Thames & Kosmos | 691486 | My City | Family- oriented legacy

We are a board game family and this is among our all-time favorites. My City has two clever play options—legacy and eternal.

Legacy is an ongoing campaign (preferably with the same set of players) that builds in complexity revealing new and exciting game elements over multiple play sessions. This option is only played through once because the players’ boards are incrementally, somewhat permanently customized along the way. The legacy game has 24 episodes that will take about 18 hours to complete at 45 minutes per game.

In contrast, the eternal option is a stand alone game that has most of the game elements of the legacy option and is played as a single game in one sitting. This option can be replayed over and over—hence the name eternal. An eternal game takes about 30-45 minutes for 4 players.

Essentially, the game is a Tetris-like strategy where your lay different shaped and colored pieces to maximize board coverage and configuration for max points. One of the coolest elements of play is everyone plays on their respective boards at the same time so it’s equally fair (i.e. their isn’t any disadvantages to order of play like in most other games).

Setup, play, and scoring are all very straightforward. Replay ability is high.

Bottom line: Massively fun strategy game that essentially removes getting lucky/unlucky and rewards planning and forethought.

I bought this game because I thought it would be like a Sim City version of Agricola. Then I read the instructions and was intimidated by the 90 minute game play time. It doesn’t really take 90 minutes, especially in the beginning and for the “eternal” game play. Here is the game play without giving away any spoilers (I hope). The game is on a grid pattern with tetris shaped buildings. The object is to place all the buildings on the grid in a pattern that leaves the least amount of “green space”. This is the “Tetris” part. There are color groups along with shapes, so there are bonus points for grouping the colors together. This is the “Dr. Mario” part. Along with this there are “chapters” and “episodes” – each episode adds a new challenge that builds on top of previous challenges, meeting these challenges gives additional bonus points above the colored buildings and the least open green spaces. Each episode takes 15 to 20 minutes, this is mostly due to the length of time you allow the players to place the buildings. So it could be fast or long depending on how strategic everyone is and how long it takes people to be strategic.

The best part is this game is designed to be played over 8 or so chapters and at the end of each episode the winner is given 2 tokens and the 2nd place a single token. What about the 3rd and 4th? well – they are given stickers to place on their board that may provide additional points in later game play. For example – you lose points for open “green space” so in some cases the 3rd and 4th may be given stickers the cover the green space so they have less chances to leave them open. In another example, some challenges provide 3 points, the 3rd and 4th were given a sticker that enabled them to get 5 points for meeting the same challenge in later episodes. This has the effect of not allowing a single person to run away with all the points on every episode, which keeps it challenging even if you are an adult playing with teens and pre-teens.

I would totally recommend the game as it takes about 5 minutes to learn the mechanics and is an easy 20 minute game for whenever, like Blokus.

Best board game ever! Has kept me and my 10 year old son engrossed for days. It is a long game as lots of different “chapters” which are broken down into 3 “episodes” each. We played it in stages – just did a few episodes or chapters in one sitting. It looks great – very high quality. And more than anything – it is so well thought out – it is clever and creative and keeps you interested. Also it is actually a game that truly can be played by just 2 players – many say they can be but are just no fun without more players. My City is brilliant even for just 2 players – nothing is lost at all by not having more play. But I can also see that it would be brilliant with more playing too. I am not a big fan of most board games to be honest – but my son is – and most of his favourites like Risk (groan) or Pandemic (triple groan) I find horrendously boring! But My City actually engaged me all the way through. Love it. The perfect board game. Should win tonnes of awards and every family or couple who enjoy board games should buy it! We both can’t wait to go back to the beginning and play it again. The clever concept means no two games would ever be the same. Just brilliant.