Today is Malaysia’s Independence Day, marking 57 years of freedom from the United Kingdom and so we commemorate this great day in our humble group by having our first themed boardgame session with the theme of city building!
Game(s) Played:
7 Wonders
Suburbia
Session – 7 Wonders
Gideon suggested we start with 7 Wonders as only Adrian needed a run through of how the game works. During the setup and briefing, we talked about expanding 7 Wonders which I personally felt is unnecessary given the number of similar as well as good card drafting boardgames out there like Among The Stars. That way, rather than expanding one game, you can have two at the same price and just alternate in between. And that is only if I’ve played a particular game to death, like Dominion: Intrigue & Race For The Galaxy which is hardly the case with my copy of 7 Wonders.
Player(s):
Adrian
Clement
Gideon
Justin
[Game 1]
I haven’t played 7 Wonders in a while but I could still remember that science rakes in the points (perhaps a bit too much) and since I started with the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, which comes with a free starting Cloth resource, I decided to give the science strategy a go.
Despite Gideon (Colossus of Rhodes) & Adrian (Pyramids of Giza) being more "warlike" and sandwiching Clement (Lighthouse of Alexandria) & me, Clement & I were the ones to start with some military conquests. Eventually we both ran out of steam as Gideon & Adrian drafted more and more military units resulting in resounding defeats for Clement & me by Age III.
Looking at the board situation here, it is somewhat surprising that Clement (directly opposite) & I ended up being first & second
As you can see from the above, my science strategy was not really taking off and we were already in Age II. Smelling a rat, I accused my fellow Players of discarding green science cards to which the ensuing laughter confirmed my suspicions.
12 Coins from my Vineyard! Thanks to Adrian who force-built brown resource cards
So yea, thanks to Adrian’s contingent of resource producing mines, I got a tonne of cash from my Vineyard which enabled me to buy some of the science cards that came my way by paying Adrian for the resources I didn’t have. Woohoo!
Thanks to the science cards, I managed to latch on to some free blue cards which gave me the edge and the win
[Game 2]
Round 2 saw us switching to the B side and me getting the Pyramids of Giza. Going with the Pyramids wonder theme of "loads of points", I decided to go all blue which in hindsight was a little too easy to decipher as the others got a little bit better in card denial. Gideon was going all out for the science + military route which was terribly hard to stop when I drafted a hand of 5 science cards.
Not the highest scoring science in my gaming history but probably second highest
Time Taken: 60 minutes
Results Of Game(s)
[Game 1]
Winna – Justin (51 VPs)
Second – Clement (43 VPs)
Third – Adrian (38 VPs)
Dead Last – Gideon (32 VPs)
[Game 2]
Winna – Gideon (66 VPs)
Second – Adrian (55 VPs)
Third – Justin (35 VPs)
Dead Last – Clement (32 VPs)
A near complete reversal of the previous round’s scores
Rating: 9/10
Made famous due to its speed to depth of play ratio, 7 Wonders continues to amaze me even though it is now 4 years old.
Session – Suburbia
I’ve wanted to get Suburbia to the table for quite a while now but was afraid of two things (1) the teaching complexity of the game & (2) the length of the game. Gideon has played Suburbia once and so with my meagre experience of one solo play to call on, I tried to teach it to Clement & Adrian and it wasn’t quite as difficult as I thought it would be.
Player(s):
Adrian (Black)
Clement (Purple)
Gideon (Yellow)
Justin (Red)
Me going straight out for the money with the Business Supply Store! Shame hardly anyone bought offices thereafter
I’m really drawn to things like sliders / tracks (this is the Accountant in me speaking) and how you can always make sure your positions on the sliders are correct by recalculating your board position as well as how easy it is in Suburbia to thematically link the decisions you make in expanding your suburb to your income and reputation sliders. (Group your heavy industry away from your housing or suffer a reputation drop)
Here we see Gideon demonstrating how his new tile would affect his fledgling industrial city
My only pic of Adrian, I need to learn to take panoramic pictures on my phone
Gideon remained focus on his industrial city, which in hindsight showed he was clearly aiming for the industrial goal which gave 20 population (points) but honestly speaking, the rest of us were not really keeping the goal tiles in mind, much to the detriment of our final scores.
The positions at this point mean nothing and I'm not sure they mean anything until the goal tile scoring
Adrian was the only one of us who seemed to focus on spurts of income using lakes (or rivers as he called them) rather than a steady high income stream and steadily outstripped us on the population track with his high reputation park city.
Lake/Rivertown
After the Business Supply Store, I wanted to branch into my civic (grey) buildings to achieve my goal but got side tracked by the Movie Theatre & Gas Station. I should have kept a closer watch on Adrian's parks instead of looking for ways to max out my score. Note to self, bonuses from goal tiles far outstrip any population gains you could achieve in one turn.
I only needed one more civic tile to have more than Adrian & get another 15 population from my personal goal tile!
Clement had a nice cluster of tiles that generated loads of income and then threw his reputation into the toilet by using Apartments & Bed & Breakfast to make huge leaps & bounds across the population track and getting consecutive hits to his reputation through overpopulation. Strangely enough, this was not only enough to push him right to the forefront before goal tiles scoring but also to earn the Miscreant goal tile for lowest reputation (another +20 population).
Clement's reconstruction of Hong Kong
Time Taken: 105 minutes
Results Of Game(s)
Winna – Clement (57 VPs)
Second – Gideon (45 VPs)
Third – Justin (43 VPs)
Dead Last – Adrian (41 VPs)
We didn't even break into the second half of the scoring track, I'm wondering if I laid out enough tiles for a 4 Player game
Rating: 8/10
My first play of Suburbia was a very positive experience. It really is like playing SimCity where each Player is building their own little suburb where each building not only impacts your individual suburb but those of other Players as well. Build a Fancy Restaurant to gain huge profits but start to suffer losses when the town next door starts laying on the Fast Food Restaurants and little Cafes. We had a good time poking fun at each other's suburbs during the game and culling or building tiles that would impact another Player's suburb, lots of unexpected interactivity in this game.
The end game scoring was met with a lot of groans and complaints that we missed a goal tile by just one little thing. My only concern is whether in future games, I may end up building a suburb that meet the goals prescribed by the goal tiles instead of a city I want to build which is kind of a downside for me, since this would mean a game between equal Players would mean everybody's suburb ends up looking roughly the same. The shortness is another issue for me, I thought I would end up being able to build a far larger city than what I had at the end. I think I'm going to look into a variant for this one.
Suburbia definitely warrants more future plays with perhaps a varied number of Players, maybe 3 Players since that's the recommended number by BGG. Look forward to it.
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