place in your borough the same way you would place a market tile.

The third is to buy a lake. Each tile in the market has a reverse side that shows a lake that will give you $2 for each adjacent Industrial, Civic, Residential, or Commercial tile to the lake. It is a good way to quickly gain a bit of money but won't raise your overall income.

The fourth option is to use one of your three investment markers. Instead of adding a new tile to your borough, you place one of your investment markers on the tile of your choice, including lakes. You then activate the effects of the tile again. For example, a tile that scores +1 income for every residential tile will score that again, however, it will do the same for any negative effects on the tile so choose wisely.

Once the player has taken their main action, they collect money based on their current income this can be money owed if your income has dipped into the negative. Then they adjust their population on the shared track based on their current reputation.

The final stage of a player's turn is to add a new tile to the market. No matter the action the player took the market should have a gap. Shift all tiles to the right, towards the cheaper slots on the market, then take the top tile off the current tile stack and place it into the leftmost slot in the market.

At some point when drawing a tile from the C stack you will reveal the ‘one more round tile’. This tile signals that you are nearly at the end of the game. When you draw this tile discard it into the box and fill the market with the next tile. You will finish this round of the game till it gets to the start player then every player gets one last turn, allowing for all players to get the same number of turns per game.

Once that round ends, you move on to final scoring, where you will add to your population based on your goals and leftover money. Public goals go to whoever best meets the goal, if there is a tie then no one scores the tile. Private goals only score if you are the one who achieved them, other people cannot score your private objectives. Leftover money will score you one population for every $5 you have.

Once you have finished totalling populations, whoever has the highest population wins. If there is a draw the player with the highest reputation wins, if there’s still a tie then the player with the highest income wins. Still tied the player with the most remaining money wins. And if by some miracle you are still tied the rules say the tied players have to play another game of suburbia to determine the winner.

How It Plays

Suburbia plays as a midweight difficulty game. Not to say the actual gameplay is hard to learn, especially as it's an easy one to pick up on as you play, it becomes a little more difficult when you factor in having to keep track of what every tile in your borough does and what types of tiles affect and trigger them.

What I found when introducing Suburbia to my group it was an early game for them in their board gaming experience and I could see them wavering a bit during the rules, mainly because the rules try to make it as clear as possible what options players have on their turns and how it exactly works, even me summarising them above was a struggle without diving too much into the details. But once we got a few rounds in they were happy and playing, as it is an easy game to watch a player take a turn to get a grip on how a turn works.

Suburbia is very much a city-building game so that should be factored in when considering if this might be for you, there are no secret other mechanisms this game is very clear with what the goal and gameplay will be, and there is no real building tech it's just about expanding your borough to grow your population and what type or mix of buildings you do this with is up to you and what tiles come out of the stacks.

But it's fun to watch your little borough grow into the area you want it to become or have chosen for it to become to stand the best chance of winning those public and private objectives. For example, the borough in one game I played that was about a third to half just different airports, I didn’t realise what she was building to till it was too late to stop her.

So how does two-player compare to four-player? Personally, I preferred Suburbia at four-player for two main reasons, the market refresh and the amount of interaction. The market in the game is key to you achieving your goals and just growing in general, so when it is full of buildings that won’t help you or will actively disadvantage you having those tiles linger gets annoying quickly.

In a four-player game by the time of your next turn at least three of the tiles that were left at the end of your last turn have changed due to other players taking their turn. But in two-player, it’s only one tile, they just don’t refresh quickly enough.

A way we think this could be solved is by house ruling the market, in one of the two included solo mode rules called Dale the Bot you use more tiles in the stacks, fewer spaces on the market, and at the end of every round, the whole market gets cleared and reset. Maybe doing something similar but making sure to use both $0 slots could allow for the market to get less stale.

The other reason I prefer four-player is you get more uses of certain tiles and it's more of a risk to take other tiles. The tiles that trigger based on all boroughs or other people's boroughs activate more when there's more tiles coming out. Getting a slaughterhouse early can net you big when people are constantly building restaurants.

But the same goes for any tile that gets a negative effect for each of a certain type of tile that's built after that one, they usually have high immediate rewards but when there are so many people playing there is a risk at building them.

I will admit though these tiles that are affected or triggered by other boroughs can be a bit much in a four-player game if you aren’t focusing or remembering what tiles do what, checking each player's turn to see what they are doing can be a bit much if you aren’t in the right mood. So I imagine a three-player game would be best for this.

Overall both player counts are good but the standard gameplay leans more to a three to four-player game than a two-player game.

Components

The copy of Suburbia I owe and the current retail version is the 2nd edition of the game. From what I have seen of the original copy they have taken on board a lot of improvements to make the second edition a level up from the first.

Most notable is the game improved all the artwork to bring more life into the tiles, the old artwork kinda looked like an architectural model with white and grey buildings whereas the new tile's art is more detailed and better shows visually what each tile is, bringing more life into the game and usually quicker tile recognition.

The box inserts included with Suburbia are two custom trays with lids which neatly store all pieces in the game making it fairly easy to transport without worry of the pieces going everywhere, it also has the capacity to hold the expansion pieces if you want it.

The tiles, goals, player boards, player reference aids, market board, and population tracker are all sturdy card and designed in a way that all information is fairly clear to read and understand.

Speaking of player aids, this game is sensible and gives each player their own aid rather than making people share or even including far too few to really be of any use.

Overall component quality is good and the art is clear and compliments the iconography in the game to make for a game that is pleasant to look at while also being semi-easy to identify everything quickly.

Final Thoughts

As someone who is a fan of city-building games in both board games and video games, this was right up my alley. It is a game where you need to be into the theme to a point to enjoy it and it can be annoying when nothing is working in your favour for tiles but your borough will always grow and no one I’ve played with has come out of the game unhappy with how their borough turned out.

If you are looking for a city-building game to player with three or four players this is the game you are looking for. If you want something for two-player maybe look elsewhere for something cheaper but it is playable with two people it just needs tweaking to make it as fun as four-player.

Overall a satisfying city-building game.