Tile laying. Deck building. Groundbreaking.
SORCERER CITY
Designer: Scott Caputo | Artists: Damien Mammoliti, David Kegg, Mr Cuddington, Justin Chan
With a seismic rumble, the foundations of the city shift beneath your feet. Things that once seemed so stable and secure are suddenly thrust skywards; your home. Your hopes for a quiet life. This is the world designer Scott Caputo has created in his latest game Sorcerer City.
Tasked with constructing their own city district, players will draw and place coloured tiles from a personal deck, gathering resources and scoring points through careful placement of Goal tiles. Some of which score for clusters of the same colour, whilst others score only in a straight line or for each other goal on a neighbouring tile. Each round will end with players tearing down their districts ready to start anew, with the player scoring the most prestige after five rounds earning the title of Head Wizard.
Of course, there are some similarities to Carcassonne in that brief summary, but this is where they end. Indeed, Sorcerer City is intent on straying from the usual framework for tile laying city builders, swapping calm and considered tile placement for an intensely chaotic two minute scramble.
Included with the game is a sand timer used to time each of the five building rounds, with an optional app timer offering easy (three minutes) and difficult (one minute) modes and a tension building soundtrack.
Revealing one tile at a time, players will add to their districts as best they can, ever cautious of time ticking away. The fearful glances between the constant trickle of the sand timer and the dwindling piles of your opponents’ tiles gives Sorcerer City an astounding level of competitiveness without the need to resort to direct conflict or take-that mechanics. These design decisions keep the game feeling light-hearted whilst still encouraging fierce competition.
Offering respite from the frantic building phase is Caputo’s ingenious adoption of deck building mechanics, seamlessly sandwiched between each round. Whilst the game starts with each player scrambling to build their districts from identical sets of tiles, later rounds will see players’ stacks growing ever larger with tiles bought from the market display or acquired through special abilities. Each round opens up more opportunities for customisation.
Where one player might focus on tiles to generate gold to acquire more powerful tiles, another might gradually expand their point building engine, scoring increasing amounts of Prestige each round. Of course, being wizards, the option to build districts optimised for Magic or Influence production is also tantalising, with the former acting as a wild resource, convertible into any other, whilst the latter decides who gains each round’s bonus points and abilities.
With tiles appearing in a random order and time ticking away, things don’t always go to plan. Fortunately, much of the thrill of Sorcerer City lies in making the best of what is given to you and is handily packed with variability thanks to a generous selection of monsters, influence rewards, and artefacts, making each playthrough feel like a new challenge.
Despite its thrilling setting, Sorcerer City’s gameplay is unashamedly abstract as is most of its graphic design. Whilst the component quality is excellent and text and symbols are clear, city tiles only vaguely resemble patches of buildings beneath the bright blocks of colour, with monster tiles largely sharing this same design albeit with an added illustration.
Undoubtably, this simplicity aids the fast and frantic gameplay, but it lacks the thematic sense of actually building something that other tile laying games have. That aside, Caputo has nonetheless produced an exhilaratingly innovative game that manages to stay fun and fresh game after game.
CHAD WILKINSON
WE SAY
Mirroring the turbulent districts of the titular city, Caputo has torn up the foundations of tile laying and deck building, and reshaped them into something new and exciting for players to explore. With its simple rules, fast and intense gameplay and generous replayability, Sorcerer City is a quirky addition to the city building genre.
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
◗ 313 game tiles
◗ 62 cards
◗ Market and Influence Reward boards
◗ 6 Annual progress tracks
◗ 24 Annual progress markers
◗ 24 Annual progress tokens
◗ 80 Prestige tokens
◗ Sand timer
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… THE QUACKS OF QUEDLINBURG
Similarly quirky, colourful and chaotic, Sorcerer City sits well beside Wolfgang Warsch’s own novel approach to deck/bag building.