by woodnoggin
Not a lot has been written about Ginkgopolis and the rules aren't yet available online, so here are my thoughts on the game after four plays.Ginkgopolis is a city building game for 1-5 players by Xavier Georges. Players create a city out of building tiles, expanding outwards and upwards, trying to claim area majorities along the way. Every tile has a colour indicating the type of building on it: blue, red and yellow. Blue tiles are office buildings, used for developing real-estate projects and in game terms they provide extra building tiles. Red buildings are production buildings and give extra resources for building with. Yellow tiles represent housing, commerce or leisure buildings and provide Success Points, which is this game's term for VPs.
Bits and Pieces
Image courtesy of toob
I have no complaints about the components. The tiles are thick and sturdy, the cards are of decent stock, the wooden pieces are fine. The player screens stand up and do the job well. The art is a colourful sort of retro-futurism with easy to read symbols and large numbers on the tiles. Key colours in the game are red, blue and yellow, so it should work OK for colourblind players, and each colour also has a related symbol behind it to make it easier to identify. Playing pieces are in black, green, pink, orange and natural wood. Unusual colour choices - I guess they were trying to avoid red, yellow and blue so there were no clashes with the tiles - and potentially not so colourblind friendly.
Starting the Game
Image courtesy of the publisher
The city initially comprises nine building tiles, three of each colour, randomly arranged into a 3x3 square. Around the outside are 12 letter tiles, A to L, which indicate where you can place future building tiles to expand the city ("Urbanising"). There are two types of cards in the game: numbered building cards and lettered urbanisation cards. At the start of the game, the deck is made up of all 12 letter cards and the 9 building cards corresponding to the tiles that form the city - these will always be numbered 1-3 in each colour. Building cards 4-20 are kept in stacks to one side and will come into the game later.
Before the game begins, there's a quick draft of character cards so that everyone has three characters in front of them. These give you special powers which will augment certain actions during the game and they also indicate the number of tiles, resources and VPs you'll begin with. I assume the number of items received is based on the relative strengths of the card powers so that some balance is maintained between these cards. You can begin forming a strategy at this point based on the character cards you choose. You'll need to decide whether to concentrate on powers that trigger off one specific action, or if you'd rather get something from a wider range of actions. Maybe you'd like to start the game with many resources available to you, or prefer a flexible range of tiles. Of course, in their first game, players won't have any knowledge of the game to base this draft on, so there are pre-determined sets of cards to use with beginning players which offer a fair start for all.
You get an opening hand of four cards plus two New Hand tiles which can be cashed in at any time, enabling you to discard your entire hand and draw a new set of four. These are worth a couple of VPs each if you haven't used them by the end of the game.
Game Play
Each turn, everyone simultaneously picks one card to play from their hand of four. Effects are resolved in clockwise order beginning with the start player. At the end of the turn, you pass your cards left, including the start player card and draw a new card from the deck to add to the hand you've just received. That's right, you only get to use one card from each hand, so you'd better make it count.
Image courtesy of sebduj
Cards have three uses:
i) Play the card on its own to gain the effect of the building pictured on it. Blue buildings provide extra tiles, red buildings give extra resources and yellow tiles give Success Points (VPs). The number of tiles, resources or VPs you get depends on the height of the building - one item for Level 1, two for Level 2 etc. Playing a letter card gives you either one resource or one tile, your choice.
ii) Play a letter card with a tile from behind your screen in order to Urbanise. This involves building the tile on the spot marked by the letter token, then moving the letter outwards to a free space, thereby expanding the city's footprint. You also place one resource marker on the new tile, and they could be worth points at the end of the game.
After placing the tile, you get to activate all adjacent tiles as if you'd played their building cards. These rewards can be very helpful, so free spaces adjacent to two or three tiles can be highly sought after.
iii) Play a building card with a tile from behind your screen in order to build a new floor on that building. We usually refer to this as "overbuilding" or "squashing". You need to pay resources equal to the level of the new tile you're placing and you put these onto the tile, so adding to your influence in that area. You don't get to activate any tiles if you choose this action, but you do get to keep the building card you played and place it face up in front of you with your character cards. Each building card has a special ability which can be triggered by taking the indicated action. Once the cards are sat in front of you, you gain access to those abilities.
The rulebook lists six steps for overbuilding, which makes it seem like a complicated process, but it soon becomes second nature. If you build over another player's resource markers, they are returned behind that player's screen and become available for them to use later. The overbuilt player also receives one VP compensation per marker. (You can squash your own markers too, returning them to your supply, but you don't get any points for it.) If you overbuild with a tile of a different colour to the original one, you have to pay an extra resource marker. This payment goes back to the general supply, not onto the building. If you overbuild with a tile of a lower number than the existing building, you have to pay the difference in VPs - quite painful and not something you'd want to do often.
After each action, you can use any special abilities on the cards face up in front of you which are triggered by the action you chose, including the powers of your character cards. Most of them give you some combination of tiles, resources and VPs, others score bonus points at the end of the game. By overbuilding, you can gain quite a set of these abilities, resulting in lots of free stuff whenever you take the right action. There are decisions to be made over what sort of abilities you want to collect. For example, you could make it so that one action gives you a bit of everything, or you could concentrate on VPs so that you’re always accruing points no matter what you do.
