Game A Week: Poisoned Cities

Today is Tuesday and that means we have a new game to put up! This one went together with a little help from my friend Sonja (check her blog here). We grabbed some thoughts from Boardgamizer and I pulled a random thought from my head. She helped me tune it up, then with a little more fine tuning from me, we hve the version seen below.

Without further ado, our themes were:

1. city
2. pollution
3. survival (this was a victory condition, but I liked it better as a theme)

Our mechanics were:

1. pattern building
2. chit pull

My first thought with these mechanics was a Zen Garden style city building game, were you had to manage pollution levels to keep your citizens alive. (See my thoughts on Zen Garden here)

This was a little complicated in my mind and would likely have just been a retheme of Zen Garden.

Then I remembered a project I was working on before I bought Dungeoneer (see review here). It had tiles with paths on them that could be built up in sections, forming the board as you go. I shelved it because of my opinion of Dungeoneer and not having ideas of how to do it better.

So now we had a mixture of ideas. The secret design element of Zen Garden, the path building aspect of Dungeoneer. We needed something else, something that screamed survival. Sonja hit this one for me when she mentioned Master Labyrinth, a game I recently bought at Value Village. Instead of a pattern of paths, a pattern of materials.

Thus we have the framework for the theme:

Players are playing as survivors of the nuclear apocalypse. They need to fortify their base in order to survive the constant storms. Their job is to head out into the ruins of the city and gather resources to try and match the building plans they have. First person back to base with all their resources wins.

The game requires two bags of chits. One is the Exploration bag, the other is the Resource bag.
In the Exploration bag you have four kinds of square chits:

1. Roads: These show a road on one side and smog on the other
2. Resource Hubs: These show the number of resources on both sides
3. Radiation: These show radiation on both sides
4. Smog: This tile shows SMOG on both sides

It also requires two d6 (one specialized) and a card for each player listing the trade possibilities.

The game is played by first placing down the Home Base chit in the center of the table. This is where everyone starts and must return to in order to win.

Next one player rolls the exploration die (1d6) and can use any part of the number rolled to pull from the Exploration bag that number of chits, one at a time.

• If they draw a Road they place it Road side up connected to any path on the board. Only one side has to be connected, others can face walls.
• If they draw a Resource Hub they place it attached to any road on the board. It must be attached to an open road. They then drawn the number indicated on the tile from the resource bag and place them face down on top of the hub.
• If they draw a Radiation they must attach it to an open road immediately
• If the draw the SMOG they may flip one or more road tiles equal to the remainder of their Exploration die. The SMOG tile is then replaced in the Exploration bag

After they have drawn and placed all their tiles they may use the remaining sum of the Exploration die to move that number of spaces. A player who moves may not end their turn on the same space they started it on. A player may not move through Radiation or Smog tiles.

When a player lands on a Resource Hub they may take the top tile from the Hub and place it in their Inventory. A player may have no more than four items in their Inventory at once, but may discard an item at any point of their turn. A player cannot earn another resource from a Hub until they land on that Hub. To land on a Hub and take its resource ends your turn.

At the beginning of each round (after the first) one player rolls the Wind die. This die has one face showing wind and another showing a storm. 

If the wind side lands face up all Road tiles currently smog side up are turned road side up again.

If the storm side lands face up all Resource Hubs are refilled to their maximum resource number.

On their turn players may trade resources in to the game in order to gain certain effects:

• Trade goals with another player
• rotate goals: you can choose direction
• trade inventories with another player
• trade one item with another player
• re-roll the exploration die once
• re-roll the wind die once

These and their trade amounts are listed on a card in front of each player.

We've not playtested this one yet to determine starting numbers of each exploration chit, resources, or number of resources per hub, but the framework is there, and I consider it done enough to understand. So that's it for this week.

Meet us next week when take a look at another new game, or follow the blog as it constantly has new content in games, art and resources as well as reviews of places I go!