troy jones
United States
Huntsville
Alabama
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About a month ago I think, the wife of one of the organizers of our local boardgame club bought The Golden City on sale from Tanga. It did not get played immediately though for some reason, and just sat on their shelf for a while. Something about bad reviews on BGG I think. I thought it looked interesting though so I asked if they could bring it to one of our weekly gaming sessions at the local Steak 'n Shake. They did.
Since not a whole lot of info is on BGG about this game, I thought I'd contribute a Session report about it. This is my first Session report.
I'll get to the game in a second, but first our Dramatis Personae. BLUE, whose wife bought this game, is a seasoned boardgame hobbyist who owns dozens if not hundreds of board games and attends conventions and tournaments and whatnot. I think his skepticism about TGC is why it didn't get played before now. I (WHITE) like light- to medium-weight Eurogames with a decently high amount of "interaction", aka heinous back-stabbing. I'm not really a strategy-whiz, but I do like throwing monkey wrenches into others' carefully laid plans. RED and BLACK are pretty much casual players, though both are regulars at our boardgame meetups. BLUE's wife didn't play, opting instead for a game of Colonia two tables over.
My plan was to get onto a river no one else wanted and then race to the city from there. I was first into the outer city and started placing businesses in the outer ring around the city collecting as many bonuses as I could. On the last turn of the game I picked up a bonus card that gave me a point for every business in the city-- it was worth six points to me. BLUE figured out the infamous "goods strategy" at some point during the game and pursued it, but not to the exclusion of trying to get into the city. He was only able to collect three goods cards to go with his goods bonus card though. RED picked up the coins bonus card, but then proceeded to get into bidding wars over land he didn't really need-- in fact at some point BLUE convinced him that I was winning and had to be "stopped" somehow, so he got into a bidding war with me over land I could have definitely used but wasn't critical, which RED couldn't use at all. I let him take it. RED spent a total of four coins (at two VPs per coin!) buying that pair of land cards he couldn't even use to place a business that turn. (Note: if you try the coin strategy, don't throw away your coins like a drunken sailor!) BLACK got lots of land cards and placed the last business, ending the game, but didn't seem to have much of a plan for turning his faster business placement into a VP advantage. At some point he picked up the Forest bonus card which was worth six VPs to him at the end, so I guess that was a plan of sorts. Mostly though BLACK's plan was to ask the others at the table what his best move would be-- it annoys some people but I'm usually happy to offer self-serving yet plausible-sounding advice.
All of us managed to get one of the ten-point bonuses in the inner city. Even though I was first into the outer city, I was last into the inner city; it wasn't an immediate priority since I already had majority in the Desert quarter of the city even without it. RED went to the trouble of collecting a second key to pick up a six-point inner-city bonus. It seems to me collecting keys is usually only worth it if you have a reasonable shot at a ten point bonus, but evidently RED disagreed.
Anyway, needless to say RED came in last. Personally I believe the coin strategy could work, if you are patient and efficient with the land cards-- i.e. don't get caught up in bidding wars for land you think you need but don't. Since bidding on land is the only thing you spend coins on, and you get two land for free every turn if you decline to bid, I think the coin strat could definitely work under the right circumstances. BLACK came in third. BLUE and WHITE tied on VPs at 61 apiece, so it came down to the tiebreaker of who had the most businesses in the city. That would be WHITE. Victory!
Some more thoughts on the game...
The "letters of business" (aka victory points), come on paper-money-ish slips, and are kept hidden (well we kept them stacked with low denomination "letters" on top-- not hidden from view but impossible to estimate how much there is in a stack). Players get VPs in small amounts continually throughout the game so it is hard to tell who's winning unless you've been very careful to keep track of all the numerous +2's. Keeping track of VPs is probably of limited usefulness anyway though compared to the effort required, since targeting the leader seems to not be as good of a plan as improving your own position in most circumstances (looking at you, RED! Haha). It would be nice to know who's winning, but usually that knowledge wouldn't affect my plan that much so I don't bother to count VPs.
More useful-- in my opinion-- would be keeping track of what scoring cards have already been seen. Much more bang for your mental buck.
Every turn a scoring card is flipped up at the beginning of the turn that will be scored at the end of the turn. The scoring card has two halves: one half depicts a region on the board (either a river or a city quarter) that will be scored 2 points to each player with a presence there and +2 if someone has a majority, and the other half shows a "goods" thingy that will be scored two points for everyone who has the matching goods in front of them (just two points for having it, not double points for having multiple of the same goods). Since the scoring card isn't scored right away, it will sometimes trigger a rush to get into the region depicted, or to grab the matching goods card if it happens to be sitting face up.
My thinking is that getting caught up in a rush to benefit from the current scoring card isn't always the best way. There are four river regions on the board and four city quarters. Each will be scored, at most, twice: rivers generally earlier, city quarters generally later. So, obviously, if you keep track of the scoring cards, you know which regions are dead (will not be scored again), and which should be coming up soon. It's a similar situation with the goods cards. Let the others bid up land cards chasing the current scoring card while you plan for the turns ahead and hopefully take some land for free.
My thoughts on the "goods strategy": Building to collect goods is in most cases kind of out of the way of building to a river or to the city, and there are a limited number of goods squares to claim. So there is some risk and some opportunity cost going after goods-- it may let other players claim a bigger share of the city and/or river bonuses, and other players may try to claim goods cards too, which may keep you from collecting four, or delay you from doing other stuff while you chase the fourth goods card. No doubt it's a great card, but as with many Eurogames, you have to stay flexible and plan your strategy around what everyone else looks like they're doing.
Overall I liked it. The others thought it was ok, though no one seemed to be falling out of their chairs in ecstasy over it. I hope to give it another go at some point.
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The Dave
United States
Brooklyn
United States
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Just finished playing my first game of TGC, which I also purchased on sale from Tanga.
I was quite impressed with the number of options to you and I'm looking forward to studying the game a bit more. I think there is a lot of subtle depth there waiting to be found with multiple plays.
Great session report! We didn't have any RED or BLUE players, but all three of us spread out pretty much across the board. WHITE didn't make it into the mountains at all, but did manage to snag 2 inner city bonuses. BLUE went for the Rivers, but spent way too many coins in the middle game for it to pay off. RED took goods every chance he had, and was taking the Solo-owner bonus frequently. Also snagged the goods bonus card, but never was first in the inner city. Score was 79-78-60. RED-WHITE-BLUE.
I was RED. 
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