Thoughts from the Yellow Meeple:- Quadropolis: Public Services

Game: Quadropolis: Public Services

Publisher: Days of Wonder

Designer: François Gandon
 
Year: 2017

We reviewed Quadropolis during November last year and at the time rated it quite highly as a gateway level city building game. In the time since then it hasn't really hit the table a great deal and I didn't feel it was quite simple enough to introduce to my most frequent new gamers - my parents. If nothing else, the the new expansion Quadropolis: Public Services has helped us get the game back to the table, but what does this expansion add and does it over-complicate a smooth, simple game?


First of all, this expansion is deceptively small if you've only seen pictures online. The box is perhaps 6 inches square and even that is still slightly over-sized for the two sets of tiles it contains. The box contains a set of tiles to use as optional replacements in the basic game and a different set of tiles for the expert game, which are on a similar theme but vary the power of some of tiles to balance the game.

The expansion adds a market of public service tiles which refreshes each round.

The basic gameplay is not changed at all by this expansion. Every time you take a basic public services tile from the central grid you can choose to place that tile or pick one from the face up supply of four new public services. Usually these are more powerful, either giving you end of game victory points for completing different objectives, or a quick injection of people or energy tokens. The victory point tiles are varied in terms of which strategies they reward and some are very much opposed, for example one which rewards tall apartments and another which rewards filling all the spaces in each section of your player board.

Because of how powerful the new public service tiles are, I think it would be very challenging to win by ignoring this strategy - something that wouldn't be significant in the base game. However, especially when we played the expert game, we noticed how there were ways to use the expansion to complement whatever other strategies you'd chosen to pursue in the game. Unless your opponents decide to deliberately take the tiles that will work well for you, then you're likely to have the opportunity to make the most of the tiles available, at least in the two-player game.

Two sets of new tiles are provided in the box; one set for the basic game and one set for the expert game.

I am definitely enjoying the game more with the new expansion. For me, the key difference it makes is in guiding my strategy early on in the game. Without the expansion I would often find it difficult to decide what strategy and how many strategies to pursue in any game of Quadropolis we played. At the moment I can't see us playing the game without it, although if further expansions are released in the same style, ie. focusing on a certain building typology, then I'm interested to see if they all combine well or are best used one expansion at a time.

For me,Quadropolis: Public Services, is not an essential expansion or a game changer, but if you enjoy the base game then it's a cheap expansion to pick up to renew your interest in the game and it definitely improves the game slightly for me. The Yellow Meeple gives Quadropolis: Public Services a 7.5/10.

Quadropolis: Public Services was a review copy provided by Esdevium Games Ltd. It is available for an RRP of £11.99 at your friendly local game store.