The short
version::

City & Guilds is a surprisingly elegant tile laying game with a
multi-layered scoring pattern. It is Steve Kingsbury's first
designer game and one of the better upper-middleweight games that
was released at 2004's Essen fair.

Yeah, it is
that good.

Caveats:

The only real caveat is production quality. Production quality is
at best "fair". The game board, while nicely cut and trimmed, had
some minor alignment issues. Similarly the paper art cover for
the game box wasn't quite positioned correctly when making the
game box, and wasn't fully glued along the interior flaps. The
tiles are mounted on study card and quite pleasant, but the paper
used for the art is a bit soft and porous making me suspect that
it will wear quickly. The bits of card left holding the tiles in
the frame (what I'd call "sprue" in molded plastics) are thicker
than I'd like, making for little projecting "twigs" along each
edge once they are punched (a quick run over with a single edged
razor blade handled). Finally one of the yellow cubes in my set
was, well, not a cube but instead a sort of cube-meets-pyramid
shape. Outside of that single flaw, all the wooden pieces were
fully up to the standard of other designer games (and I love the
wee coke-bottle wooden pawns). At a more general level City &
Guilds seems to be an example of
"JKLM's":http://www.jklmgames.co.uk/ (the publisher) second
edition production quality: better quality paper, tiles, printing
and more visually appealing than say first edition Kogge, and
while fully functional and modestly attractive, it will win no
exclamations. JKLM still has a way to go to reach the production
qualities of say the games from Alea, Hans im Gluck, or Queen.

The rules are not great. They're certainly not as bad as has been
made out, but they could stand improvement. On the good side the
rules communicate the principles of the game relatively clearly
using consistent language in a consistent fashion and the example
diagrams accurately match their descriptive texts and show useful
and realistic game situations. A second edition of the rules
which improve on a few weak areas has already been posted to
"boardgamegeek":http://www.bggfiles.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=8356
.

Where the rules fall down is in a slightly confused layout of some
core principles (eg scoring of guilds in blocks), and in skimming
over or otherwise ignoring some corner cases. I've noted the few
rules questions we were unable to answer from the first edition
rules below.

Finally the game includes a couple of mechanics that are actually
just niceties and superfluous to the actual game mechanics.
Neither are huge, but it would have been nice if the rules had
more clearly stated that they are conveniences/player aids and not
core elements of the game.

1. The rules spend a fair while going over making three stacks
of the tiles, keeping one tile atop each stack face up for tile
drafts, and then redistributing the stacks should one stack be
emptied etc. Ahem. Yeah, right. Just toss the tiles in a bag
(Crown Royal bags are good), and then draw three tiles to make
the draft set. As players draft tiles, just draw new tiles from
the bag.

2. The whole business of using the white and black cubes to mark
the leader and second player on each block is unnecessary to
playing the game. They are player aids/conveniences that make
surveying player positions on the board easier and are not
actually necessary to play. Depending on how vigilant your
players are and how fiddly you find maintaining the correct
assignment of them as tiles are placed you may or may not wish
to use the black and white cubes at all. (I like them but don't
mind not playing with them).

Now on to the good stuff:

I'm not going to attempt to rehash the rules. What I will do is
to try and cover the core mechanics, their relationships, and how
they combine to build a good game with interesting decisions.

The City & Guilds board consists of a map of a city section
containing eight city "blocks" each of which has space for eight
tiles.

There are a small set of core concepts in City & Guilds which are
necessary to understand the core of the game:

City blocks -- The game board depicts eight blocks. Each block
consists of eight squares on which tiles may be placed. When a
block is filled with tiles it is scored and when all eight
blocks have been filled and scored end-game scoring occurs and
the game is over.

Guild chains -- Orthogonally adjacent sets of tiles of the same
guild are considered to be in the same chain. The trick is that
orthogonally adjacent can cross the roads between blocks. As
long as you can draw a straight line along one of the axis from
one tile to another tile from the same guild without crossing
another tile or empty tile space the two tiles are considered to
be part of the same chain. These guild chains are the core of
end-game scoring and result in sum to about a third of a players
total points for the game.

Guild investment -- In parallel to the tile laying area of the
board are four Guild Investment Tracks. These are simple tracks
along which players may advance to show relative investment in
the four guilds. The investment tracks are in tension as
regards the tile laying area of the board. Advancement on the
investment track is at the expense of ownership and influence on
the board and visa versa. Comparative guild investment affects
VP allocation during block scoring and for end-game scoring and
in sum probably directly affects about two thirds of a player's
total points in a game.

