Between Two Cities: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Set Collection, Drafting, Tile Placement
Player Age: 14+Player Count: 1 - 7 PlayersTime to Play: 25 Minutes
Game Designer: Matthew O'Malley, Ben Rosset Game Artist: Beth SobelPublisher: Stonemaier Games Expansions: YesYear Published: 2015BGG Weight: 1.82
Player Age: 14+
Game Designer: Matthew O'Malley, Ben Rosset
Rundown:
In Between Two Cities, players are trying to build two cities; one shared between the opponents to the left and right. The game is divided into three rounds. In round one and three, each turn will have players selecting two tiles, then after discussing with the players next to them they will place one tile in the city to the left and one in the right. This will continue until there is only one tile left, which is then discarded. Round two has players drawing three duplex tiles (tiles that contain two tiles combined). They will select one duplex tile for each city and discard the third. Once all rounds are completed the lowest city out of your two cities will be your final score. Whichever player has the highest score is the winner.
As I have already reviewed the follow-up game called Between Two Castles, I will compare the two games within each section. In game play Between Two Castles is very similar, except for the fact that the tiles have unique scoring on every tile based on the surrounding rooms. There are also speciality room tiles that are awarded when a fifth tile of a certain colour is played.
Alteration:
The game is made up of 108 single tiles and 24 duplex tiles. Not all of these tiles will be used each game which gives players a randomised pool each game. There are six tile types: shops, factories, taverns, offices, houses and parks. These tiles may score for the amount in a straight line (shops), multiplied based on which player has the most (factories), score based on the different types of buildings (taverns), simply based on how many you have (offices), score based on how many of the different tiles a player has (houses) or score based on how many are orthagonally connected (parks).
In Between Two Castles there are seven base tiles. Each tile type has a theme of scoring but don't score the same as each tile of that type. For example the food room has a certain room type it wants above or below it. So one of the food tiles will score for sleeping rooms above and below it. This creates a larger depth of alteration but did make the game more complex to understand. The simplicity of the tile types in Between Two Cities makes it easier for newer players to join.
Production:
The production for the game is less grandiose then other Stonemaier titles as there are no inserts, however there are wonderful wooden pieces to represent the cities.
Between Two Castles comes with an insert for players to easily access each piece as it becomes needed. The game does have a lot more moving parts than Between Two Cities which made the insert more necessary.
Interaction:
Both of these games are highly interactive as you are striving to place tiles successfully with the player to your left and right. These are the kind of games that are more successful in higher player counts.
Determination:
Pros:
- Easy to learn
- Gateway game for newer players
- Wide player count
Cons:
- No Insert
Between Two Castles is a great tile laying game that has players building a city together. This causes challenging decisions in which tiles will benefit which city more. The big challenge of this style of cooperative play is that you are only building half the city so it will take skilled teamwork to pull off a thriving city. The tiles are more simplistic in scoring than ‘Between Two Castles’ but that only makes the game more approachable for newer players. There is certainly room for both games in one’s collection as they share mechanisms but have a vastly different feel when playing.
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