The discovery of silver has brought economic boom to this city! Take charge of a wealthy family and use your influence in various guilds to expand the city and change the economy. Pay close attention to the supply and demand of everything, and seize the best opportunities whenever you can! Let’s get building!

What Is It?

Hand Management / Multi-Use Cards – Players have a hand of 6 action cards, each with 2 available actions. They will play 5 cards each round, and once a card us used for one action, it can not be used for the other, so players must keep their options in mind so they don’t end up without an action they need later in the round.

Variable Player Set-Up – Players each have 3 guild tokens which determine what buildings they can/can’t build. Where they place them on their player boards will also determine what bonus they will get when building that type of building.

Tile Placement – Players will build building tiles on the shared board to expand the city. They’ll want to have their own buildings next to others with the right colored dots in order to maximize scoring at the end of the game.

Fluctuating Market – As players build, mine, and more, the values of resources will fluctuate which will affect pricing and income moving forward.

Events – In 2-player games there are event cards to help increase economic activity. These may affect taxes, adjust population, remove buildings from the game, and more.

Who Is It For?

  • 2 to 4 Players – Scales well at any count, but more players does make the game longer. 2-player games use event cards to keep the market tight
  • Ages 14 & Up / Mid- to Heavy Gamers – There is a lot going on and a bunch of stuff to evaluate turn to turn (and even action to action) since the market is always fluctuating. Might be hard for younger or less experience players
  • Fan of Euro games, hand management, shifting market, and many opportunities for points

PROS

  • Aesthetics – Great, grandiose look
  • Components – Excellent quality across the board. I’m a big fan of the recycled “re-wood” player pieces. Everything looks and feels great!
  • Rules are well-written and clear
  • Super useful reference cards
  • All assembled components (dual layer player boards, cards stands) stay together well
  • Variability in which guilds you have each game, so you can tailor a strategy to those each game
  • A lot of opportunities for points
  • I definitely like the events at 2 players to keep the economy interesting
  • I like the choices turn to turn and how you have to reevaluate your moves based on how the values of things change
  • Good level of player interaction without feeling too harsh
  • Turns are smooth
  • Scales well
  • Theme works with the mechanisms

CONS

  • No insert so you have a ton of stuff to unbag/bag each game
    • Set-up/clean-up is pretty lengthy
  • The box cover is very boring
  • Some things can feel very slow in the game. For example, building a single tile takes 3 actions (rights, plot, build)
  • Moving the sliders and rotating the cards for the market can get tedious
  • Quite a table hog

Final Thoughts

Overall, I thought the game worked pretty well. I was invested in everyone’s turns because how things changed (resource values, wood pricing, building rotating, et cetera) really influenced what actions I wanted to take. I thought the general flow of the game was decent, but I do think some elements of the game could feel slow, and that also seemed more prevalent with more players, since there was more time between your turns too.

I think that what guild buildings you get will affect how you strategize of course, but there are plenty of paths to points so you don’t have to rely on a consistent strategy game to game.

If you like Euro games generally, this is worth checking out!

Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 7/10

esigners -Ondřej Bystroň, Petr Čáslava, Pavel Jarosch
Artists -Roman Bednář, Štěpán Drašťák, Dávid Jablonovský,
Jakub Politzer, Milan Vavroň
Publisher – Czech Games Edition
MSRP – $59.95
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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