Quadropolis from Days of Wonder unboxing and Review
Today we look at Quadropolis from Days of Wonder. Its a city building game with lovely artwork that takes me back to many happy hours playing the Sim City series of games, and in my mind really reminds me of Sim City . Take a look over at the video on Esdevium games channel to see it in action.
I really like the cartoon style artwork, its bright, colourful and characterful.
the back gives you a nice clear overview of the game and contents, and lays down the ideas. Its recommended for 2-4 players, and ages 8 and up. but Olivia (7) was fine with it. Its not a "kids" game exactly, its more of a game suitable for everyone, with a very non offensive theme, no violence, little text on the cards, but plenty of subtle tactics and strategy whilst playing.
Lets pop it open, take a look whats inside, and see what its all about..............................
You get a bag of really nice plastic power tokens, these are generated by some buildings, and used to power other buildings. You also get people in awesome blue token form, these go into residences, and retail and gain you points. You can also see two other coloured plastic pawns, these we will get to later. A score pad is also included, though do not worry, the game is not that scary.
You get 4 scoring guides, enough for each player and it tells you very nicely what points you get for different combinations and placement of buildings, and people, as you can see you get more points the more people you have in a shop (the purple picture), and more points for having docks and retails attached to factories. All these things come into play when you are planing and placing your tiles to get the best possible layout and points.
Nicely included in the box is a mini expansion, Playgrounds, which slightly changes things up giving you a nice little option to try something different straight from the box.
The manual is full colour, with plenty of diagrams so you will be playing this in no time, certainly quicker then it took to punch out and sort out all those tiles! Its only a few pages, and it encompasses the "classic mode of play" and the "expert" which adds another layer of challenge to the game by adding more architects, and different layouts on the reverse side of the player board.
Each player builds their own metropolis in Quadropolis, but they're competing with one another for the shops, parks, public services and other structures to be placed in them.
The game lasts four rounds, and in each round players first lay out tiles for the appropriate round at random on a 5x5 grid, these are then turned over.
On the back of the tiles it has numbers like 4 in the bottom corner, or 3-4, and these tiles are only flipped over in a game with that many players. You start with all the 1 tiles, then each round have the 2 tiles, and 3, and so on.
Each player has four architects numbered 1-4 and on a turn, a player places an architect next to a row or column in the grid, claims the tile that's as far in as the number of the architect placed (e.g., the fourth tile in for architect #4), places that tile in the appropriately numbered row or column on the player's 4x4 city board, then claims any resources associated with the tile (inhabitants or energy).
Trying to build up some industry here, and keeping my power, and people off to the side as i can redistribute them at any time.
We realised afterwards we had been using the architects wrongly. by using the numbers as the turn number rather then the square number, but since we always declared it it was not a problem, and on our 2nd game we had changed that.
When a player takes a tile, a figure (the urbanist) is placed in this now-empty space and the next player cannot place an architect in the same row or column where this tile was located. In addition, you can't place one architect on top of another, so each placement cuts off play options for you and everyone else later in the round. After all players have placed all four architects, the round ends, all remaining tiles are removed, and the tiles for the next round laid out.
After four rounds, the game ends. Players can move the inhabitants and energy among their tiles at any point during the game to see how to maximise their score. At game end, they then score for each of the six types of buildings depending on how well they build their city — as long as they have activated the buildings with inhabitants or energy as required:
Expert mode, is only an additional page or so in the book, but does add more, some new tiles such as towers, and different layouts on the player mat, this is more for when you have mastered classic mode, and want to bump it up a notch, though do not discount classic mode, its great fun for all, and is certainly still a challenge.
The main challenge in this game is making sure you Can plonk your architect down to claim what you need, whilst making sure its a good match and fit for your board. though of course sometimes you may want to play to block off your opponent as well. Then though you have to think, where will the peace go on my board... as they have to go on corresponding tiles. You need to plan ahead, and make sure your town is balanced, as you lose points for energy that has not been used, i like to think of it as pollution, so you need to make sure you are distributing them in the best possible way.
