Kickstart Your Week! Small Cities and Big Guns
Small City
The mayor of Small City is standing down at the end of the year. Now’s your chance to win that seat, but only if you can garner as much support from your borough as possible! And that means building the best city you can.
Small city is a pretty heavy Euro of city planning and development. You start with just a city hall with a few potential workers looking to move into your city. Literally, the city is an otherwise deserted wasteland… who elected the previous mayor exactly!? But soon you, and the other players around the table will have thriving metropolises… metropolii… erm cities, full to bursting of tetrimino shaped houses, parks, shops, factories and civic buildings. There will be jobs for your workers, and the money and votes will be pouring in.
So far, so classic city planning game. However, this game features some very fun rules that make it really interesting. The first is self-growing buildings! How you arrange the sectors you build is incredibly important, because the different types of building will synergise with one another. Build a commercial district next to some houses, and it will grow into a larger commercial district all by itself, not requiring you to pay any resources. Just like in a real city! (And for once, that wasn’t sarcasm!) So the development of your city is given a tremendous spatial puzzle that really rewards forward planning. Again, just like in a real city!
Also, just like in a real city, the current mayor is a giant who will take up two whole city blocks… erm ok maybe that’s a bit of an abstraction. But still! The mayor will come to visit a player each turn, making them the first player. But unlike the first turn marker in every game I’ve ever played, this has a direct interaction with the gameplay. The mayor is a big meeple who must be placed across two of your city blocks, preventing you from building there this turn. And, of course, your opponents get to choose where to place him. This mayor always brings a party to town!
You’re not only managing the building of your city though, you are also managing its populace. You will decide where they will be sent to work, earning you money (in the shops) or goods (in the factories) that will form useful resources for later development. Or maybe they’ll stay at home, giving you votes, which equal victory points. The people of Small City have trouble holding down a job, however, as each turn they must move from their current employment to another type, encouraging you to build a diverse city. Which hopefully you’ll be doing anyway to keep everything expanding on its own! This city is turning into quite the engine. And you aren’t building separate cities, not really, as you can send your workers to other peoples’ boroughs, to get the benefit from their buildings and to clog up their engine!
Now, I could tell you about the secret “election promise” cards, bribing city officials for bonuses and the collection of role/action cards available. But this is supposed to be a short description, so I will mention one last interesting element: pollution. As in most city building games, your city will be producing pollution that you must manage. In Small City however, get above 10% pollution and your worker meeples will start dying! And you can’t just throw bodies away, you monster! These hard working residents deserve a decent burial. Yes, that’s right, your rampant pollution will fill up spaces of your city with every increasing numbers of dead meeples. Just like a real city!!!
With all these interacting pieces, Small City is a complex game. But it is full to the brim of very neat mechanisms that make it a joy to behold. If you don’t mind the heavier elements of this, you should definitely go check this game out!
Elections in Small City are held September 8th.
Guns and Steel
It’s a long climb up the pyramid of civilisation, from the age of horses and agriculture, to the glories of the space age, but climb it you shall in the game of Guns & Steel. While the name suggests bloody conflict, it is first and foremost a civilisation building game. Starting at the bottom of the card pyramid, you’ll be managing your hand of resources and actions to enable yourself to obtain ever better technologies and resources. The interesting element of this game is the double-sided nature of the cards.
Not one for wasting space, the cards of Guns & Steel have actions/abilities printed on the front, which activate when you play them from your hand as you will every turn, or resources printed on the back. Each turn you will be able to play down a single resource and a single action, and once you have sufficient resources available you may flip their cards to exhaust them, and purchase a new card from the pyramid. In this way you are always making a choice of whether you can best use the action or the purchasing power of the card.
As cards are taken from the supply, the cards on higher levels become cheaper and you’ll soon be moving from knights to cannons, alchemy to the steam engine. Oh yes, cannons. See this is not a game of peaceful development, as you’ll always need to be prepared to defend yourself from enemies who seek to steal your resources or you big victory point scoring wonders. You won’t be happy to see your friend driving off with your Eiffel Tower I’m sure!
This is a fairly simple, elegantly designed civilisation game that is well worth checking out. There is a slight lack of variety in the cards, though the order in which they are laid out will result in different cards becoming available at different times throughout the game. The wonders with their varying requirements for building will also add variety to each game.
Development begins September 13th.
Worth a Look
Cat Tower – You know what cats are? Dextrous, that’s what. So what better way to make a game about cats than to make it a dexterity game? Maybe. Anyway, that’s what IDW Games have done with Cat Tower, a game of stacking awkwardly shaped cardboard cats, illustrated for maximum cuteness. It’s a game about cats Internet, what more do you want? Ends Sept 4th.
Mudslinger – As the name suggests, sh*t will fly in this game of racing to win the US presidency. Lots of take-that style action, but the centrepiece of the game is the deal making that should be constantly going on around the table. Of course, no one said these deals would be binding… Ends Sept 7th.
Soccer 17 – Only 17 cards make up this game of soccer. That’s fewer than players in an actual match. 2 players will lead their teams, alternating attacking and defending, in which the focus is always on trying to predict what card your opponent is going to play. Ends Sept 7th.
Earth 667C – Build the biggest fastest spaceship and save humanity from a supernova. Players first build a space ship using the available components, hoping to mitigate the dice rolling that characterises the launch and journey to Earth 667C, our new home. Feels like a more serious Galaxy Trucker? Ends Sept 9th.
Witchhunt – Social deduction game ala mafia/werewolf, with roles for every player. Unlike mafia/werewolf, eliminated players are still able to influence the game, by protecting players each round or cursing them. While the One Night games are probably superior, they do lose the rising tension that occurs as players are eliminated, which this game maintains. Ends Sept 10th.
Image credit goes to Board Game Geek users nabla, milenaguberinic, darkavatar1470, aza543, JackDarwid, sbmedvec80 and Chocolate Pi.
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