Cull Me Maybe is a series where I discuss a game that I am considering getting rid of and discuss my current thoughts on it, as well as a final “keep or cull” decision. Today, we look at My City.
My City, designed by the incomparable Dr. Reiner Knizia, is a legacy polyomino tile-laying game where players compete to develop their cities by placing building tiles on their individual boards through a terrain of constantly changing rules.
What I Enjoyed about My City #
Prior to My City, I had never played a legacy game. As a father of young children, the Herculean task of getting a consistent game group together meant that a legacy game was never on the table. But polyomino laying is one of my wife’s favorite mechanics, and Reiner Knizia is my favorite designer! If there was any legacy game that I’d be able to get through, this would be it.
And we were able to make it through the entire campaign! Throughout Knizia's ludography, you can see how much he loves to iterate. In this box, he gets to a couple dozen times! It was fun to see his manipulation of a simple system into different evolving directions.
Most importantly, though, the core gameplay loop is fun. To oversimplify, it follows the tried and true pattern that you see in many roll-and-write games: input randomness, shared player action, rinse & repeat. Luckily, the eternal game (the non-legacy way to play) is probably my favorite of the ways throughout the campaign, so even though we finished our legacy playthrough it is still a fully playable game.
Why I’m Considering Culling My City #
So if it's a compelling puzzle with a satisfying game even beyond the campaign, why am I getting rid of it?
As I mentioned earlier, my wife is a big fan of polyomino games, so we already own a handful. One thing that I often enjoy is the “looking a few steps ahead” aspect that many have to offer. This lets you get to plan your creation, giving just a touch of strategy to an otherwise tactical game. For example, New York Zoo doesn’t have any randomness outside of the set up. This allows you to plan a few steps ahead as long as your opponents don’t thwart your moves.
That brings up another of my issues with the game. One of the main things that I find interesting about Knizia’s tile-laying games is how interactive they are. Whether warfare in Tigris & Euphrates (and Yellow & Yangtze), blocking in Through the Desert (and Blue Lagoon), or fighting for majority in Samurai (and Babylonia), you can never afford to ignore what your opponent is doing. In My City, you can absolutely ignore what your opponent is doing. Without spoiling too much of the legacy elements, there are some “race to achieve X” but other than that, it’s largely a solo affair.
Verdict #
In the end, the twenty-four plays that I got from the legacy campaign of My City (along with a few attempts at the “eternal games”) were enough for me. I didn’t have a bad time with it, but in a crowded polyomino market it didn't have enough to make it worth keeping. I got my money's worth, but it's time to reclaim the shelf space.
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