In our first plays, it seemed sensible to collect special powers which triggered when overbuilding, because that action would add more cards to your display and the cycle would feed itself. However, I don't think it's a clear cut decision to do that - you could be missing out on endgame scoring for other aspects of the game and you need a good set of abilities to keep the tiles and resources flowing sufficiently.
Running Out the Deck
Turns proceed as above until there are no new cards to draw from the deck, at which point a new deck is reconstituted from the discard pile plus any new building cards. Whenever a new tile is added to the board, a grey marker is placed on it to indicate that its corresponding card is not yet in the deck. Once the deck has run out, you need to do a quick run through each tile with such a marker on it, find its card in the stacks and add it into the deck. The grey marker is then removed from the tile so you don't go looking for it in future.
Endgame
Image courtesy of henk.rolleman
The game end is triggered by one of two things. Either one player has placed all of their resources on the board, or the tiles have run out for the second time. But wait, I asked myself upon first reading the rules, how can the tiles run out twice, surely they're either on the board or behind people’s screens? What happens is, the first time the tiles run out, each player can choose to return any number of tiles from their supply to the general supply. Everyone chooses how many to return secretly and simultaneously and receives 1VP for each tile returned. The game continues until those last few tiles run out. Once the endgame is triggered, you play out the round so everyone gets a turn.
Although by putting tiles back it might appear that you can control when the game will end, in practice once you've reached this point, one player usually has enough tile-drawing powers that they can run out the tiles again in a couple of turns anyway. So, I get the feeling this addition to the game is not so much about controlling the ending but rather to give a warning to all players that the game may be about to end. Of course, if you don't have any tiles behind your screen at this point, you're at the mercy of the other players as to whether there’ll be another round or not. One option I'd like to explore further is the possibility of hoarding lots of tiles in order to cash them all in for VPs during the tile return, although I'm not sure how valid a strategy that would be.
Scoring
You score any VPs you collected during the game, plus 2VPs for each New Hand tile you still have left, any points due from cards played in front of you and also district majorities. Endgame scoring cards can give you points for things like each marker on a red tile, or for every tile you control of size 2 or less, or for each Urbanising power in your display etc. There are a few different types. The Number 20 building cards in each colour give a straight nine points but they'e a little tricky to get into your display - because you need to overbuild the 20 in order to claim the card, which necessarily involves a lower-numbered card, you're going to have to pay the difference in VPs when you build. So the 20s are never really worth 9 points, but could be worth 8 if you managed to overbuild with a 19.
The board is scored by looking at who has the most markers in each district. A district is any group of adjacent building tiles of the same colour, but a single tile is not big enough to count as a district and does not score. The player with the most resource markers in a district scores 1VP per marker, regardless of who they belong to. The second place player gets 1VP for each of their own markers in the district. This can mean that if there's a fight for control of a district, by putting more markers into the district you are making it worth more VPs to the eventual majority holder. Ties go to the player with control of the taller building, or the higher-numbered building amongst those tallest if still tied. If you’re the only player in a district, you get to score 2VPs for each marker you have in that district, which can be very profitable and something the other players will no doubt want to stop from happening.
Thoughts
Time and Learning Curve
The listed playing time is 45 minutes and I've found this to be accurate for all but the first game. The first play may take a little longer as players start off baffled as to what effects their actions are having long-term. As the game unfolds and the rules embed themselves, it speeds up and subsequent games should zip along at a breezy pace. The iconography is very helpful once players understand what the code means. It was a source of some amusement among my group at first, as the symbols look like haphazard squares and circles in primary colours. There are some unusual symbols on the endgame scoring abilities, but those are consistent with the other icons so you can work out what they mean, or look them up in the rulebook the first time you come across one.
Scaling
Game length isn’t affected much by player count, since you use a reduced number of resources per player in games with more players. The designer clearly felt that 2-3 player games would run through the deck too slowly, so there is an additional rule for those player counts instructing you to discard the top 7 cards of the deck whenever it's reconstituted. Consequently, sometimes a card you would like to draw gets discarded instead, so nobody will see it until the next cycle through the deck. That's slightly frustrating, but not a huge problem. 4-5 player games will use all the cards, but the higher number of players means you are less likely to see a specific card.
I've played with 2, 3 and 4 players and all those counts worked well. I slightly preferred it with 4 players, thanks to the extra interplay on the board. There's also a solo variant, played against a dummy player, "Hal".
Tactics vs Strategy
Because cards are passed left after each turn, you need to consider not only which card is best for you but also which one you don't want your opponent to have access to. The effect of this movement of cards is dependent upon the number of players in the game. With two players you can perhaps gamble on seeing a particular card again, but the more players you add to the game, the less likely it is you'll get that card back. This makes the game more tactical at higher player counts, as you'll tend to pick the card that’s best for you at the time rather than making a bigger plan. That's not to say you can't have plans - you can create strategies around improving your bonus abilities in any combination of the three categories, or you can identify particular areas on the board where you want to prioritise overbuilding when the opportunity presents itself.
