OUR REVIEW

FUTURE URBAN DEVELOPMENT

GINKGOPOLIS

DEVELOP NEW LAND OR SET UP SKYSCRAPERS?

When I look back to Spiel 12 at Essen I spontaneously remember three games which have a placement mechanism as the main feature of the game - Noblemen by Pegasus, where each player develops his estates on his own; Suburbia by Lookout, where each player for himself builds a suburb for a common town and, finally, Ginkgopolis by Pearl Games. Here players are not constructing on their own, but build the town of future times together. We find ourselves in the year 2212, and sustainability and urbanization in accordance with nature, symbolized by the Ginkgo tree, have become even more important than they are today. But as a player you find out pretty soon that there have not been many changes to what is is built – there do not seem to be alternatives to skyscrapers or to the urbanization of new land. But you also notice very quickly that resources for urban development have become extremely limited ant that a balanced relationship is necessary between resources needed for building and resources acquired by building.

Ginkgopolis does not require a game board. The town, that is, more exact, the buildings, are constructed with building tiles. There are exactly 60 of those tiles, 20 tiles each in three colors. Each tile is unique and is characterized by two attributes, their color and a value from 1 to 20. The color tells you what the tile will yield when it has been built: Blue building tiles yield building tiles from general stock to the player, red building tiles deliver resources and yellow building tiles deliver the Success points that decide the game.

Resources are given out in the guise of wooden cylinders, for each player in his own color. Depending on the number of players each player commands a different number of resources, which all are deposited in general stock at the start of the game and must be acquired. Success points are collect with corresponding success points markers shaped like ginkgo leaves!

At the start of the game a town is laid out in a grid of 3x3 building tiles of values 1 to 3 in all three colors, the rest of the tiles is shuffled together and stacked face down as general stock.

In order for a player to build a tile he must play the corresponding card from his hand. So, as a logic conclusion, there are also exactly 60 building cards, one for each tile. Those building cards have – in addition to their function of identifying the building tile – on other attribute: They yield a bonus as soon as they are placed in front of a player. This bonus is a permanent one that can be used for the rest of the game or it is a bonus for success points at the end of the game, usually linked to conditions. With those cards a player can only build on existing tiles. For new building lots at the edge of town you need to have an urbanization card in hand. There are 12 of those cards in the play and they, too, have a corresponding equivalent, this time in the guise of round tiles, the so-called Urbanization tokens. Those tokens differs only by the letter they carry, from A to L, and they are placed in a circle around the starting town at the start of the game.

Building cards and Urbanization cards are stacked in a joint draw pile, and you only shuffle those cards into the pile which correspond to the tiles already visible in town. When a new tile is placed in the course of the game, the gray Construction site pawns come into play. They mark which building cards must be shuffled into the draw pile during the course of the game. In case of two or three players seven cards are discarded immediately after reshuffling of the draw pile so that the draw pile is used up more quickly. Regardless of the number of players, each player is dealt four cards from the draw pile for his first hand.

Before we can start the game the character cards are distributed. Those cards determine with which material a player starts the game and yield, as do the building cards, a permanent bonus during the game for one of the possible actions. The character cards are drafted at the start of the game. Each player is dealt four cards, keeps one and hands on the other three. This is continued until all players hold three character cards. Then each player displays his character cards, the remaining cards are removed from play. Then each player takes the materials pictured on his character cards and hides them behinds his screen. Now there is only a starting player to be determined, he is given the starting player card.

Ginkgopolis is played in rounds which are divided into three phases: In the first phase players decide which card they want to play and put it down face-down. At that point a player can decide to swap his complete hand before he selects a card. For this purpose each player holds two New Hand tokens, which means that he can swap his hand twice during the game. When a player wants to build a building tile in the next phase he must add a face-down building tile from his stock to the face-down card.

Then the action phase is executed, in which all players, beginning with the starting player, play their selected card.

Each card can either be played with or without the building tile. If the card is played without building tile you play the Exploiting action. Depending on the type of card this has different effects: An urbanization card can either yield one of your own resources or a building tile, both from general stock.

A building card yields, depending on its color, either building tiles, success points or resources, the amount is determined by the height of the building on which the corresponding building tile is situated.

In both cases the card is discarded afterwards. When a player has cards laid out that earn him a bonus for the Exploiting action he now receives this bonus. The other two possible actions demand playing of a building tile together with the card from your hand.

When you play an urbanization card the action Urbanizing is put into effect. The building tile is placed where the corresponding Urbanization token is situated. The Urbanization token is then relocated by the player, who must adhere to the alphabetical order. For the placement of the building tile you are given materials: Which materials he gets is determined by the horizontal and vertical neighbors of the tile, the number is determined by the height of those buildings. The costs for building are paid by placing a resource from your own stock on the building tile. As it is a new building you add a Construction Site pawn to the tile. For the Urbanization action you receive all bonuses from your cards which yield a bonus for this action.

When you play a building card together with a building tile, thus choosing the action of Constructing A Floor, you can add a floor to a building in town. Which building you want to extend is decided by the card you played. The least costly variant of Constructing a Floor is to extend a building of the same kind (color) with a lower number then the new building tile. In this case you only need the number of resources equal to the height of the building, one resource per tile. Those resources are deposited on the tile. When you construct a floor in a building that is marked by resources of another player this player takes his resources back and puts them behind his screen and scores one success point for each resource that he got back.