Basic play pattern:

The basic pattern of play in City & Guilds
is almost trivial:

- Play a tile from your hand of three tiles.

- If a building, place one or two pawns on it.

- Possibly increase your "investment" in the guild of the tile
played by moving your marker along the progress track for that
guild

- Draft a replacement tile from the three face up tiles.

- Next player...

This continues until 64 tiles have been placed on the board,
filling all eight city blocks. As soon as the last block is
filled the game ends and final scoring occurs. As there are 80
tiles in the game, 16 of the tiles will not be placed in any given
game. Like the multiple layers of scoring, the tiles have two
dimensions of relationship. In one dimension tiles may be
buildings or markets, and in the other dimension tiles belong to
one of the four guilds. There are also eight tiles which are
exceptions to the pattern -- four minstrel tiles and four pubs
tiles -- all of which are buildings which don't have any guild
affiliation.

It is in the scoring patterns that the heart of the game lies.
There are four inter-related scoring layers in the game. Two are
invoked every time a block is "finished" (all the spaces in it
filled with tiles), and the last two only occurs at game-end. In
our games the end-of-game scoring has accounted for about a third
of players' final scores. The player with the most points at the
end of the game wins.

Please see the rules for when pubs and minstrel tiles are played.

Block scoring:

The two scoring patterns that occur during
the game are:

1. Scoring for the contents of a compleated block.

2. Scoring for your investment in the most significant guild
represented on that block.

First the block is examined to determine its total VP value. The
value of a block is 8 points (matching the eight tiles that
constitute a block) plus two points for every market tile on the
block, and 5 points for every pub or minstrel tile. Next the
block is checked to determine who owns the most buildings on the
block (ie has a pawn on the tile) with ties broken by most pawns
on the block and then who-got-there-first. Then the other players
with a presence on the block are ordered as to second, third,
fourth etc. Note that guild affiliations of tiles are not counted
for this stage of block scoring. Finally the first/largest
presence player gets half the value of the block in VPs rounded
up, the second player gets half that rounded up, the third half
that again rounded up and so forth.

Second is guild scoring for the block. The compleated block is
examined to see which guild has the most tiles on the block (no
matter who owns them), with ties broken by which guild has the
largest chain (chains may extend off the block to adjacent blocks,
see the rules for good examples), and broken again by the total
number of blocks touched by the chain. If there's still a tie the
guild isn't scored. Once the leading guild has been determined,
the investment track for that guild is examined. The player who
has invested the most in that guild gets 4 VPs, the second most
invested player 2 VPs, and the third most invested player 1 VP.
In this way a player who has little or no presence on a block may
yet score a significant number of VPs due to the block being
compleated.

End-game scoring:

End-game scoring is a bit simpler. Taking each guild in turn the
board is examined to find the longest chain of tiles for that
guild. The value of the chains is then calculated: 1 VP for every
tile in the chain plus a bonus of the triangular number for the
total number of blocks the chain is present on (eg 4 blocks is a
bonus of 10 VPs). The investment track for that guild. The
player with the largest investment is awarded half the VP value of
the guild chain rounded up, the second player on the track half
that again rounded up, the third player half that yet again
rounded up and so forth.

Victory:

The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Core game tensions:

- In playing tiles players may extend guild chains across multiple
blocks. As the triangular VP bonuses for guild chains increase
rapidly as more blocks are touched, extending a guild chain over
many blocks makes it an attractive VP target for all players.

- In playing a building tile the player may place one or two pawns
on it. If only one pawn is placed, then the player advances on
that guild's investment track by one. If two pawns are placed the
player does not advance on the investment track. As pawns are the
second tie breaker for ownership of a block this creates a tension
between the investment track and block ownership. Additionally as
there is a limited number of pawns per player, pawns need to be
meted and played efficiently in terms of end-game VPs.

- If instead the player plays a market tile, then the player
advances two spaces on that guild's investment track. He plays no
pawns, and so his ownership of the block remains unchanged, but
the total block value is increased by 5 VP for when the block is
compleated. The additional market tile moves the block along
toward being scored, advances the player significantly along the
guild investment track, doesn't increase the active player's
ownership of the block, increases the total value of the block by
5 VP, and further established the guild chain as a competitive
target for other players.

