Sunken City First Impressions

I was fortunate enough to get the chance to play a copy Sunken City by Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling, which will be coming out from Überplay in April.

The object of the game is to collect the most treasures from the buildings which are raised from the lake. If there is a tie for the most treasures, then the number on each player’s treasures are added up and the one with the highest value of treasures is the winner.

The game board has three parts. The first is the lake which will have the Buildings and Streets raised from its bottom. It is a 9 x 9 grid which has squares which are three different colors: the middle square is a very dark blue; there are also light blue and dark blue squares. The colors of the squares determine what can be placed on them during the game. Second is there are six Street Spaces which is where the supply of Street Tiles is place, and finally is the Grotto where the ten Building Blocks are stored.

Set-up

There are ten buildings which are numbered 1 to 10. Buildings 1 through 9 are placed on their corresponding numbered spaces in the Grotto on the edge of the Game Board to show they are available for placement in the lake. Building 10 is placed on the dark blue space in the center of the board and Neptune is placed on top of it.

The Street Tiles are placed face-up on the first Street Space on the Game Board, then one Street Tile is placed face down on spaces two through five. Nothing is placed on Street Space six.

The players choose a color and take one set of six Movement Cards, an Adventurer Pawn, 11 Treasures (numbered 1 to 10 and 12), their Adventure Board, and one of the Rules Summaries. Each player’s treasures are placed in the corresponding square on their Adventure Board with the roof side up. Their Adventurer Pawns are put in their Village on the corner of the lake.

There are also three dice and start player marker. Only one die is used during the game and which one is determined by the number of players.

Playing the Game

On their turn, a player selects one of their Movement Cards and plays it face up in front of them. The first action taken is placing building and street tiles are placed on the Game Board. Then the player moves their Adventurer Pawn, and finally they move Neptune.

The cards show the three actions on them, one of which is mandatory and the other two are optional.

The first is how many City Pieces (Streets and Buildings) are placed on the board. The player *must* place the exact number of pieces as the number shown on their Movement Card, but they may place only one Building. The rest of the City Pieces placed by the player will be Streets. The Street Tiles are two squares long and the Buildings fit in one square on the board.

Buildings may only be placed in the dark blue squares on the board and may not be placed adjacent to each other. Streets are taken from the face-up stack and may be placed anywhere on the board except in the dark blue square in the middle of the board. Streets may be placed adjacent to each other or buildings. During the game, Street Tiles will be removed from the board due to Neptune’s movements (see below) and placed face-down next to current the draw stack. When the last tile is taken from the face-up stack of Street Tiles, the face-down stack next to it is immediately flipped over and becomes the stack from which tiles that get placed on the board are taken.

After the City Pieces have been placed, the player may move up to the number of movement points listed on their Movement Card. Each City and Street tile moved onto takes one movement point. When an Adventurer is moved onto a City Piece, they turn over the corresponding Treasure on their Adventure Board. Should the player move into a Building in the middle square on the board, they can collect an additional Treasure. That additional Treasure is the one with the number 12.

When an Adventurer Pawn is moved into its Village space, any turned-over Treasures are taken off the Adventure Board and placed on the Village. Until this happens, any Treasures are vulnerable to being lost to Neptune.

After they have finished moving their Adventurer Pawn, the player has the option of moving Neptune.

If Neptune is in the active player’s area of the board (a 4 x 4 square area bordered by the player’s color in the corner of their Village), the play can move Neptune up to three movement points (four in a two-player game). If Neptune is elsewhere on the board, the die is rolled and he can move up to that many spaces.

Like the Adventurers, Neptune must move along the streets and through the Buildings. When Neptune leaves a Street or Building Tile, that tile is sunk and removed from the Game Board. The City blocks are put back on their corresponding number and Streets are put face down on the next number by the face-up stack of Street Tiles. If an Adventurer Pawn is on a City Piece that is sunk, then the Adventurer is returned to their Village and any face-up Treasures on their Adventure Board are flipped so the roof side is up and they must be found again by that player. When an Adventurer is sunk, that player gets a Neptune Token which they can use on a later turn. When moving, the Token can turned in so the Adventurer Pawn can be moved an additional number of spaces equal to the number of roof-side-up Treasure Tiles on that player’s Adventure at the time the token is turned in. Only one Neptune Token can be used per turn.

At the end of their turn, the player leaves the Movement Card face-up in front of them. Once a player has used all six of their Movement Cards, they may take all of them back into their hand.

Game End

The game ends when one of two conditions are met: a player has collected all 11 of their treasures and returned them to their village, or the stack of Street Tiles on Street Space five are exhausted. The current round is played through so each player will have the same number of turns. Street Space six is there so you have a place for the tiles that are sunk while space five is active. It also is used as the draw supply for those who have turns at the end of the game.

When the game is finished, the players count the number of Treasures they have collected and the one with the most is the winner. If there is a tie, the tied players add up the values of their Treasures and the one with the highest value wins.

Comments

I really liked this game and wish we could have played again, but the group grew to five players so this was put away, so my comments are based on one playing with four players in which I finished last.

The components are top-notch, though I can’t help but feel that the large plastic blocks that represent the Buildings were included in the place of tiles to justify charging more. The street tiles and treasure tokens are solid, thick cardboard and the pawns and Neptune figure are good quality wood pieces that you would expect to find in games from Germany, so maybe the choice of blocks was just to add to the cool factor, which I think they do.

The rules are well-written and organized and I found them easy to refer to while we were playing. Unlike the other two games released in Europe by Clemontoni which I have played (Wildlife and Magna Grecia), the components in Sunken City do fit quite well in the box.

At its heart, Sunken City is a pick up and deliver game, but unlike most of the games that fall into this category the other players are able to interfere with your plans on a regular basis.

At first we were quite aggressive towards sinking the other players so they would have to go about reacquiring the Treasures they had collected but not managed to get back to their Villages. This is when we learned the power of the Neptune Tokens. If someone has eight or ten uncollected Treasures, then they can zip about the board and easily get several treasures off the board. It can be an advantage if they only get a few extra movement points out of using a Token, since Neptune can only move a maximum of three or four spaces.

The real planning in this game seems to be not so much in deciding on when to use Neptune to sink another player, but where to move him so it will hinder the other players while keeping him out of your way. The next time I play, I will try to use him to sink streets to try and delay the other players while leaving him in a position where the other players will not be able to easily use him against me.

When and where you place the Building blocks is also important. Ideally, you will collect your higher valued treasures while doing what you can to prevent the others from doing the same. You can also place a Building that no one else needs to visit in such a way that it makes placing other Buildings difficult so someone will have to use Neptune to sink it.

I really like how the Street Tiles serve the dual purpose of being used both in game play and as a timing device. This allows for the game to move along at a good pace and also creates the tension of being in a race. The only part of the game which bothered me was how easy it is to use Neptune to bash on the leader, but the Neptune Tokens provide a nice balance to that tactic.

In the end you have to carefully monitor where Neptune is, what the other players are doing, which Movement Cards have been used by yourself and the others, and how close the game is to ending; all while collecting your treasures. There is little down time since what each player does on their turn may end up changing your plans and enough tension to make it a rewarding gaming experience.

Sunken City is not as deep a game as you might expect from a Kramer and Kiesling collaboration, like the Tikal trilogy and Torres, but it is a solid and fun middleweight game which can easily be finished in the hour that it states on the box.