presentation

Forbidden City

Win rooms, enhace your influence

The new Emperor Wei Zu Yang is too young to reign - his advisors want to enhance their influence in the Forbidden City and therefore try to achieve most influence - represented by advisors on tiles of their colors - in closed rooms.

The starting tile is laid out - you select the easier side with four gardens in the corners or the more difficult one with larger rooms - and each player shuffles his 24 tiles of a color and stacks them face-down.

In a round, each player draws a tile from his stack and then all place - in turn - this tile next to one already on display; the same color without restriction, to place a tile of another color, the two tiles must be separated by a wall. A room that is completely surrounded by walls - be they with or without archways - is considered to be closed and its value is determined: each tile in the room is worth one point, each dragon symbol three points; rooms that are connected to the newly closed room by an archway are also scored. If you then have the majority of advisors in the room, you are paid the room value in coins; if you have the second-most advisors, you receive half the room value.

When all tiles but two have been placed, you receive coins for advisors and dragon symbols on those tiles and then you win with the highest total sum of coins.

A true Knizia game - seemingly simple and yet full of hidden depth; game elements are basically standard and known and the two rules for them not new either; the sophistication and tactics/strategy come from the scoring of adjacent rooms - as the board develops during play, you can score lots of points by closing small rooms next to big ones.

Players: 2-4

Age: 8+

Time: 30+

Designer: Reiner Knizia

Art: Paul Windle Design

Price: ca. 22 Euro

Publisher: Jumbo Diset 2018

Web: www.jumbo.eu

Genre: Tile placement

Users: For families

Version: multi

Rules: de en fr nl

In-game text: no

Comments:

Compares to:

Pretty design

Nicely varied standard mechanisms

Sophisticated due to scoring of adjacent rooms

Clever pun on the Emperor’s name

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0