Between Two Reviewers


 

Matt: Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right! Here I am – take it away Chris!

Chris: Matt is letting me write the review alongside him on this one as a) I own it and b) I have played it more than him.

Matt: Damnit, Chris! The line is “Stuck in the middle with you!”

Chris: Yes… but you see um “I’m wondering what it is I should do…”

Matt: Now you’re getting it!

Chris: Because I need to make sure that this review is of a similar quality to one that I’m helping another friend write, so they get read a similar amount. Because I only get points for the article I write that gets the least page views!

Matt:

 

Between Two Squares

 

Chris: OK, that metaphor broke down slightly, but encapsulates the circular thinking required for Between Two Cities, the brand new game from Stonemaier Games.

Matt: Between Two Cities will see you collaboratively building a small square city with each of your neighbours, but scoring each city as an individual enterprise. Over three rounds you’ll be drafting tiles around the table, each featuring a particular type of building. All your classic city building game elements are present: factories, houses, eateries and shops. You’ll each chose 2 of these tiles to keep from your hand, then pass the rest on to your neighbour. Everyone will reveal the two tiles they’ve kept, and then everyone can start arguing about which of the two cities you should put your tiles in!

Chris: Maybe if you’re Matt! I always have a much more convivial relationship with my neighbours, working together to ensure the best possible outcome and understanding when my neighbour needs to place a particular tile in her other city this round. I seem to remember winning that first game.

Matt: I do regret threatening my neighbour with mutually assured destruction if she didn’t place a particular tile in our city…

Chris: Indeed.

Matt: That might not have been in the spirit of the game…

Chris: No.

Matt: But I was much better behaved in our second game! I’ve learnt the error of my ways.

 

Between Two Cities Game
We would like to acknowledge Board Game Geek user Steelman for this image.

 

Chris: Hmmm… anyway, after the first round of drafting, you get some “duplex” tiles, effectively two of the normal city tiles stuck together. Again you pick two, but then discard the other back in the box.

Matt: It is amazing how challenging it can be to fit these into your cities! They are only the size of two tiles, but their orientation is fixed and your city has to form a 4×4 square at the end of the game. Trying to keep your factories away from houses, your shops in rows and all the rest is not easy.

Chris: After, you do a second drafting phase, in the other direction, and then it’s time to determine the winner!

Matt: Just like no activity you’ve ever heard of, the winner is the player with the… least bad worse city?

Chris: No, no, no, the player with the best city that’s not their best city.

Matt: I find the best way to work out your final score is to add the scores for both your cities together, and then subtract your best scoring city from it…

Chris: Now you’re just being silly.

Matt: Maybe. The point being, it’s not an intuitive system. There’s a look new players have when you say to them “your final score, is the value of your worst city”, a kind of glazing over of the eyes while their brain processes this.

Chris: But it doesn’t take long for the “aha!” moment when it clicks into place. I’ll admit it’s not especially thematic, unless I’ve thoroughly misunderstood what a city planner does.

Matt: And while it isn’t intuitive, it is very interesting! You realise that this might be a competition, but it’s first and foremost a collaborative effort with your two neighbours. But you don’t want it to be too collaborative – you still want to win! It’s a completely unique experience.

 

Between Two Cities City

 

 

Chris: It would be natural to compare this to drafting classic 7 Wonders, and my main concern going in was that it would feel too similar, but I don’t think it does! Whilst the mechanics are similar the atmosphere is different. Collaborating rather than competing with your neighbours gives the game a more relaxing feel, and it is also more forgiving; almost every tile you play will give you some points, and the need to balance between the cities makes a runaway winner less likely. It will probably replace 7 Wonders for me as a gateway game because the rules are much easier to explain, but I’m still glad I own both and I look forward to playing them both in the same evening in a “Drafting special”.

Matt: I’ve never understood 7 Wonders as being considered a “gateway” game, the resource system and “free build” opportunities are way too complicated and difficult to track on the cards. And let’s not forget scoring science… The scoring in Between Two Cities felt pretty arcane too, when I first saw that reference card!

