Shortly after finishing the third installment of this series about the tactility of the pieces, I took some time to capture a multihand playthrough of my physical prototype. Let me tell you a secret. I lost. In fact I lost in the first decade, three times in a row. Granted, this was the “Bronx is Burning” scenario which is hands down the hardest one in the game, but the fact of the matter is it took me four tries to get out of the first Decade, which is what you’ll see in this playthrough.

Everyone Loses

Let’s be perfectly clear here, I was going to lose that game in the Seventies. And what I mean by lost here, is that my multihand solitaire play would trigger one of the collective loss conditions in the game – Bankruptcy or Disenfranchisement – meaning no faction wins. This is intentional. Even in easier scenarios there is a strong chance that games will end with a collective loss, and players must learn how to work together to avoid this.

Thematically the collective loss reflects the historical stakes being modeled in the game. Keeping the city afloat was a balancing act historically, with real world consequences. When a collective loss happens in the game you can look at the play of each of the factions to understand what was pushed too much or too little, tipping the whole thing over the edge. Mechanically this decreases the chance of a runaway leader, as the effect of any faction pushing their victory conditions too hard is to accelerate one of the collective loss conditions, ending the game with no winner. Anyone in a winning position therefore has the greatest incentive to pull their weight and try to avoid collective loss, even at some personal cost.

A part of learning to play Cross Bronx Expressway is learning what is too much. First plays will see players taking wild swings for their victory conditions, while future plays will see more careful and calculated play to keep The Bronx afloat, then with experience one starts seeing the opportunities to make the small gains that will work towards those victory conditions. Getting to that point is all about learning to read the map state and its potentiality.

The Big Picture

The “Burning Sun” playthrough video makes a good reference point for learning how to read the Cross Bronx Expressway game state. It is a lot to take in at once, so don’t worry if it doesn’t all make sense yet. What follows will provide some of the context by looking at the impacts actions have in the Districts.

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Cross Bronx Expressway is often mistaken for an area control game at first glance. With its Districts filled with colored faction pieces, the temptation is to see the most dominant color as the winner. Taken as a whole though, these pieces each say something different about what has and is happening in the game. Looking at the map after the 1970 Census from Burning Sun we can see what the game state is telling us.

One of the first things to check is if all of the Population is housed in Infrastructure. Here the factions have managed to house all of the Population, which is a good thing because any unhoused Population in a District adds Vulnerable there. Housed Population can earn resources for all factions, while vulnerabilities put those populations and earnings at risk.

While the Population at the 1970 census is all housed, six out of the seven Districts have unhoused Vulnerable, which inflict penalties the factions will have to pay for. Both Private and Public did what they could to mitigate the situation, using their Organizations to hire employees and open social work cases, but the number in Corrections lets us know it was not enough, and that Community did not do their part (by not recruiting any activists to help mitigate the Vulnerable).

A District Perspective

So what was Community doing instead of helping fight vulnerabilities in their neighborhoods? Looking at the map tells us a lot about that as well. Despite being the faction with the least overall Infrastructure available, they have developed in the area the most, creating the conditions in Districts 4 and 6 to earn their Grassroots objective. Looking specifically at District 4we can get a peek into how this was accomplished.

At the start of the scenario District 4 is filled with 10 Population across its two Public and Community Infrastructure . Those two factions also have Organizations in the district, forming a Social Coalition. Private also has an Organization in the district, because with two Infrastructure filled with Population and no unhoused Population or Vulnerable it is profitable to be there. Public uses its Organization without a coalition partner to move one of the Vulnerable to Cases.

When an event comes up (the titular “Cross Bronx Expressway”) that exhausts Infrastructure, Community decides to plan around it, because exhausting the Public Infrastructure in the District would leave theirs the only one there, and with the coalition that is enough to score that Grassroots objective. Because the card is so early in the deck, however, they also have to think about how to maintain this situation until the Census.

Exhausting the Infrastructure unhouses the Population there, but it does not move them. This makes buying the exhausted Infrastructure a solid investment before the Census. Community thus has to act fast to purchase the exhausted Infrastructure for cheap before Private can do so, which would break the Grassroots condition.

Private uses Community’s focus on this to squeeze the Public Organization out of the District, which forces Community into the Economic Coalition that Private needs for their own Trickle Down objective. Public is now boxed out and moves some Vulnerable into the District at the very end of the decade, to penalize Community at the Census.

There are a number of perspectives from which to look at District 4 in the end. Through an area control lens it looks good for the Community to have done this, but let’s do some of the math:

Infrastructure – 4 resources each in upkeep means they will have to pay 8 resources in the district. They will get all of that and then some back though, as they get 1 resource per Population housed, and both Infrastructure are fully Populated. This nets them 2 resources from their Infrastructure.

Organizations – They have one Organization in the District that they have to pay 1 resource of upkeep for. It then can earn them 1 resource for every 5 Population in the District. The 10 Population earn 2 resources, netting Community 1 from their Organization.

Penalties – Unfortunately the unhoused Vulnerable in the district will cost the Community 1 resource in penalties.

This means all together the Community earns 2 resources from District 4 and one VP from the Grassroots objective. That seems pretty good and indeed is the dominant scoring for the District. Private on the other hand earns the same 1 resource as Community for their organization, and 1 VP for the way the coalition fulfilled their Trickle Down objective. They also don’t pay penalties because they don’t have any Infrastructure in the District. Not too far behind what Community was able to accomplish with less than half the effort.

Multiply dynamics like these across 7 Districts and you begin to see the challenges of the game. Community choosing to do this meant neglecting other situations on the board, whereas focusing on those may have created neglect somewhere else. And, it isn’t until you zoom out to the picture across all of those Districts that the value of those choices can be evaluated.

Hopefully this has shed some light on what goes into reading the game state in Cross Bronx Expressway. We are hard at work at the tail end of development to ensure the rules and supporting materials provide every player that sits down with the game the opportunity to both enjoy their gaming experience and walk away with a better feel for the history.

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