London is a development/economic game covering the development of London from the Great Fire of 1666 to the 20th Century. The board shows a map of London divided into boroughs. The players build buildings and businesses in London but unlike his earlier games these do not get built on the map. The map is used to indicate the "ownership" of boroughs and the development of the Underground. Most of the game play centres around the cards rather than the board. The deck of 110 cards is divided into three parts A, B, C which represent the division of 400 years of history into 3 chucks. Each part of the deck is shuffled separately and stacked. Like Brass, the deck controls the length of the game. The end game phase starts once the draw deck is empty.
When drawing cards one can take cards from both the draw deck and from a number of face up cards (which are arranged in two rows). Most games that use this mechanism (e.g. Liberté, Ticket to Ride or Union Pacific) have a fixed number of face up cards which are refilled from the face down deck. London takes a fresh approach. The face up cards come from player’s hands. These are cards that are spent to play or activate other cards or cards discarded when over the hand limit of 9. Cards added to the display are added to the top row if possible. If there are no spare spaces in either row the top row is discarded and the bottom row becomes the new top row.
The cards are complicated, most of them are unique and they all have pictures. They are best compared with those in card driven games like Twilight Struggle. They come in 4 colours (brown - economic, blue - science and culture, pink - political and grey - paupers). Most of them represent buildings or businesses. The implicit base cost to play a card is to "spend" another card of the same colour (the spent card ends up in the face up display for players to pickup if they wish). Some cards have additional costs (usually cash). Most of the cards are played in front of the player. Most cards are worth a number of points at the end of the game but some have additional advantages that are available as long as the card is face up and not over-built. At the bottom of these cards is a section that relates to "activating" the card. Activating a card often has a cost (a card or money). It gives a benefit (and possibly a penalty) and in most cases means the card is turned face down. Though some cards remain face up for multiple activations. The two part process of building a building and later activating it seems to be a development of the building and flipping of buildings in Brass.
A turn consists of drawing a card (from display or draw deck), then do an action and finally discard down to 9 cards (discards go to display). The action is one of four choices:
- Play cards
- Run city
- Buy land
- Draw 3 more cards
As in other Card Driven Games, cards in hand represent the opportunities that you have. Playing/building a card cost you another card/opportunity of the same type/colour. Interestingly you are penalised at various points in the game for having cards in hand (hogging your opportunities?).
The Play Cards action is mostly about building one or more cards/things. Though there are a few cards (Wren and the 3 Refugee cards which are discarded rather than built).
The Run City action is when you get to activate one or more of your face-up cards. In most cases this will result in the card being turned down. It is just about the only way to get more money and possibly reduce poverty. Poverty Points are a similar concept to the Loss Points in Automobile. Everyone starts the game with 5 and at the end of the game they gain one for each card left in their hand. Every time a player chooses the Run City action they count the number of cards in hand, add the number of stacks of cards they have built and subtract the number of boroughs they have bought. If this is a negative number (highly unlikely) they reduce the number of Poverty Points (black cubes) they have otherwise they increase it by this number. A number of the buildings have penalties or benefits which also change the number of Poverty Points you have. In the final scoring the player with the fewest Poverty Points discards them all, the other players discard the same number and then use a chart on the board to determine what the remaining Poverty Points will cost them in VP.
The Poverty Point system provides an incentive to over build buildings rather than create more stacks. It also provides an incentive against choosing the "Run City" action too often.
The Buy Land action allows the player to buy a borough. This cost money, but you immediately draw a number of cards and will score victory points at the end of the game. It will also reduce the Poverty gained by one each time you "Run City". There are also extra points available when the Underground cards come into play.
Of course there are loans in the game. They can be taken at any time but only paid back at the end of the game. The interest rate is 50% and there is a steep VP penalty if you can't pay.
As is common in Martin Wallace games it wasn't clear what the strategy should be at the beginning of the game. Buying land could give you some useful cards but that advantage is minimized as you near/reach the hand limit. Run City didn't seem useful until you had a number of buildings built. But how many buildings should you built side by side (rather than on top of each other) given the Poverty Point penalty of having lots of building stacks?
Hand management plays a big part in London. A big hand of cards gives you plenty of choices but comes at a cost. It is also important to develop your "engine" so that you have a source of cash, points, cards and a way of avoiding too many poverty points. Though as building turn over or get built over your "engine" is very dynamic.
There is the possibility from time to time of choosing when to cause the top line of the display to be discarded, reducing the number of face up cards for players to your left to choose from. Similarly when you add cards to the display you might consider how useful they might be to your fellow players (though this may have little impact if that card is the only spare one of its colour in your hand).
You might consider the other players when choosing which borough to buy, and there are also a few cards that allow targeted actions against other players. But overall I suspect the two main influences on the other players are keeping your Poverty Points much lower than them and choosing when to end the game by using up the draw deck.
Like many cards games with lots of different cards, knowledge of the deck will give a seasoned player an advantage over a newbie.
It was the first time for all of us and due to over hasty rule reading we played a few things wrong. Most importantly we misunderstood the Wren and Refugee cards. We understood that they weren't buildings so we didn’t play them in front of us like the other building cards, we "played" them to the display (where Wren in particular got eagerly picked up by the next player) rather than "playing" them to the discard pile. So Wren got played about 8 times in the game rather than just once! There as a tendency for eager players to want to play/build a card and then immediately activate it in the same turn!
Overall I think London was an interesting Martin Wallace economic/development game with a novel card drafting mechanic, and elements of Brass like two phase builds and the loss/poverty points from Automobile. I'm a little worried by the lack of interaction between players (though some people may see that as an advantage!). I'd play it again but I am not yet convinced that I need to buy it.
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