RogerBW's Blog

Thirsty Meeples October 2014 08 October 2014

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.)

See also:
Reading Boardgames Social 27 January 2015


  1. Posted by Michael Cule at 10:22am on 08 October 2014

    The gallery of games on boardgamegeek does seem to show the variant I mentioned seeing where you can build your borough to meet up with the other players' boroughs. Oh and look, there's an iPad version. Excuse me....

  2. Posted by RogerBW at 11:06am on 08 October 2014

    I think that variant may be the expansion, Suburbia Inc.

  3. Posted by Michael Cule at 11:11am on 08 October 2014

    And the tutorial on the iPad version highlights a rule we got wrong yesterday: it costs the Real Estate Market price to discard something after building a basic tile. So unless you feel that interfering with another player is worth the money you will probably end up discarding from the +0$ spaces.

  4. Posted by RogerBW at 11:26am on 08 October 2014

    Oho, thanks.

    Also, you do get the full population growth benefit of your Reputation even if that does involve crossing multiple red lines.

  5. Posted by Michael Cule at 04:28pm on 08 October 2014

    I think so: it seems to be knocking the reputation back after the population increase has gone through. I've won twice against computer players but the solo game is proving harder.

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