Urban Sprawl Review

Urban Sprawl is a board game from the GMT stable and was designed by Chad Jensen who has published a number of war games under the GMT name. He designed the highly successful Dominant Species game, along with its more recent sister, Dominant Species Marine.

BOX AND CONTENTS

The board is of a solid construction and of good quality. The imagery is of a high standard clearly setting out the urban landscape and provides plenty of space for the decks of cards that are required to play the game.

The playing pieces are in keeping with GMT standards of good quality with wooden player cubes and plenty of cardboard building pieces and counters, all of which are thick and of good quality. There are several decks of cards and these are of standard playing-card size and laminated. They are generally clear and easy to read although some cards use a mock ‘typewriter’ font for effect and these are a less attractive feature of the game.

The Rule Book is clearly laid out with illustrations to assist understanding of play.

DESCRIPTION

Urban sprawl is a game which tracks the growth of a city in the US from its beginning as a grid of empty lots through to a Municipality of buildings of different types and sizes, controlled by the players.

Each player obtains the right to build by acquiring ‘Build Permits’ on ‘Planning’ cards and ‘Contract’ cards, and by so doing gain control of spaces on the board. The value of the lots changes as the game progresses and victory points are scored along the way. Players can also be appointed to certain ‘elected’ offices such as the Mayor and the Union Representative and these provide additional influence and powers.

A turn begins with the opportunity to discard held Build Permits for cash, following which players spend up to six action points to obtain fresh permits and/or fulfil contracts to place buildings on the board. They may also acquire a ‘Favour’ (essentially a deferred contract). Some end of turn activities then follow.

The Planning cards award varying numbers of Build Permits and restrict the zones in which buildings can be placed. Several cards are available to buy and the layout is designed so cards start very expensive but become cheaper. So if a ‘dream’ card is drawn a player must use five of their six Action Points to obtain it, thus restricting their ability to do anything else, whilst other cards may be ignored in the hope to obtain them more cheaply on a subsequent turn. This can lead to tension and jeopardy which is a
strong factor in the game.

The same mechanism is employed with the Contract decks the first of which is ‘Town’ consisting of relatively low value buildings but, as the game progresses, is supplemented by ‘City’ eventually ‘Metropolis’ with cards of greater value.

The game has a somewhat random and risky feature of property valuations. The overall grid is divided into rows and columns, each of which can have up to two value markers placed one at either end. All four markers combine to give the value of each individual property. An interesting feature of the game is that these values tend to increase over time but can then suddenly move up or down, often by large amounts, as a result of card play or the actions of individual players. These changes can therefore be engineered by skilful play to have a big impact on the game, including very close to the end when such actions may determine the final outcome.

One powerful card is called Urban Renewal. It enables players to demolish another player’s property and build over it. This is a particularly interesting factor of the game especially in the later stages when the board is more cluttered and opportunities to build are less. If someone has become too rich and powerful another player can simply demolish and build over their prized building and a big chunk of their wealth disappears. Urban Renewal cards appear later in the Planning Deck so all players have an opportunity to obtain them and are aware of anyone who holds one. Additionally, since the demolishing player has to replace the wreck with a suitable larger replacement, it cannot be implemented arbitrarily.

Lots of planning cards have ballot box symbols on them and these trigger an ‘election’, this consists of rotating a pawn round a wheel to determine which office is up next. In fact, no election actually takes place but rather the player who meets the qualification for the role is simply handed the relevant card and takes office.

As an example, the player owning the most valuable industrial building becomes the Union Boss and by so doing gets eight action points per turn instead of six. Other offices have different benefits of varying value.

Such benefits make the individual players a target for changes in valuations and this can be an interesting driver to the game forcing people not to work in silos but instead to take a wider view of the relative value of rows and columns.

The player in last place at each ‘Election’receives the ‘Contractor’ card giving them an automatic right to demolish without holding the appropriate Urban Renewal card. This powerful ability means the player in last place has a great opportunity to do some catching up.

Another feature is ‘Vocations’ which can be acquired through the building out of contracts and these provide valuable bonuses. Obtaining a Vocation early means additional bonuses are gained from other players actions. This can make Vocations very valuable, both in terms of wealth and victory points.

The game ends when the ‘Olympic Games’ card is drawn from the Municipal deck. There is a bit of end-of-game management and then the player accumulating the most Victory Points (‘Prestige’) is the winner.

