You came back! What – you have a couple of simple questions? No worries, make yourself comfortable and ask away. “What does a turn look like in WtC?” No, that’s not a simple question but I’ll tackle it. This may take a few minutes – grab yourself a snack and a drink from the kitchen and I’ll set the board up to walk you through it. Ready?

Hey, just a reminder – this is PLAYTEST artwork. We’ll get the final art later on, this is just to get us through testing and examples like this. So you can follow along, here are the player colors:

• Chad: white
• Mark: tan
• Bob: gray
• Kai: dark brown

So here’s what we have:

What about the board? It looks different? Well, yes, it does. Good eye! Making sure the 2-player, 3-player and 4-player versions were all fun and adding a little more interaction between the sections of town, Chad made a few refinements and we were happy with how the testing went with them. So the map got a face-lift and here it is – all shiny and new again.

Okay, back to your question. Suppose we are nearing the end of the second round. My friend Mark has just finished his turn and he slides the pile of dice in my direction. I pick all six and give them a shake and roll them out onto the table.

Well, that’s a mixed bag of icons! Okay, to make things easier – I can’t reroll the black die so I move it to the Time track as a reminder to advance Time at the end of the turn and collect my Milestone. I have five dice left to work with.

I see that Chad (playing white) is holding Central Park with only two cubes. If I combine the bench and Fate icons, I can bump him out of there and take the park for myself. We are getting close to scoring the second round and the +1 in each sector of town does pull me out of last place in both the yellow and red sectors. Since I’m tied with Mark (tan) in both of those sectors and it doesn’t look like he’ll get another turn before scoring, this is mighty tempting! So I set aside those two dice so I won’t reroll them.

I could use the two town dice – blue and red – together to build a 2-value red building, but this doesn’t help my score in yellow at the same time. I could even add the yellow Fate die to that to build a 3-value building, but that still only helps me out in one of the two sectors. Since we are so close to scoring the round, I think I’m better off taking the park and hoping Chad doesn’t kick me off the bench on his turn.

I already have a cube in the North portion of the river, so I will be getting points for my location in the Greenbelt. I could add one to this with the purple die, but I would really like to get a political office before scoring happens.

I pick up the purple, blue and red dice and roll them again. Now, along with the dice I set aside, I have this:

I can get into the Public Works office with the two votes, so I’m happy with this. And another tree is another point from my Greenbelt (remember, I already have a cube in the river). I do have one more roll available, but I am happy with what I have.

Rolling that red die one more time isn’t worth it as I have a 60-40 chance of getting something I can’t use or don’t want. Here’s what that looks like, based on what I have on the board right now:

Useful Rolls

Fate: could add to Park Bench or Votes, fortifies those positions but is a short-term gain for Votes as it would be removed after scoring

Tree: already have it so re-rolling and getting this is the same as not rolling again

Wasted Rolls

Vocation: don’t need Retail, not building sets

Town (x2): can’t build in 1-value spaces, they’re all taken and I don’t hold Contractor right now *

Vote: just adds to the two I already have, nothing gained

* If I had owned a 1-value red building, I could have used a red town die if I took the Public Works office first, used my bonus to move my 1-value red building to a 2-value red space and then built the 1-value red building. Sneaky, eh?

So, with all of that in mind, I might as well keep the tree I have. So I declare my die-rolling done and implement my choices on the board. So this turn I took over Central Park with two cubes, claimed the Public Works office (also two cubes) and used my bonus there to push my 3-value blue building into a 4-value blue space, advanced one space on the Greenbelt track, advanced the Time marker and gained a Milestone.

Now, just so you know, this turn could have gone so many different ways there just isn’t time to run you through all the possibilities. If it were early in the game, I may not have re-rolled many – or any! – dice as the board is fairly open at that point. Late game, I may be working hard to grab a last few Vocations to complete sets or scrambling to get back into an Office to avoid losing points.

Did you have another question? “Is this just Urban Sprawl Lite?” Now that you’ve seen a turn, do you still think that? No, I wouldn’t think so, either.

Hey, Chad just had another idea and we’ll need to test something. Are you up for a quick game? Great, sit tight for a minute and I’ll reset the board. We’ll have you start and feel free to ask all the questions you want. This will be fun!

Author: Kai Jensen