The Capitals

EvEvanstar4,6

This game really wowed me on the first play, particularly in comparison to Suburbia. Comparatively this game has a lot more meat on it's bones. It has a tougher tile placement system when you build your city, and several charts that you have to budget. Additionally, after the tile selection phase there's a building activation phase where you spend yellow cubes from your power plant to activate the functions of buildings that allow you to do so. The most critical part of the game is making sure you have as many people and as many jobs as possible. This is so critical to scoring well, that the other three charts are really just there to support and distract from that singular goal. There's a lot to like about this game... however my second play soured me. The game sets up many situations where you are forced to take on negative points, in some cases through a fault more to do with the tile selection options you have and or your ability to predict which tiles other players will select first if they go before you. The frequent penalties certainly feels punitive. In particular, one of the tracks gives each player -2 points for each player above them, and it goes so far as to break ties by position on the money track, so even if you stand at the same level as someone else you may get hit for points. The turn order system is also strange and mathy. You pay money for turn order equal to the cost of your new position times the multiplier of your old position. The inability to pay results in losing points. The game also gives you six special scoring tiles that you get a chance to play when the round marker crosses a purple ribbon. All of the tiles require you to have achieved the most or least of something specific. If you can't meet those requirements than the tile has to be placed as a lake, which instead of a powerful effect just gives you 2 energy. Well, I had major trouble, as half the tiles I was given were just plain not achievable because they relied on me having the least of something that I was not capable of controlling. The most galling ones were the one that wanted me to have the least on the bell track, which meant working to set myself up to take negative points, and the one that wanted me to have the least energy when my opponents were perpetually at 0. I think there's something to this game. I'd like to give it another chance, but I just can't. As dressing on top, the chart iconography is a little unclear, particularly when it comes to which charts you can spend and when, there are printed mistakes on the player aids, and there's so much to absorb in terms of planning and looking up all the building abilities that any additional static pushes it over the line from interesting-complicated to over-complicated. We also had a hard time finding information we needed in the rulebook, which feels silly to say, since it's not the worst rulebook I've ever seen by far, but we kept missing critical things because very important information about tracks was scattered between the front of the book in the icon explanation and the back of the book where they list out the phase process. ☆ 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