Game Options and Control
Consider the three available actions: playing a card alone lets you use a building tile; urbanising lets you use adjacent tiles plus adds to a district and affects its majorities; overbuilding gives you influence over majorities and adds special powers to your display. So simply playing a card for its effect feels like the weakest action to take, as it nets you the fewest benefits. However, it's often the only option if you're running low on tiles and/or resources. I'm interested in seeing if there's a good strategy involving stocking up on bonus abilities relating to that action. Urbanising and overbuilding are what you want to be doing most of the time, as you get to affect the board to your advantage.
Your choice of tile has an effect that ripples through the rest of the game, which may not be readily apparent. The colour of tile shapes the tenor of the game by adding extra opportunities to collect tiles, resources or VPs. In a game where nobody plays blue tiles, for example, there will be fewer ways to draw more tiles, and any special abilities that allow tile draws will be more powerful. You may also want to consider the special ability or endgame scoring you're bringing into the game by playing a certain tile. All the buildings numbered 10-20 have endgame scoring on them, some of which may be better for your opponents than for you. Are you sure you want to introduce that card into the game? It's another aspect to factor into your decision making.
FAQ
"What's it like?"
- Placing tiles to squash other players' markers is reminiscent of Taluva. However, I found the area majority scoring of Ginkgopolis to be more intuitive than the strange moves you need to make to get all your pieces down in Taluva.
- Collecting special powers that trigger on particular actions reminds me of Race for the Galaxy. In that game it can be pretty fun to stock up on Produce powers, for example, so that you're drawing loads of cards whenever you call Produce. Ginkgopolis shares a similar feeling.
- The area majority scoring works like Web of Power or China.
- I'm hesitant to mention Kingdom Builder here, because of the polarising effect that game seems to have, but there are similarities in terms of doing the best with what you've got. You can definitely plan in Kingdom Builder, but your plans have to be flexible because you can never guarantee you will get a particular card. The same is true in Ginkgopolis - it's better to hope for types of card or tile (by colour, special ability or board location) than a specific one.
"It looks really abstract!"
Yeah, I thought that too and I'm not a huge fan of abstracts. But I tried it and found the cards make it feel less abstract. The city-building theme is not essential to the game, but it does fit. It could have no theme at all, but I think it would be even harder to initially comprehend what you're doing. At least expanding a city or building new floors have real-world associations to assist with learning the game.
"What's new?"
The way building cards move through the game is a lovely, fluid process. Placing a building tile brings a new building card into the deck; later using that card to overbuild removes the card from play but adds it to your display as a new ability. It's quite clever and weaves seamlessly among the other, more familiar mechanisms of the game.
Unlike some Euro games where you want to collect resources early and points late, in Ginkgopolis it doesn't feel like there's a definite point in the game when you need to switch from collecting tiles and resources to amassing points. Resources and tiles remain useful into the endgame, since you need both to affect area majorities - something which can provide plenty of points during final scoring. Both items also have a relationship with the endgame trigger, so the length of the game can be affected by the speed players are collecting these. There's potential for players to manipulate tempo to their advantage in this regard.
Interaction
There are two main areas of player interaction. The first is in terms of the cards you pass to your left. This is light interaction, as you can theoretically "hate draft" a card that would be great for your neighbour but there's usually something useful in each hand anyway. There is more direct interaction on the board, as you're striving to strengthen your majorities, expand areas you control so they are worth more points or breaking up districts your opponents are strong in. You can directly attack an opponent’s position by overbuilding their tiles, but they'll get compensatory VPs for each marker returned, so you have to weigh up whether it's worthwhile in the long run.
Downsides
Marking new buildings and finding the cards to represent them once the deck has run out adds a little fiddliness to the game. It's not a time consuming process and is something that speeds up with practice, but reconstituting the deck adds an odd little break in the flow of the game every few rounds.
If you're the sort of player who only enjoys games in which you can create a grand plan and be able to stick to it, this game might not be for you. You have to do the best with what you get in your hand of cards each turn. The New Hand tokens help in case you get passed a hand containing nothing useful for your current situation.
If you want to get immersed in the theme of building a futuristic city, you should probably look elsewhere. The buildings don't have names to identify their function and there's no flavour text to help you get into character as a sci-fi architect.
Conclusion
I must admit to being slightly jaded heading into Essen, not expecting to be shocked by anything original, but this game is quite different to anything else I've played and I was pleasantly surprised after trying it. I think Ginkgopolis is a brilliant design. I'm impressed with the system by which cards enter and leave the game: it feels novel and dynamic. There's also a surprising level of complexity for such a short game, with plenty to think about and lots of different paths to explore. Each game has been tense and engaging. It's also been a hit with the rest of my group, many of whom usually prefer much more thematic games. I currently rate the game 9 out of 10 and am looking forward to many more plays. Another hit for Xavier George who is really developing a strong catalogue of design credits.