Next up, we tried out Metropolys, designed by Sebastian pauchon and published by Ystari. The players are urban planners looking for prestige. Over the course of the game, they try to construct their buildings in the best places by bidding for the right to build. As soon as a player has placed all of their buildings, the game ends and the player with the most prestige is the winner.

Early on, we all struck out to capture the trendy neighbourhoods with our highest bidding pieces although Tom made a move for the subway tokens to get the three bonus VPs at the end of the game. Once several buildings were on the board, things began to get more interesting as you became able to create dead ends which gave you opportunity to force play in certain directions. I took advantage of having kept hold of a couple of higher bidding pieces to claim three or four building sites in a row and end the game with Tom and Guy both still having at least three buildings left in their hands. As virtually all of my buildings added to my secret objective, the bonus points gave me a fairly comfortable win.

Metropolys is quite a thoughtful game and, having played once, we will now all be watching out for the traps and opportunities that can be created. We played the basic game, which had enough to think about of its own right, but the advanced version should give even more things to consider and I’m keen to give that a try before long. Good stuff.