The artwokr is lovely, and the component quality is high, the box design is ace, as you will see a ton of tiles are punched out, but the box has you covered for an excellent storage system
Its just a great fun game for all, even "non gamers" as the theme of it will draw people in to it, "OH a game like sim city? i used to play that" or just tell them its about city planning, which i know sounds a bit dull, but the game really is not, its excellent, and sim games certainly on computer like this do very well and are popular, so it should translate to plenty of your friends and family at least giving it a try, and once they give it a try they will be hooked
Olivia says........
I love it! i like building my town, and moving my people around so they have good places to live, and shops to buy things, but then i need factroires, and docks too, it can get hard to think about it, but its so much fun to see it all come alive i dont care, its a good game and i dont have to do much reading in it, so its good for people who do not like reading, or maybe can not read. I can, but sometimes its nice not to have to ask dad what a card says in case i get embarrassed.
This is a great game, fun for all ages, and simple to teach, though very deep in tactical level, it looks great, it stores well thanks to the clever box design, and the components are top notch, all in all its well worth the RRP of 34.99 so grab one from your local game store
Lets pop it open, take a look whats inside, and see what its all about..............................
Inside the box there is a whole load of card tokens that need popping out, these are nice high quality though, and will represent the different building available to you, ranging from residential, to docks, factories, and shops, with more as well. The player boards and main board, manual and some other documents as well. A little cloth bag is also there for tile randomisation.
Each player builds their own metropolis in Quadropolis, but they're competing with one another for the shops, parks, public services and other structures to be placed in them.
The game lasts four rounds, and in each round players first lay out tiles for the appropriate round at random on a 5x5 grid, these are then turned over.
Each player has four architects numbered 1-4 and on a turn, a player places an architect next to a row or column in the grid, claims the tile that's as far in as the number of the architect placed (e.g., the fourth tile in for architect #4), places that tile in the appropriately numbered row or column on the player's 4x4 city board, then claims any resources associated with the tile (inhabitants or energy).
We realised afterwards we had been using the architects wrongly. by using the numbers as the turn number rather then the square number, but since we always declared it it was not a problem, and on our 2nd game we had changed that.
When a player takes a tile, a figure (the urbanist) is placed in this now-empty space and the next player cannot place an architect in the same row or column where this tile was located. In addition, you can't place one architect on top of another, so each placement cuts off play options for you and everyone else later in the round. After all players have placed all four architects, the round ends, all remaining tiles are removed, and the tiles for the next round laid out.
After four rounds, the game ends. Players can move the inhabitants and energy among their tiles at any point during the game to see how to maximise their score. At game end, they then score for each of the six types of buildings depending on how well they build their city — as long as they have activated the buildings with inhabitants or energy as required:
- Residential buildings score depending on their height
- Shops score depending on how many customers they have
- Public services score depending on the number of districts in your city that have them
- Parks score depending on the number of residential buildings next to them
- Harbours score based on the longest row or column of activated harbours in the city
- Factories score based on the number of adjacent shops and harbours
The main challenge in this game is making sure you Can plonk your architect down to claim what you need, whilst making sure its a good match and fit for your board. though of course sometimes you may want to play to block off your opponent as well. Then though you have to think, where will the peace go on my board... as they have to go on corresponding tiles. You need to plan ahead, and make sure your town is balanced, as you lose points for energy that has not been used, i like to think of it as pollution, so you need to make sure you are distributing them in the best possible way.
The artwokr is lovely, and the component quality is high, the box design is ace, as you will see a ton of tiles are punched out, but the box has you covered for an excellent storage system
Olivia says........
I love it! i like building my town, and moving my people around so they have good places to live, and shops to buy things, but then i need factroires, and docks too, it can get hard to think about it, but its so much fun to see it all come alive i dont care, its a good game and i dont have to do much reading in it, so its good for people who do not like reading, or maybe can not read. I can, but sometimes its nice not to have to ask dad what a card says in case i get embarrassed.
This is a great game, fun for all ages, and simple to teach, though very deep in tactical level, it looks great, it stores well thanks to the clever box design, and the components are top notch, all in all its well worth the RRP of 34.99 so grab one from your local game store
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