My City: Roll & Build

• What's Eric Playing?

Base price: $20.
1 – 6 players.
Play time: ~30 minutes per session; 12 sessions per campaign.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 24; two complete campaigns. 

Full disclosure: A review copy of My City: Roll & Build was provided by KOSMOS.

Whoops! It’s like, twenty minutes to midnight and I forgot all about this section of the review. It’s happened to me before, though, that time half of the review was missing. That was a fun evening. I think there’s almost no better way to write than incredibly quickly and under an intensely tight deadline, albeit a self-imposed one. But I caught myself a bit earlier than usual, so, hooray and hooray for me. This time, we’re going back to My City for its roll-and-write version! Let’s dive into My City: Roll & Build.

In My City: Roll & Build, there are twelve different episodes you can play through four chapters, forming a complete campaign! As you do, you’ll explore a new area, find treasure, almost lose that treasure to bandits, and then figure out how to Cask of Amontillado those bandits by building houses around them. As you do. Over the rounds, you’re going to roll dice and use the shapes those dice produce to place those buildings and build up your very own city. Are you ready to roll up a new city again?

Contents

Setup

This is a campaign game with some legacy elements, so you’ll forgive me for not spoiling everything. You can choose any episode to start, or you can play the entire campaign from beginning to end. Either way, choose your board and set the dice nearby; you should be ready to start!

Gameplay

Very high-level, here, but a game of My City: Roll & Build takes place over several rounds, as players roll dice and place the shapes indicated on them on the board. Generally, you’ll place your first shape next to the river, and subsequent shapes must be placed next to any previously-placed shape. There are three types of fills for the shapes (different building types) and several types of shapes, so there’s a lot to try out.

If you can’t or don’t want to place a shape, you can fill in a circle on your board, but be careful! Those are worth negative points at the end of the game. If you’d rather stop entirely, instead of filling in a circle, you can end your participation in the round. Once all players have done so, the round ends and the player with the most points wins!

Player Count Differences

Almost none. There are a few episodes with racing elements to them, but even then, with more players you’re still trying to be first; there’s no benefit for second or third. You may find if there’s more than one racing element happening that you need to pick one and stick with it at higher player counts just because other players might also be doing that. Beyond that, though, there are no major forms of player interaction, so you’ll likely not see much in that regard. No big player count preference.

Strategy

  • Early on, don’t stress your placement, but try to give yourself options. I wouldn’t place haphazardly, for instance, but you also may not necessarily need to focus on creating huge groups of one building type. In later games, you’ll find that setting up a way for you to branch out will help you build certain combinations of buildings, and that can be pretty useful, too!
  • You’re pretty much always going to want to cover rocks and avoid covering trees. I can’t think of any time when that isn’t the case, though you may find certain scoring criteria in certain chapters take priority.
  • Keep the rough probability of certain pieces or shapes in mind. Certain shapes are just very likely or very unlikely, and keeping your expectations reasonable can be really helpful with planning.
  • Certain aspects of the game will become high-priority in later chapters. If a chapter is giving you something to do, it’s probably worth doing that as quickly as possible. The game doesn’t generally give you information or tasks with no reason behind them; usually, fulfilling the primary objective you’ve been informed of will either earn you a lot of points or prevent losing a lot of points.
  • Make sure you’re also checking how much certain actions are worth in terms of positive or negative points, so you can get a sense of what matters the most. There’s not just a primary objective in some chapters; there can be a lot of different things to do and place and shoot for. Knowing what you’re up against can help you quickly prioritize. I personally appreciate that BGA surfaces that at the top so it’s specifically easy to see and take stock of.
  • Try not to pass too often, especially if you’re holding out for an unlikely shape. The more you pass, the more points you lose, which is obviously not ideal, even if it’s tempting to hold out for the perfect shape. The only time I’d hold out is if you’re going to take an even larger penalty if you don’t.
  • Not every round uses compasses! That can affect your probabilities a lot. Keep in mind when the compasses are spawning specific tiles and when they’re not, and prepare accordingly. You can get some pretty good tiles from compasses, as well, so knowing what to expect can be pretty helpful.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

