Rival Cities
- Board's Eye View
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Hamburg traces its history back to the 9th Century. It has been an independent city state and for much of the Medieval period Hamburg was a key member of the Hanseatic League - the Amazon.com of its day! In the 16th Century another town grew in close proximity to Hamburg. Locals complained it was 'all zu nah' ('all too near') and the sobriquet stuck so that the new city became known as Altona. The neighbouring cities of Hamburg and Altona entered into a fierce rivalry, and it's that rivalry that forms the basis of Andreas Steding's board game, which has two players competing inter alia to form alliances with other European trading cities, build commercial shipping fleets and win law suits.
With art from Annika Heller, Rival Cities is a two-player game; one player representing Hamburg and the other Altona. There's a tug-of-war prestige track that can earn victory points according to the position of the marker on the track but these points, also earned by winning court cases, only factor in if the game runs a full seven rounds because this is a game with multiple instant win conditions. You win immediately if the prestige marker gets all the way to your city's end of the track. You immediately win if your city has all four alliance cards, if you win three lawsuits or if you have three ships more than your opponent. This is a game where you need to keep a close eye on what your opponent is doing so that you can prevent them from seizing an immediate win. Of course, you'll be trying to sneak won of those instant win conditions for yourself...
The actions available to you on your turn depend on the position of the inkpot marker along the rondel of action cards. You must move the inkpot at least one space but you can move one or two spaces for free to take the action to which the inkpot is adjacent. You can move further but you have to pay to do so. This inkpot action track is central to the game's strategy as your movement affects not only your own actions but what actions will be available to your opponent on their turn. If you think your opponent is eager to acquire a particular card, it may be worth paying to move the inkpot further to bypass that card...
Tho' Pegasus Spiele has packaged Rival Cities in a modest-sized 20cm x 20cm (8 inch x 8 inch) box, it's a meaty game, and with its modular set up it's a game with a lot of replayability. The cards, wooden and pre-punched cardboard components all come in slide-drawer mini-boxes, providing practical storage that's thematically presented as wooden shipping crates. The game is played on a busy board with a lot going on but Rival Cities is relatively easy to learn and play, and you should know which rival city triumphs within a brisk 40 minutes or so. (Spoiler: In the real world, Altona was finally absorbed into the Hamburg metropolis in 1937.)
