Game(s) Played:
Suburbia
It was supposed to be Boardgame Night In Puchong (S02E06) but it got cancelled due to lack of attendees. When announcing the cancellation on facebook, Kaz (the organizer) seemed quite a bit down that less and less people are coming lately. I’m not sure if he was more surprised or pissed off when he got comments from invitees who were going to show up but hadn’t bothered to indicate that they were coming (yours truly included) on the facebook invite page. I suppose in a way the cancellation was for the best due to the incredibly horrible traffic snarl on the roads that night caused by the rally in Stadium Kelana Jaya. Apparently people were just abandoning their cars on the highways and byways and walking to the stadium reminiscent of the first episode of Revolution.
Revolution became too weird too fast for my liking
After reading Kaz’s facebook post, I told my Significant Other who was playing with Padawan Minigeek that I wasn’t going tonight, without telling her the event was cancelled. Her cheery exclamation of "Yay! Daddy’s staying home tonight!" made me wonder if they really like having me around (probably not true since I ended up playing solo Suburbia that night) or that she really dislikes my hobby that much. It is probably the latter since each of my gaming sessions is 2 – 6 hours that she cannot relate to in any way it seems. It makes me wonder if Padawan Minigeek is such a good idea, seeing as if Padawan Minigeek takes to boardgaming, my Significant Other might feel abandoned. Thoughts, fellow boardgamers, thoughts?
I guess a boardgaming hobby is still better than a mountain climbing hobby
Now that the ranting is over and done with, here the session report for my first solo-play of Suburbia:
Game #1 – Suburbia
Player(s):
Hayen
Suburbia is a boardgame about city building where each Player tries to balance two great forces called Income and Reputation in their quest to build the most populous city amongst other Players. Income provides the Player with money to build various districts from four categories: Residential, Industrial, Commercial and Civic which further influence both the Player’s Income & Reputation and Reputation determines how fast your city’s population grows. The balancing act comes where many districts provide a boost in one force at the expense of the other and each population size threshold the city crosses reduces the Player’s income and reputation by one, courtesy of higher maintenance and overcrowding.
Round-a-bouts are the bane of smooth traffic on the highway
Each Player starts off with Suburbs, Community Park & Heavy Factory to give them 0 Income 1 Reputation & +2 Population. Halfway through the first round I realized that the attrition (-1 Income & -1 Reputation) I was suffering from my Reputation boosted growth, was killing me in that I had no money to build some of the more expensive districts available. My Commercial districts were just not giving me enough income to offset the amount attrition was taking away from me so I built another Heavy Factory, an Industrial district that gives Income at the expense of Reputation.
My city at the end of the first round (after finishing the stack A tiles) & Blogger's irritating in that I can't orientate my pictures
As you can see, some districts like the Parking Lot and Shopping Centre were really expensive, costing more than $10
My city had just cleared the first stage and had upgraded from Hamlet to Village?
At this point in the game I really see-sawed between objectives. At first I was greedy in trying to not go into the negative on either Income or Reputation by using the Suburbs to supress my Reputation forgetting that Suburbs give +2 population. Then deciding I didn’t care even if I had a negative Reputation, I went for broke to get maximum Income through additional Commercial districts like the Parking Lot & Skyscraper and Industrial districts like Landfill and Slaughterhouse which really hurts Reputation. After having reached maximum Income, I attempted to salvage my city’s Reputation through an Elementary School, Museum & Community Park (all Civic districts as expected). You can see where I ended up with that yo-yoing configuration below:
Lakes help you when you don’t have money although I have no idea how this is thematic
I regret not buying the Casino but thought it would come up again later. How wrong I was
Now it is a township! But it took a lot of suppression to make sure the city size stayed small
From here on out I used the Civic districts to boost my Reputation and some Commercial districts to keep my Income in tandem with the attrition rate. It is a good thing that money is exchangeable for population at the end of the game else my overabundance of moolah would have been a total waste. I was not particularly keen on Residential districts since the boost to population was only a one-time thing as opposed to Reputation’s increase in population which occurs at the end of each turn. I was not going to let the PR Firm slip out of grasp this time having lost the Casino, and that was really helpful in stopping the attrition to my Reputation from my fast growing city. Having completed my turn after flipping over the "One More Turn" tile, my city looked like this:
My dive bombing Income is due to my final turn population screeching past all the thresholds
Sadly after getting my final score I’m not sure how well I did in this play
Me shunning the green Residential tiles
Time Taken: 45 minutes
Results Of Game
Hayen (116 Population)
I know I haven’t got a good grasp of the game simply because I didn’t use any of the supposedly awesome Investment Markers which double the effects of any already built district in your city. It just didn’t seem obvious to me when I should be using it when playing solo but I suppose if playing with others and you don’t have a good action to take, doubling the effects of your best tile would be a solid choice. Maybe playing the game solo with Dale The Bot or Jule The Bot (courtesy of Enroth186 on bgg) would be more of a challenge and if I do so I’ll post another report here about it (since I’m actually more keen to do a solo play of Ora Et Labora). My next play of Suburbia will probably a multi-player one, hopefully in the not too far future.
Thought of the game:
Initial tiles available
Hayen: "Ooo a Mint! I’d like a Mint but man is it expensive! Don’t have the money now…"
Another Mint comes along
Hayen: "$12… $13… $14… Argh!!!" (Mint’s lowest cost is $15)
I need to find more Playas
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