RogerBW's Blog

Back to three players, and a reserved table, at the boardgame café. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

We started once more with Splendor, which is staying on my buy list even though I did fairly badly again. The copy in the shop has clearly seen some hard use, particularly the cards, but it's standing up well.

Then it was time for Suburbia, a game that at least two of us had been meaning to try for a while. The basic idea is that you're putting down building tiles in your particular borough, aiming for the best combination of income (to get more stuff) and reputation (to bring in more people); most things boost one but not the other. I started off lagging badly, without very much of either, and since you seem in effect to control your rate of population change but score on total population I thought I might come off very badly.

However, by building a Resort (which scored off everyone's residential tiles, and while I only had two there were plenty of others on the board), then doubling it, I managed to get out ahead towards the end of the game. One of the open goals was ten points for largest connected water, which I easily had (and with Waterfront Realty had been getting extra money for all game); the secret goal I'd chosen was a further twenty points for the same thing.

Downtime was a problem in early turns, but once we all got things which were affected by other people's tiles we got more involved. Definitely an interesting game, with multiple possible strategies, though they won't all be open to one in the same game. One that I want to play again, and it's moved onto my to-buy list.

We finished off with Bang! The Dice Game, which particularly as a three-player game wasn't much fun. I've heard good things about the card game version, but I suspect even that would work better with more players (it's officially for 4-7). As it was, this one just felt random, and my victory didn't seem to have been earned at all. (Note from Future RogerBW: see linked post for a better game experience.)