Tiny Towns

PoPoteetstar7.3

Classic easy to learn difficult to master game. This game frustrates you (in a good way) by never letting you get comfortable with a specific game plan.

EvEvanstar4.6

City building filler game. One pattern card for each type of building is revealed at the start of the game. Each player gets a grid. In turn order each player calls out a color of cube, and then all players have to take one and place it into their grid on an empty space. Then if they have a grid state that matches a pattern on one of the cards they can clear the cubes and place a building token in one of the spaces those cubes occupied. To keep things from being symmetrical, each player gets one special building card to their hand which grants them a different ability or scoring opportunity once built. The game continues until everyone's grid is full of buildings or useless cubes. Then you score and are punished for spaces without buildings. The game plays quickly, and it's quite satisfying to try and tetris these cube patterns while avoiding getting cubes stuck in an arrangement that won't be able to complete a pattern. Clever players can watch for colors you need and try and call out colors they can use but you can't to trip you up and also manipulate you into calling a color they need. We had one oddity, there is one of the asymmetric cards which once built had the ability to let the owning player place a completed building anywhere in their grid rather than forcing them to place into one of the spaces those cubes occupied. This seemed a little overpowered, but perhaps with additional plays we would see it differently. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ★ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ★ Multiple plays stay interesting ★ Low or mitigatable luck elements ★★☆☆☆ Raw enjoyment