City planners wanted! It’s time to shake things up in order to design the best block and help this thriving city continue to grow. Only one can be dubbed the very best city planner around – will it be you?
Tag: alderac entertainment group Page 1 of 2
Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) has so many games, that sometimes even I forget everything that’s by them! I have found a lot of great games thanks to them, and so I wanted to put my favorites all together in one list and share them with the world! They have a bunch of variety, so there’s something for everyone. Even if you don’t find it on this list, there might be something of theirs for you too! (Note – I know not everything is still published by them, but my list looks at any games they’ve ever published). Let’s get started!
If you can count to ten, you can win! Well.. as long as you have a little bit of luck on your side! Will you focus on getting all the numbers in one set, or try to spread the wealth across all 4 and hope for the best? Will you hang on to your currency as long as possible, or spend it all on the perfect wild card? Let’s find out!
What Is It?
A push-your-luck game where players draw cards one at a time, trying to collect to make consecutive sets of each color. Number cards add to your net positive, while currency cards subtract. Drawing a wild card interrupts a player’s turn with an auction, and players bid to collect it.
If you choose to stop drawing, you can take all the currency cards as currency tokens, up to your max of 10, and move the number cards to the market. Or, you can take all number cards revealed, which will give all other players currency tokens equal to the currency revealed; this also allows you to buy one card from the market. If either your net positive or currency total exceeds ten, you bust. You will get a bust token, worth 3 currency, which doesn’t count toward your currency limit.
The game end once the deck is played through, and players score for their longest consecutive sequence in each color, one point per card, plus a bonus point if they have all 9 in a color. Highest score wins!
Who Is It For?
- Ages 8+
- 1 – 5 Players (multi-player shines at 3+)
- Fans of push-your-luck
- Fans of light auctions / bidding
Variants
Busting Variant – Allows you to have a buy phase when you bust if you forego gaining a bust token. Not a huge game changer, but can definitely help you grab the perfect card for one of your sets before someone else does, which is neat. I can definitely see switching between the regular rules and this variant with ease.
Solo Mode – Compete against JEN in a similar style to a normal 2-player game. JEN draws cards until her new positive equals or exceeds a predetermined number (based on difficulty), always chooses to take all the number cards, and can only bust if her currency total exceeds 10. It’s a really solid solo experience that definitely takes some balancing for the player, in attempts to not let JEN get too many cards. I also really like how you can ramp up the difficulty, which is fun as you get better at it.
PROS
- Aesthetics – Great color scheme and graphic design
- Components – Cards are great quality, and the tokens are simple but have a great weight/feel to them
- Plays smoothly
- Works at any player count. My least favorite is probably 2 players, but it’s okay, I just prefer 3+
- Great intro to push-your-luck; compensation mechanism of the bust tokens works well
- Bidding on wild cards is cool so that it’s less likely for one player to always be lucky and get them all
CONS
- If you’re bad at math (like me) it can be difficult at times to reevaluate your net total after each cards, as well as keeping both your net positive and your currency total in mind
- I didn’t feel like the choices turn to turn were all that interesting; draw another card or don’t, bid on a wild card or don’t, but very same-y each time
Final Thoughts
If you like light push-your-luck games with a little bit of bidding, or want to introduce the mechanics to newer gamers, this is probably a good choice thanks to a small rule set and quick, smooth gameplay.
On the other hand, if you’re more hit and miss with the mechanics, this doesn’t bring anything revolutionary to the table in my opinion, so there might be other games better suited for your tastes.
There were decisions to make, which give you a little bit of strategy, but I didn’t feel like my choices were all that interesting, so the game fell a little flat for me. Basically, I could take it or leave it.
Additional Information:
My Final Rating: 5/10
Designers – Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, Shawn Stankewich
Artist – Shawn Stankewich
Publisher – Alderac Entertainment Group
MSRP – $19.99
Website
*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*
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