It's time to do a bit more catch-up on some tabletop goodness. B&B&B has still been going strong and one of the games we played recently was the awesome Suburbia from Ted Alspach and Bezier Games.
Suburbia is one of those games that for a long time was at the top of my favourite board games list. It focuses in on a lot of the things that I really enjoy about board games; tile-laying and the management of your layout in order to score an ever-expanding combination of points. It also helps that Suburbia is one of the best representations of the SimCity strategy game on the tabletop.
Creating The "Ideal" Suburb
During a game of Suburbia, you'll be taking control of a smaller section of a larger city. Everyone starts off with the same three tiles which show off where people live, where they work and lovely patches of nature where they go and relax. From there your suburb can go in all manner of different directions.
Games of Suburbia are set up to show you a range of tiles which get more and more expensive/lucrative as you go as well as a series of common goals which you're trying to achieve. For example, the game might have you trying to be the suburb with the most lakes or maybe you're looking to have the longest connected route of industrial zones.
Because of these goals (plus the secret goal given to you at the start of the game), you'll find people focusing on specific tasks but also going off in different directions in order to try and make the most of what the game has generated for you. It's a lot of fun trying to guess what someone might be aiming for and how much you can deviate from the main plan in order to capitalise on the points available from different aspects of city building.
Throughout the game, you'll pick through a set of tiles broken down into A, B and C which get added to an open market. As well as costing an amount of money printed on the tile there is also an additional cost for it based on where it's situated in that market. Tiles will get cheaper but you have to weigh up being able to grab them early and spending a little more in order to make sure that you get it before your opponents!
When you pick up tiles they will get added into your display and you'll go through a little scoring flowchart. You start off by scoring points for that specific tile. Then, you score any bonus points for the tiles next to it. Finally, you then score any points for including the tile in your display as a whole plus deal out points to other players who may have a tile which scores from your actions.
For example, airports score you points but they also score points for others who also have airports in their suburbs. Restaurants score you a massive amount of points right away but will lose you points as other restaurants are introduced into the various suburbs. There is a real back and forth in the game and I like how it flows between player turns even if it can be a little confusing at times.
This brings me to actually winning the game. Throughout a game of Suburbia you have to, as any city does, balance the number of people you have brought into your local area via your reputation and also how much money you're making. Nearly everything that you do in the game adds to your reputation or income but you need to balance this against a growing city which will make more and more demands of you as you play.
It's a really good idea to focus on building up your income at the beginning of the game, shovelling factories and businesses into your suburb before then getting people to build homes and enjoy parks in the late game which boost your reputation. If you tried to do it the other way, introducing loads of housing right away, then you can end up tanking your reputation and income too soon as people realise that your suburb has very little to offer!
A Great City Building Board Game
As I mentioned at the start of this little review, Suburbia is a very, very good way of playing out the SimCity/City Skylines strategy game experience on the tabletop. It features all of the city management elements that make those games fun plus it also produces lots of fun little stories for players during a session.
Maybe you're the player who ends up making a terribly smoggy suburb which also happens to have exceptionally sought after restaurants. Perhaps you are the player who builds an impressive sprawl of residential zones with cinemas, shops and businesses dotted in and amongst it? Maybe you just sack all of that and make your suburb a place packed with lakes, parks, highways and airports...they are all viable options.
This is what makes Suburbia a joy to play on the tabletop. With all the variables introduced during gameplay, it feels like a fun puzzle you need to solve each time you get down to the tabletop. If you have enough time during an evening you can even get two or three games in! This gameplay loop may become a little played out if you only have Suburbia in your collection but as a game to dip into every so often between bigger and more complicated experiences, it works very nicely.
Suburbia is now available from Bezier Games with the Collector's Edition introducing a rather fancy version of the game for you to pick up with a whole host of expansions. I would say it's well worth checking out at least the core game if you like city building games which are light yet strategic.
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