The Games We Play

The Games We Play

A repository of reports on the Wednesday night sessions of the club and anything else related to the club or boardgaming in general, which may be of interest to anyone who may be passing by.

Friday 17 August 2012

Rush hour in City Tycoon - a bit too busy?

Just to show we haven't all collectively fallen under the Number 9 bus that trundles past our club venue regularly, just a quick post on a new game (to us) City Tycoon.  So new that we had to punch it as Steve Perkins was kindly explaining it to us.

The ideas are pretty simple, some card selection like 7 Wonders, a bit of square tile laying as per Carcassonne, a bit of resource movement like 20th Century, but put together quite nicely into something which doesn't overall feel too derivative.  Place tiles, which you then own, to generate resources, then ship the resources around to generate resources, cash and VP's.  First playing was quite long (nearly 150 minutes) as it's very difficult to judge the true value of tiles and how they interact as the game (and the city) develop, particularly as we all share the same city and there is some interaction in the usage of resources.  Second playing would speed up a bit, but I see two main problems with the game.  Firstly, the very busy graphics on the tiles, particularly when the city is really big in turn 4, make it difficult to see what's going on, plus there are resource cubes on top of some, which can mean the tile has been exhausted or that it hasn't been exhausted (!), it really burns the brain.  Secondly, I guess we're supposed to be building a city grid, but as some of the interactions with other players can be extremely disruptive to your plans, it's very tempting to stay in your own corner, or indeed to spread out as quickly from the centre as possible away from everyone else.  Perhaps we misunderstood something, but this isn't going to look much like a city at the end if so.

I'd play it again if only to make the learning curve we faced worthwhile, but it will need to be a more inspiring experience next time to make me persevere (which can happen - as with Lords of Waterdeep earlier in the year)

4 comments:

  1. I'm going to read the rules for this one again as I can't believe that there isn't more intentional interaction. For all that there was in the game we played, it might as well have been "multi-player solitaire", to use that over-used expression; yet it seems that it wouldn't take too much tweaking to make it really quite nasty in its competition for resources. As it is, it feels like a "nearly there" play-test going through a final round of tweaks before being submitted to a publisher, and I don't think that's quite right, given how sorted the other stuff from Rebel has been.

    I agree that the biggest issue is how busy it looks late in the game. There can be delays whilst players check out what they still have to do an how to do it. This slowing of the game is an issue regardless of whether you're AP-prone or not. I think the artwork is stylistically simple, which is what is required, and I'm not sure how the information could be presented more simply, but if this feat could be managed, it would certainly improve things.

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  2. City Tycoon has been played a couple of times at my house on a Sunday evening. I've missed out by being on the other table. It has gone down well without actually blowing anyone's socks off. Looks a bit light for a main event game to me.

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  3. I wouldn't really call this a light game, towards the latter stages of the game it's a major brain burner!

    However I imagine a lot of that brain burnt element could be eliminated through good graphic design.

    An okay game but a bit long for what it's worth.

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  4. I wouldn't really call this a light game, towards the latter stages of the game it's a major brain burner!

    However I imagine a lot of that brain burnt element could be eliminated through good graphic design.

    An okay game but a bit long for what it's worth.

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