Tag Archives: between two cities

Co-op Case Study: Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig

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Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig is another co-op related game that released just as we were Kickstarting Meeples Together. It’s a sequel to Between Two Cities with many of the same mechanics, but it’s still worth a little investigation on its own.

This case study was originally published in the Meeples Together blog, which focuses exclusively on cooperative game design.

Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig by Rosset & O’Malley

Publisher: Stonemaier Games (2018)
Cooperative Style: Competitive with Partial Partners
Play Style: Card Drafting, Tile Laying

Overview

Over several turns of play, each player drafts tiles in order to build the best castle possible — or rather, to build the best two castles possible. In Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig each player is working in cooperation with the two players to either side, and he’ll be scored based on the worst of those two castles, so there’s no shirking either responsibility! Continue reading →

Co-op Case Study: Between Two Cities

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Meeples Together (which is nearing the end of its funding on Kickstarter) covers a whole spectrum of cooperative games. “True co-ops” are the heart of the book, but it also discusses traitor games, overlord games, and even the more classic style of team games — because they can all offer interesting design lessons.

Between Two Cities is a great partnership game because it goes beyond simple, static partners and instead forces players to “partially” partner up with two different people with varying goals.

This article has been crossposted from the Meeples Together blog, which focuses exclusively on cooperative game design.

Between Two Cities by Rosset & O’Malley

Publisher: Stonemaier Games (2015)
Cooperative Style: Competitive with Partial Partners
Play Style: Card Drafting, Tile Laying

Overview

Over several turns of play, each player drafts tiles in order to build the best city possible — or rather, to build the best two cities possible. In Between Two Cities each player is working in cooperation with the two players to either side, and he’ll be scored based on the worst of those two cities, so there’s no shirking either responsibility! Continue reading →

New to Me: Summer 2017 — The Season of the Expansions

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I love returning to my favorite games and playing them in new ways. That means that I’m usually a fan of expansions, and I played a good number of them this summer. But, there were new games too, including a surprising number of variants on old mechanics — whether they be Poker resolution or classic deckbuilding. As usual, this is a listing of games according to how much I like them, as a medium-weight euro-gamer, and they’re new to me (although I was pleased to play a lot that were just flat-out new this time around).

The Great

Hocus (2016). I am not a fan of Texas Hold’em, which I consider a bluffing exercise with probability memorization thrown in. Sure, you can be better at it than other people, but I don’t find it a fun game, or even a game. And, Hocus uses Texas Hold’em mechanics … but I love it.

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The Design and Care of a Tile-Based City Builder

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Tile-based city building games are among my favorites. That’s in large part due to the creativity that they introduce. I mean, I’m one of the generation that grew up with SimCity (1989), obliviously building until the sun began to flood into my college dorm room, suggesting that it was time to be off to bed. I love being able to put together the puzzle pieces of a city, and a good tile-based city builder lets you do that.

City TycoonThe General Shape of the Game

When I’m talking about tile-based city builders, I’m specifically limiting my consideration to game designs that meet several criteria:

  1. Obviously, they allow you to build cities out of tiles: usually square tiles, but occasionally hexes.
  2. Often, you’ll have your own city that you’re working on … but quite a few games instead have you contributing to to a joint city.
  3. The tiles that you place are complete and coherent buildings, businesses, residences, or other structures within a city. They’re not just parts of a whole.

There are probably hundreds of tile-based city games that I could have picked from in writing this article. I opted for the ones that I know the best, because I’ve played them. I’ve mostly focused on recent ones. My complete list for this article includes: Acquire (1964), Alhambra (2003), Between Two Cities (2015), Big City (1999), Carcassonne: The City (2004), Chinatown (1999), City Tycoon (2011), Key to the City: London (2016), Quadropolis (2016), Saint Malo (2012), Suburbia (2012), and Urbania (2012). Obviously I could have picked others (and I may expand this article in the future).  Continue reading →

New to Me: Fall 2015 — A Really Great Season

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It was a really great season for board games. I played perhaps a few less games that were new-to-me than usual, but the recurring theme was that they were all good or better. OK, I played Exploding Kittens near the end-of-the-year because Christmas family gatherings … but not even that could bring down what was a season of fine games!

The Great

Pandemic Legacy ThumbnailPandemic Legacy — Season 1 (2015). Any discussion of the new Pandemic variant should begin with my belief that Pandemic itself is a great game. I count it as one of the three most influential and important co-op games. Arkham Horror (1987) mostly invented the genre and Lord of the Rings (2000) reinvented it for the modern day. However, it was Pandemic (2007) that made the genre accessible. It’s also a near pitch-perfect design with huge piles of difficulty and chaos, and its great replayability.

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