By Kayla Diaz

Overview

Between Two Cities: Essential Edition is a tile-drafting game card game for three to seven players that requires coordination with the members playing, published by Stonemaier Games and designed by Ben Rosset, Matthew O’Malley, Laura Devon and Agnieszka Dabrowiecka. In this game a player will build two cities, one with the person their right and one with the person their left. A player must share attention equally between both partners because during the end of game scoring players must take the lower scoring city of the two built. The winner is the player with the highest score.  On each turn players must select two tiles that represent landmarks for their city, reveal them, then work with their partners to allocate those tiles (one to each partner) to create the highest scoring city. 

Components

This game features two card decks (building tiles and duplex tiles), a variety of landscape mats, city tokens that represent famous monuments around the world, reference cards, a rule book and score pad. The 153 building tiles are all illustrated by Beth Sobel, an artist for Stonemaier products. There are ten different types of building tiles (factories, shops, parks, offices, houses, civic tiles and four different types of taverns) are used to construct a 4×4 (or 5×5 city depending on the game mode). Each tile displays information on how to score points at the end of the game. The city landmark tokens are used to track cards passed to your partners, they are a fun way to incorporate actual cities around the globe (although, we received a second hand copy gratis from Stonemaier games and our tokens were missing).  The game is easy to learn and understand. The reference cards that explain how to gain points and organize the city are very useful. Lastly, this edition features a scoring pad (which differs from the original edition) that helps speed up the scoring process at the conclusion of the game.

Setup

Between Two Cities is simple to set up. To begin the game, players randomly sit around a table. One city token should be placed in between each participant. This represents the location of the cities between each player. The matching city token is then placed next to the scoreboard (note: the scoreboard component is only offered in the original version, the Essentials edition does not feature this item). Players then shuffle all the building tiles and place them in face-down stacks. The players each receive seven cards from the deck and choose two to place on their mat (one card per partner-city). The remaining hand of five cards are then passed to the person to the left and their city token is placed on the cards. The game is ready to begin!

Gameplay

The game is played in three rounds. At the start of each round, players draw a random hand of seven tiles. On each turn, they discretely choose two tiles to place in front of them. If players have more than one tile remaining in  their hand, they pass the cards to the next player. Then all players flip and reveal their selected tiles simultaneously and, after negotiating with their partners, place one tile in each of their cities. The end of the round is triggered when each player has only one card remaining in their hand. That card is discarded and players begin round two. Round two follows the same gameplay, but players compose a random hand of three duplex tiles.  Round three repeats the procedures from round one, again using the standard tiles, but during this round gameplay proceeds in the counter direction. At the end of the game, each city must form a 4×4 square of 16 tiles. Players may never play a tile in any position that would cause the result to violate the 4×4 grid.

End Game

After the third round is finished, players add up the points for each city they’ve constructed. Each type of tile has its own way of maximizing its score: factories are worth more points if you have multiple on your mat, taverns are worth more if you have all four types on your mat, parks are worth more if they are in a connected group on your mat and offices are worth more if they are adjacent to one or more taverns. Score one building type at a time for clear and simple scoring. Players determine their final score by using the lower of the two city values and the player with the highest score wins.

Impressions

When I had first looked at Between Two Cities, I was confused and thought it would be a difficult game to learn. I thought shifting my focus back and forth between the two cities I was creating would be frustrating. I was wrong. This game allows you time to think about each of your decisions carefully. The tempo is a bit which might be a turn off for some players. But the simultaneous gameplay kept the game engaging and appealing for those of us at the table.

Final Verdict

Between Two Cities is a good and easy game for a younger audience to learn and understand. I enjoyed working with the other members in the game rather than against them. While I do like the collaborative aspect of the game, I wish the building tiles were different sizes or shapes to enhance the difference in buildings. I would have also liked if there were more difficult choices to make as it is pretty hard to place a tile down that could be a disadvantage to either of your cities. As a young adult who does not often play board games, I would rate this game overall a 3/5.

A Note From the Teacher

In March of this year I attended the Long Island Tabletop Gaming Expo. It was at that event that I attended an event panel hosted by Board Game Academics, a nascent educational journal dedicated to researching the wider application of board games in education and society. I left that panel wide-eyed and bushy tailed, eager to bring their ideas into my classroom. I spent the next few weeks working through a unit on board games as texts. Students played games and then wrote ludo-textual analyses of their experiences.  Kayla produced a review of the game Between Two Cities: Essential Edition, graciously donated to us by Stonemaier Games and Nattydice.com.  I hope you have enjoyed their review!

-Robert Van Auken

Nattydice.com is honored to be able to give senior Kayla Diaz a platform to begin their content creation journey.