- In playing a minstrel or pub tile to a block the active player
increases the total value of the block by 5 VPs and adds one
building to his ownership of the block (minstrels and pubs may
only have one pawn placed on them). Minstrels and pubs don't
affect guild investment and _do_ break guild chains.

- With so many points coming from the end-game scoring, there's
considerable incentive to invest heavily in a small number of
guilds and try and make sure that those guilds touch the largest
number of blocks possible. After all, the player in the lead will
gain up to 4 VPs for every block where that guild dominates, plus
half of a potentially very large number in end game scoring. The
problem is that it is difficult to get a guild to both touch many
blocks and dominate those blocks. Additionally the more
attractive a guild becomes in end-game scoring the more other
players will try and climb the investment track as well, possibly
stealing first place for that guild. Finally, in general the more
VPs are moved toward end-game scoring the less points are
generated at the interim scoring points.

- Players vie for the pubs and minstrels, especially as blocks
come near to being compleated. Both are worth at least 2 VPs to
the player in the lead on their block where they are played.
Additionally, like any other tile of a different colour they break
guild chains on their square. In this way they can be effectively
used to limit the block-connectivity of guild chains in which the
active player is not heavily invested.

Advised player counts:

The game is rated for between three and five players inclusive.
The designer states that almost all playtesting was done with five
players.

I'm very uncertain which I like more: the three player game or the
four player game. Both are very good in slightly different ways.
The three player game is the most strategic and least chaotic, but
also has significantly less interesting competition for guild
investments and board placements. The four player game is more
chaotic in the board state and tile draft set can change
significantly between turns, but competition for guild advancement
is much tighter and more interesting, as is the dickering over
block ownership and guild chain blockage/spread.

I've not played with five players but confidently expect it to be
very chaotic and tactical. Four players is quite clearly right on
the edge of the knee in several dimensions, and five players is
right over on the other side.

Rule ambiguities:

In our games there were three points in the rules which we were
unable to resolve directly:

1. At the start of the game each player places one tile anywhere
on the board (within certain limits) to form the initial seed
tile distribution. The rules didn't state where these tiles
came from, and if the player's hand, if/how they were replaced.
We opted that they were played from the initial player hands and
were replaced from the three draft tiles in normal fashion. We
liked this approach as it game an early if weak signal as to
each player's interests.

2. If a player runs out of pawns, do they still play tiles? Can
they play building tiles and then place no pawns on them? While
this only occurred in one of our games, we decided that yes,
they could play tiles and no, they didn't have to play a pawn on
them if (and only if) they had none left.

#1 is mostly ignorable. The extra signalling of getting to see
what people decide to play or draft is nice, but certainly isn't
critical to the game or to subsequent good play.

#2 is potentially significant. Scores in City & Guilds tend to be
tight all the way up into the end game. Small point deltas can
mean a lot. Buildings without pawns can significantly influence
block majorities and even inter-block connectivity.

Summary:

This is a great game that plays quickly, has a high rate of
interesting and non-trivial decisions, and delivers one heck of a
kick for both the money and the play minute.

ObNote:

The original copy of this review was written in StructuredText for another venue, thus the slightly funny formatting here.

clearclaw (#78469),

Two small corrections:

1) The white and black cubes are partially necessary for recording who-got-there-first for tie breaker resolution. This fact can't be otherwise deduced from simple observation of the board state.

2) I state that we found three rule ambiguities and then list two. There were three, but we answered one from another more thorough reading of the rules.

clearclaw (#78646),

Thanks for your very clear and positive review. Its nice to see that my experience of playtesting, a middle wieght game playing surpirisingly quickly (45 mins) is happening in the real world. I only wish the first version of the rules had been as clear as your review!

I hope to have amended those errors with a new set posted above in the files section.

Your rule queries: i agree with your rulings.

I guess the componenet quality can only get better....with each new print run as we make further developments, amendments.


Cheers

Steve (Kingsbury)

Steve Silbla (#79089),



You're very welcome. Thank you for the most enjoyable game.



45 minutes has been for 3 and 4 player games. While we're a fairly analytical bunch, most player turns are in the single digit second range. It makes for a fast game.



Cool. Will this be another update to the rules from the version you posted a few days ago, or just that one?



Ha, great! Would you mind posting your agreement under my article on rules ambiguities? That way others will be able to find that nore more easily.



The art is actually a big hit about here. People just like it and it has drawn all sorts of approving comments. I've also had players commenting on how well the mechanics match the theme (and from a player big into theme games and light on game depth) which I hadn't expected.

Excellent review.