Chris: It was unintuitive in the first game but now it makes perfect sense, and on a thematic level too! Shops are built in rows, cities with lots of factories get better business for them, people want a wide range of entertainments, no-one wants to live next to a factory but they want a bit of everything in their city, and after a certain size people stop caring about parks!

Matt: Not to mention at night big parks become full of axe murderers and “dogging”.

Chris: What is “dogging”?

Matt: Well, umm… go look it up.

<Hurried typing>

Chris: …. I am never going to a park again.

 

Between Two Cities Park

 

Chris: Another great thing about the game is the effort that has been put into the components! The city meeples are a fantastic feature, and I really like the tile design but… opinions may vary on that.

Matt: The artwork is rubbish.

Chris: Oh, come on!

Matt: I get that Stonemaier likes to go for a pretty drab, pastoral pallet and I think they knocked it out of the park in Viticulture, but here there are just acres of brown roofs… You’ve got this amazing box art, two cities nestled in this fantastical valley with sunlight pouring over the mountains. I imagined I would be building Minas Tirith, but instead I got Milton Keynes.

Chris: I can’t believe you’d have a problem with something looking plain given your dress sense. And I like Milton Keynes, it’s got an Ikea! I think the theme is more interesting imagining that the shop tile you are placing down is an Aldi rather than a fantasy weapons emporium. The city markers resembling landmarks from real cities adds to this feeling too, when adding a restaurant to Rome, I find myself thinking of Pizza.

Matt: It’s not so much that I wanted orcs and elves wandering the streets, but just some interesting architecture! Aldi might well be the home of wonderously cheap deals but it doesn’t exactly get my heart racing. Neither does the artwork evoke the majesty of the pyramids, nor capture the romance of Paris.

Chris: If you’re looking for romance perhaps you should be building more parks… *shudders*. No matter what you think of the artwork, you have to admit the seating order cards are fantastic!

Matt: That’s true, they’re a great addition! I can see that if you’re playing lots of games in a row, they’ll be necessary to mix up your neighbours, but just as a resource for other games, they are great. No more who goes first awkwardness!

Chris: It’s not often a board game has something so useful for many other games inside it!

 

Between Two Cities Score Track

 

Matt: So final thoughts?

Chris: I’ve played the game with 3,4,5 and 6 players, and found that it worked at each number, though I enjoyed 3 and 5 the most. With three the scoring becomes much clearer as it is simply, “Who isn’t involved in the worst city”? I could teach anyone this game, it’s definitely one of my favourite gateway games.

Matt: Nice! I think it is a fascinating, if sometimes infuriating, experience. You need to collaborate with your neighbours, but if they aren’t very cooperative there’s not much you can do. Admittedly that was our first game so chances are players hadn’t built an intuition for spotting which of their cities was better, and which needed more work, than the other. I think the game needs you to be very peaceful and accepting of your neighbours’ decisions. The result will be the same whether you get frustrated or not, but the experience will be more enjoyable for everyone!

Chris: And we know how competitive you are.

Matt: I… maybe. But that required a change of perspective for me, a good thing! As fun as highly competitive games are I’m always looking for new experiences and this game delivered that in spades.

Chris: Exactly! My only real criticisms of it are not about what it is, but about what it is not. It executes being a fun, light, drafting game excellently, but doesn’t have enough depth for it to become one of my very favourite games.

Matt: I keep coming back to my expectations for this game. I expected it to be meatier than it is. I was expecting a better-looking city. I was expecting to feel more when I played it. It is a lovely game and I wanted so much to fall in love it, but I just don’t feel that fiery passion for it. I think we’ll just have to be friends.

Chris: You know you can have human friends, right?

 

Rating: Stuck in the middle with you…

 

Between Two Cities also features a specially designed Solo game! We’ll be giving this a play over the coming weeks and post up a separate article reviewing that. 

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