The City

In accordance with my continuing prejudice against cards games, once again I was pleasantly surprised by one that was actually fun to play. It was at a board game party couple weeks back where people both that play board games usually and those who don't gathered around a table to play something. It was either Catan (which I don't like) or something easy for others to learn quickly. The game I brought was quickly dismissed, much to my disappointment, but the picked alternative, the card game The City proved to be a fun game in itself.

Building a city is awesome and anyone that has ever played SimCity will attest to it. However, the complex nature of it suits computer games better than board games which results in city building board and card games being usually based on something other than balancing RCI. Sure, there is Alhambra with its many expansions but that is not really a city building game either. It's laying tiles to each other so that they connect with walls. More like a logical puzzle, I'd say.

The City is not about balancing RCI either but it's more city building than any other board game I've played. As with most of the card games, the luck plays a large part here. You are dealt some cards and for the couple first rounds, as you're building your first buildings, you try to set a specialization of your future city. Each building has some attributes and most of them react to other buildings in your city, so of course, you are trying to create such building combinations that give you some very nice bonuses.


There are three attributes a building can have. Either it is commerce (symbolized by a shopping cart), leisure (symbolized by a fountain) or transportation (a car). Some buildings produce a lot of one attribute, some produce bit of several attributes, but on their own they don't mean anything. At the end of each turn, each building generates profit and victory points, which are sometimes influenced by the produced attributes. One building might for example make profit 1 for each fountain produced in your city, another will always generate 3 victory points but no profit, another perhaps 1 profit and 1 victory point for each car produced which would go great together with that other building that makes 1 car for each bus stop in your city... Profit means how many cards you will draw next turn, victory points stack and at the end of each turn, they are counted between players. Once one player reaches 50 victory points, the game ends and that player wins.

As you can see, the game is all about combining well the cards you draw with the buildings you already built. The foolproof tactic is to try to get high profit soon so that you draw a lot of cards each turn and can decide what to build. Each building has a cost, of course the more useful (profitable or giving a high number of VPs) are more expensive than the starter ones and you can only build one in one turn. Paying for buildings is done by discarding from your hand, just like in Race for the Galaxy. And actually, the game is quite similar to RftG, its mechanics are simpler and not as punishing (luck plays a greater part in The City than in RtfG) and its theme is also more approachable than colonizing planets. The rules are explained in two minutes and the game is over usually in 20, which is due to everyone playing at the same time. Actually, it is its brevity that adds to the charm. The game is colourful, one round doesn't last too long, there's little analysis paralysis (when you're thinking way too long over your next move) danger... It is the perfect gateway game to introduce new players to board and card games!

And perhaps I won't give card games a hard time anymore, since
most of the ones I've played proved to be quite fun.