Rogue Review- My City

I got this for my birthday last year and we recently finished playing through the campaign. My City is a legacy game where through a series of eight chapters, you compete for points to see who will create the greatest city through the ages.

Gameplay- B+

The core of the game is a tile placement game.  Each player has a board that starts with the same features and a collection of building tiles that, again at the start, are all identical. Each round, a card is drawn which corresponds to one of the building tiles. You then have to place that tile on your board. It has a bit of a Tetris feel to it. The biggest skill is figuring out where you want to place all of your pieces and then being able to adapt that when the tiles are drawn in the wrong order because tiles have to be placed touching one already on the board. This can really mess up your strategy in some games.

Simple enough concept but the interesting part comes with each chapter’s rules variations. How you score points changes throughout the game which requires you to use a different strategy each game. This helped keep the game interesting across 24 play throughs (eight chapters, three games each). New pieces were added to the game as you went, eventually resulting in not every player having the same number or types of tiles. The boards, while starting identical, became very different by the end due to stickers each player adds depending on how they placed each game.

The biggest issue with the game was it was very easy for someone to get behind in points and have no real way to catch up. In the middle phases of the game, gathering gold can yield a lot of points to one player, and only one player. Sources for getting more gold dry up and those points become lost. And getting these points does not prevent you from getting other regular points. We had one player who didn’t start out trying for these, as with everything until then it was fairly balanced. But she was never able to recover and we had half the game to play.

Production- A

The game boards and pieces are all strong quality materials. I never felt like I was going to bend or break the tile pieces despite them all being a wide variety of shapes and dumped together into a bag each game.

The boards convey their information well at a glance. Each feature is distinct and visible so you never had to question what it was. The stickers remained in place on the board, despite several stickers being placed on top of each other. They also peel off well without damaging the board underneath.

Theme- B+

The game’s theme feels a bit shaky at first since you are building a new city out in the wilds. Then, you do it again on essentially the same piece of fresh land. But that’s a minor conceit of playing a game. The game does a good job of feeling like it is advancing through the years as each chapter provides new mechanics. In the early ones, you’re just placing buildings and proximity to a well is important. Then later the Church moves in and you get new tiles. Then you start mining for gold and there’s a new mechanic. Then factories spring up followed by the railroad. You do get a sense of time advancing and facing new challenges in how to manage a thriving metropolis.

Expansions- TBD

Not that kind of game.

Conclusion- A

We enjoyed ourselves, making this a weekly game for the family. The game suggests you play a chapter at a time, three games, which is feasible but after two, the game feels a bit samey. There are differences in your strategy and how you score points, which does keep it interesting. But that only works for the long haul.

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