Well, it's kinda weird that the "bonus" posts are far outnumbering the "standard" posts. I think some sort of malaise due to the pandemic and having had to teach remotely for the last three semesters has just kind of settled over me - am not gaming as much as usual, and even when I do, I'm not posting about it. I see that my last post was in July, and it is now December! We actually have played "new" games between now and then, a couple in August and at least one in the intervening months, and I did take pictures, but at this point I don't even know which SD card the images are on. Hopefully the New Year, 2022, will bring better things to us all! Anyway . . . this is a "bonus" post because this game, Tiny Towns, is not on OUR shelves, but rather on our son Caleb's shelf. He and I are both on kind of a holiday break, so he came by this past week and introduced me to Tiny Towns. It's a game, where, as you might have guessed, you each build your own town. Having played this a few times before he did quite a bit better than I did!
Above is my tiny town as it was at the end of the game. If you haven't played before, this may look good at first glance, but all the little cubes are resources, not buildings. Caleb's is below, and you'll notice that his resources are on buildings (i.e. in factories), which allowed him to choose the resources he wanted during the game, whereas I was often stuck taking resources that were chosen for me, and becoming increasingly stuck and unable to build. I learned a lot, and I think the outcome will be quite different for me next time I play.
This is what the table looked like as we got going. The hammer in the middle is a fun way of keeping track whose turn it is (as everyone is active on each turn).
The game involves both resource management and territory management. I'd say it's almost 100% skill-based and 0% chance-based. As with the game Quacks of Quedlinberg, different tokens (in this case buildings) can have different abilities or requirements based on the related cards chosen for any given game. This keeps the game fresh and changeable. As an example, I've laid out the card choices for the red building and for the green building in the image below. The squares show what resources and in what configuration are necessary on your board for erecting that building, and the text below that gives information about how the building operates or what points you receive for it at the end of the game.
There are 6 types of buildings and therefore 6 cards laid out for everyone's use. Each player also has their own, individual "monument" card that allows them to place their own sort of building that no one else has. You're dealt 2 monument cards at the beginning of the game and you choose and keep one.
"Statue of the Bondmaker" below is an example of a monument card.
It's always fun to play a game that has colorful, quality wooden pieces.
Scoring is done by building type. You lose a point for each undeveloped square at the end of the game.
I see that "C" won both games recorded above, so, yeah. While I mentioned at the top of the post that I probably lost because he had played before, and it was completely new to me, it's also the case that he is just a master strategist in general!
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