Thoughts from the Yellow Meeple:- Quadropolis

Game: Quadropolis

Publisher: Days of Wonder

Designer: Francois Gandon

Year: 2016

I’m not sure what took me so long when it came to buying Quadropolis. I’m a big fan of many Days of Wonder games, so knew that eventually it was a game I wanted to play and probably own. I assumed I’d see it being played everywhere and yet 6 months after release I’d yet to play it at a game group and there were seemingly no opportunities to pick Quadropolis up much below RRP so I included it in a sizeable order I made to get myself up to speed with some 2016 releases.

Quadropolis is a gateway level city building game. In the game there are a number of different building types and each has a different scoring mechanism. Each round you are selecting tiles from a central grid which is common to all players. The selection of the tiles is very spatial, and the way that you obtain each tile effects where you can place it in your city. The game proceeds in 4 or 5 rounds depending on whether you’re playing classic or expert and at the end of the game you have the opportunity to organise your resources – energy and people – in the most optimal way around your city.

I typically try to assign resources during the game and at the end of the game there's just a quick moment for optimisation before we jump into scoring.

Your selection of tiles, although simple, can be a complex decision influenced by the building type, the amount of and type of resources required to activate it, the amount and type of resources that it gives you when you play it and potentially trying to block your opponents or at least beat them to critical tiles. In the expert variant there is also a pressure from the limited number of selection arrows in the supply.

The tile selection method. Arrow 5 is placed to select the 5th tile in the row or column. It then needs to be placed on your player board in a slot labelled with a '5'. When a tile is selected it is replaced with the black plastic token which blocks this row and column for the next player.

What I think I like most about Quadropolis is that the mechanics are super simple, so there’s no reason you couldn’t teach this to anyone but every time we play. However, at the same time, for the first couple of turns I still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m sure it’s important to find a strategy and stick to it, but that first round, I just feel lost because I can really put anything anywhere on my board and I’ve no idea of the consequences, until later on I hate the fact that there’s no space left for that last harbour etc.

To me the expert rules don’t really add complexity the game, although turns seemed to take a little longer with a couple of extra dimensions to think about, not to mention the fact that I think the player board layout for the expert version is far less intuitive. There’s not real reason not to jump straight into the expert game and enjoy a simple, yet effective city building game.

The difference between the classic and the expert boards. For me the classic board is far more intuitive. The expert board makes gameplay slightly less smooth as it takes more time to think about the consequences of placement.

Quadropolis is simple, clean, well produced and the style of city building I much to prefer to some more fiddly alternatives. It’s an 8/10 from the Yellow Meeple.