But it is also allowed to construct a floor in a building using a building tile of another color and also with a building tile of lower value. The first possibility makes sense especially as regards to the final scoring, albeit there are additional costs to pay for those versions: In case of different colors is only one additional resource which goes back into general stock, but when you place a building tile of lower value on a building tile of higher value the difference must be paid in success points, and costs accumulate!

In this action too, a Construction Site pawn must be put on the new building tile and here, too, you receive all bonuses from the cards that you have on display in front of you which show the action of Constructing a Floor. Contrary to both previously described actions you keep the card you played and add it to the cards in your display, so you have one additional bonus card on display.

Should a player when playing a card together with a building tile become aware that he does not have the necessary materials to build the building tile he replaces the tile behind his screen and plays the Exploitation action.

When each player has executed his action the third phase starts, which is preparation for the next round. For this each player hands his three remaining cards to the next player, the starting player card goes with them, too. Beginning with the new starting player each player now draws a forth card from his hand.

Should the draw pile become empty during this drawing of cards the draw pile is recreated: Now those cards are added to the discard pile that correspond to those building tiles on which Construction Site pawns are situated and all cards are reshuffled. The Construction site pawns are removed from the tiles. This ensures that the card corresponding to each top building tile is present in the draw pile. Again at this point the top seven cards of the draw pile start the new discard pile in case of 2 or 3 players.

Now a new round starts.

Ginkgopolis can end in two different ways: either due to an empty stock of building tiles or as soon as one player has built all his resources into the town. When the stock of tiles is empty for the first time during the game the game does not necessarily end, because all players now have the option to return tiles from their own personal stock to general stock. If they do so the game ends when there is again an empty stock of building tiles.

Now the final scoring is done: You add the success points collected so far, success points based on cards in your display yielding bonuses at the end of the game, 2 points for each New Cards token you did not use and add the majorities for resources in town district. A town district are all adjacent buildings of one color. Single buildings without a neighbor of the same color in any direction, horizontally or vertically, do not constitute a town district. For each town district you compare the resources of all players. If you hold the majority in a district you score success points equal to the number of all resources in the district. The player with the second highest number of resources only scores the number of his own resources in the district. Of course there is also a rule for deciding ties. Should you be the only one with resources in a town district you score double the number of success points. IF you now have the highest total of success points you win the game.

Ginkgopolis is a felicitous, well-made mix of mainly tactical but also strategic elements. Your success in the game is based on your aptitude to use building tiles and resources from your own stock together with your current hand to the best possible outcome in order to acquire as many new materials for future building. It is especially important to choose the card from hand you want to play with the aim to collect as many bonuses from your own bonus cards as possible. But do not forget in this context not to restrict yourself to collecting building materials but also success points. You can acquire quite a lot of success points in the final scoring, but a continuous acquisition of success points is equally important throughout the game.

Despite the fact that the active player can only choose from three possible action the game is not uniform or boring. The variety mainly comes from the chance element of drawing building tiles and the continuous change of your card hand, which results in ever changing and new combinations of cards in hand and your own building tiles and forces you continuously to decide new which combination is currently the best one. And despite the only ways to develop the town being Urbanization or Constructing a Floor the town always looks different at the end of the game.

Besides the high content of tactical elements the strategic elements are not neglected, either. Already from the very start you should keep an eye on majorities in town districts, but this alone will not earn you victory. An essential part of the game is the best possible constructing of new floors and thus achieving the building card for a bonus. The right bonus cards in your display together with the best suited choice of actions earn you enough materials from building to be able to execute additional actions without lack of materials. And if you have enough materials you can implement the more expensive building variants more easily and thereby invest into majorities in town districts. Albeit having only four cards at your disposal in your hand you usually have both kinds of cards represented so that you can choose all three actions and thus can use your own bonus cards in an optimum way.

Despite all this I would not recommend Ginkgopolis to a player who prefers purely strategic games, as the draft mechanism for the hand cards in effect prevents a strategic use of those cards. Only a game for two is an exception as you definitely will get back cards in hand that you have handed on previously. But this is not the only reason for Ginkgopolis being well-suited for a game for two players. Should players not take kindly to the draft mechanism well known from 7 Wonders as being rather entrancing, you can easily play the game without drafting, which would allow you to plan the order in which you want to play your cards in hand.

The rules also list a variant for a solo game in which you play with a virtual second player.

It takes a bit of getting used to the new creation of the draw pile, which is necessary several times during the game, because it results in a real disruption of the flow of the game. Even if you pedantically sort the cards not yet in play in order to find the necessary cards more easily it takes quite some time to find the cards for all new buildings, which is annoying but unavoidable.

In this connection it is immensely important not to forget to place Construction Site pawns during the game, because this could result in building that cannot be extended as the corresponding building card is not in play.

All in all Ginkgopolis is a varied, entertaining and interactive game, with simple rules and a straightforward selection of actions.

Bernhard Czermak

Players: 1-5

Age: 10+

Time: 45+

Designer: Xavier Georges

Art: Gaël Lannuriere

Price: ca. 40 Euro

Publisher: Pearl Games 2012

Web: www.pearlgames.be

Genre: Placement game on urban development

Users: For experts

Special: 1 player

Version: de

Rules: de en fr it

In-game text: no

Comments:

Simple rules

Diverting and varied game play

Chance elements are involved

Compares to:

All Urban Development games using tile placement, e.g. Suburbia

Other editions:

English at Pearl Games, English, French at Z-Man, U-Play, Italy

My rating: 5

Bernhard Czermak:

A diverting tactical game with simple rules, that does not boast lots of possible actions but that is diverse due to chance components and again and again challenges your combination abilities for cards in hand and construction materials.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0