Whether you build your city on fountains, roadways, or rock n’ roll* (*it probably won’t be rock n’ roll…) you’ll need to build quickly and proficiently in order to outscore your opponents in this fast-paced card game!
What Is It?
An engine building game for 2-5 where players are working to build an efficient city that gets more cards into their hands, and helps them to score more and more points every round. Each round players select a card from hand to play and pay its cost by discarding other cards. Different cards will have different requirements, benefits, and symbols, which can help guide players’ decisions of what to build next. After each card play, players score points and draw new cards based on totals for all cards in their tableau. Once at least one player hits 50 points, the game ends and whoever has the most points wins! Since the effects are cumulative, getting a good engine going early can have a huge positive impact for a player!
Who Is It For?
- Any player count 2-5; works well at all counts
- Ages 8 and up – Simple rules make it easy to teach
- Fans of simultaneous play and quick games (usually under 20 minutes per play)
- Fans of Race for the Galaxy style of game, as it’s similar, though lighter and quicker
Components + Quality
The game is just cards and tokens, all very average quality overall. I would probably recommend sleeves for the cards to avoid nicks that might give info away about what you played or discarded. The art is nice, not super exciting, but vibrant and colorful. The rules are short and sweet, as they should be for a simple game, and are printed on nice card stock; I really liked that for a small rulebook like this. Finally, the box is too big for what’s in it, but if you bag the contents it’s fine.
PROS
- Easy to learn/teach/play
- Very quick if you’re short on time
- Great for all ages
- Good intro to tableau/engine building
- Plenty of variety in cards
- If you get a good engine started early, you can have pretty big plays, which can be cool
CONS
- Multiplayer solitaire game – no player interaction since you can’t stop people from doing things
- Over too quickly for me; Feel like as soon as I get an exciting engine, the game ends and I’m left wanting more
- Theme makes sense (i.e. need people – housing cards – before you can have a school) but when playing I don’t connect with the theme. I don’t feel like I’m building a city, just playing the best card for my engine that I can afford. Every play is the same, it doesn’t feel like I built a different building.
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking for something super quick and light to scratch your engine/tableau building itch, The City might be a good choice. Games are usually around 15 minutes, but still there’s various strategies players can take, and an interesting balance between going for income (card draws) and when to really start investing in points. Overall, I thought this game was fine, but it just wasn’t really for me. The turns felt repetitive and unexciting, so I just can’t see myself coming back to it much. But, if you’re big on the mechanics, and looking for something super fast and streamlined, check it out!
My Final Ratings:
Overall Game – 4/10
Aesthetics – 5/10
Difficulty – 2/10
Replayability – 3/10
*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*
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