  • I like My City a lot, so a nice compact version is always welcome. It was a recent favorite of both mine and the American Tabletop Awards committee, so it’s been nice to get to revisit the game in a new context.
  • Honestly, playing it on BGA was pretty great. BGA tracks everything and makes placement easy and you can rotate and flip shapes pretty quickly and you don’t have to keep score; it’s all wonderful.
  • I appreciate that it’s distinct from My City, but reminiscent of it, as well. I was, just the other day, writing about certain games that do a good job mimicking their larger, more complex predecessors. Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game (despite Fryx Games’ whole stupid ish with AI art and, uh, the weirder stuff they say), the Cascadia: Rolling series, and now the My City: Roll & Build game. I think it’s more difficult than folks think to design a variant on the game that doesn’t feel like a hastily-pasted on theme or vague “alignment” with some other game series.
  • The different ways to fill in shapes are pretty easy to do, which is good. I always worry when I need to like, color in shapes fully, which can be annoying, but here nothing is too egregious.
  • Each chapter plays pretty quickly. They’re pretty fast, as is generally the case with roll-and-write games, but you could definitely play this on a car trip or something without much issue as long as you had a safe flat place to roll the dice.
  • I also like that you can do a long campaign, a mini-campaign, or just individual chapters that you like. It’s very customizable and you can play the chapters in whatever order and style and flavor you like. I can’t explicitly recommend a reverse campaign where the game gradually gets less complicated as you go from 12 to 1, but hey, do what you want.
  • It’s pretty compact, at times, so the challenge of where to place shapes can be pretty tough! I appreciate that there’s not a ton of room on the board, so all the placements matter.
  • Being able to flip tile shapes rules. That’s not always allowed! I appreciate that you can mirror the shapes in this game.

Mehs

  • I appreciate that all the shapes are named; I do kind of wish they had given them silly or dumb names instead, though. I just think dumb shape names (or, honestly, actual building types) would have been fun.
  • It can be a bit annoying when you’re done playing a round and everyone else is still going. Thankfully it’s pretty brief, but it’s nontrivial.
  • It’s not easy to catch up once another player gets ahead. If you’re playing the campaign and you fall behind, there may not be much chance for recovery. That said, that is consistent with the original My City, so, can’t fault them for accuracy.

Cons

  • I don’t really feel like the bandits contributed much to the game, especially since (in one chapter) bandits you fail to surround are big penalties and they persist to the next chapter. They’re kind of annoying, and I get that that’s the point, but I’d rather be focusing on the placement and less on the distraction of big penalties. It’s exacerbated a bit by the fact that they will escape and move onto the next board, which is even more annoying. I guess the only way to stop them is to surround them with buildings, which is ludonarratively … suspect.

Overall: 8 / 10

Overall, I think My City: Roll & Build is a fun little game! While I still prefer the main My City, I think this is a fantastic analogue and makes for a great travel version or a quick, portable experience that gets players excited about or prepared for the core game. That said, the full My City experience isn’t that much longer than this, so, you might find that if players aren’t much for the roll-and-write experience, they might just gravitate towards My City naturally. I will say that playing this made me want to start up another campaign of My City, but it’s also gotten me excited again for My Island. Hopefully that comes to BGA soon. Beyond that, it’s another solid Knizia roll-and-write. There are a variety of interesting ways to get points (even if some of them annoy me), there are fun twists and turns, and the campaign offers flexibility for players who want to play long or short versions of the game. I mean, two full campaigns worth of plays weren’t bad in the slightest, so, kind of hoping there’s more coming down the pipeline with this one. If you’re looking for a fun roll-and-write campaign, you enjoy My City and want to try a dice-driven spin on it, or you just want a quick and portable little game, My City: Roll & Build is probably right up your alley! I’ve enjoyed it a lot.

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