OPINION

The very fact that the game has been published under the GMT label is some assurance of its quality, since they set high standards before allowing games to be published including rigorous play testing and good quality design of boards, cards, and pieces. Therefore, the decision is more one of ‘will this game really hit the spot?’, rather than ‘is it any good?’

The rule book is well laid out, clear but nicely illustrated. However,some specific rules are hard to track down and some explanations are a little brief.

The Urban Renewal cards are a great gaming feature preventing a player who obtains a dominant position from simply digging in and winning. Imagine playing Monopoly and drawing a card that enables you to demolish your opponent’s hotelson Mayfair and Park Lane!

Vocations have one weakness in that the very word ‘vocation’ gives rise to thoughts of doctors, teachers, and public servants, but the game is in fact referring to industrial/commercial sectors such as Energy, Finance, and Tourism so there is a bit of a mismatch. However the mechanism is a good one and adds to the overall value of the game.

The zone and adjacency rules provide an interesting complexity. They restrict the freedom to place building both by type and size. This is an ‘anti-urban sprawl’ measure which feels like anentirely legitimate element of the game.

This game has many enjoyable and attractive features about it but at the same time has some particularly random elements which seem to deliberately ‘shake things up’ without a coherent reason as to why and which may not be attractive to some types of player.

If you love randomness this will certainly be appealing to you and means that neither you nor anybody else can predict the final value of any buildings they construct. The ability to hit your opponents with a sudden revaluation gives the game a strong ‘Take That!’ factor which becomes increasingly powerful as more and more buildings are constructed. This will appeal to many but be a complete turn off for some players.

Unfortunately, these random aspects combine to make the game feel somewhat unrealistic as a representation of how the property market develops, particularly because property values effectively ‘migrate’ from one column or row to another which, whilst adding gameplay excitement, does not seem valid as a mechanism. The ability to remove value from other people’s properties and attach it to your own is interesting but far from realistic. Thus players looking to Urban Sprawl for an accurate representation of how urban development may occur are going to be disappointed. However, if having fun is your priority, this may be just the random excitement you are looking for. In any event, the random factors can, to some degree, be mitigated for by careful planning and of course you always have the option to hit your opponent back!

My least favoured element of the game is election of politicians. The idea is a good one as players can acquire power through positions such as Police Chief or Union Boss to improve their chances of winning. Whilst the concept works, and the roles are logical, the two weaknesses in my opinion, are the way these offices are allocated and the imbalance in benefits they offer.

Gaining an additional two Action Points as Union Representative gives a thirty-three per cent boost to its buying power! This seems potentially unfair, especially if it proves difficult to oust the holder from office for much of the game. However it is also an incentive for other players to invest in industrial buildings or move value markers as a means to get them out.

It just feels like the additional powers that come with office are too generous in some cases. Most players will probably accept this as part of gameplay but those who believe that a game should be rigorously fair will find them a little harder to swallow.

This is not a failing, but perhaps a weakness and the very description of ‘elections’ is itself a misnomer.

Finally, a disappointing aesthetic of gameplay is that there is no visible difference on the board between say a house, or shop, or library. As soon as buildings are placed they lose their identity so there is no sense of satisfaction in improving the outlook of the town e.g. by adding a visitor centre. The function or purpose of each building is not an integral part of the game but it would be nice to feel you are doing something useful for the imaginary inhabitants.

SUMMARY

Urban Sprawl feels like a property development game and therefore matches the theme pretty well. Obtaining planning permits, converting these into buildings which fall subject to the vagaries of the market makes the game feel thematically convincing. The sense of building a property empire and of taking actions to prevent opponents from doing likewise all feels very much like the cut and thrust of a febrile property market.

The card mechanism which means the best ones must be bought at a premium price or be lost to an opponent, whilst less popular cards reduce in value and can thus be obtained more cheaply, works brilliantly and reduces the randomness impact of a draw deck. It forces players to balance getting strong cards against being able to possess more of them and thus have wider choice.

The constituent pieces of the game are generally good, it feels like an urban block being developed and there are lots of different types of buildings on the cards which give a sense of a town growing into a city and on into a municipality. However visually it doesn’t really look like what is supposed to represent.

Provided you can accept the random elements and the ‘Take That’ elements, this will be an extremely enjoyable and tense game.

Despite all the shortcomings highlighted, this is an exciting, very playable game!