Sorcerer City
Sorcerer City is a new board game for 2-4 players in which players are competing against one another to build the very best magical city, one that must be rebuilt every single year. This game takes place over the course of 5 years and each year will become increasingly challenging.
Each year you’ll have a stack of tiles and you’ll be tasked with placing them into the city. There are 3 different goals which will help you acquire the varying resources within the game, and there are 4 different resources.The four resources are magic, influence, money and prestige. You gain them by scoring them within the districts in your city.
Each year players will take their stack of tiles and one at a time they will flip them over onto the space in front of them. Once one of these tiles are placed, they may not be moved. Any tile can be placed next to another, but the objective of course, is to score the varying resources. There are 3 kinds of goals you will be scoring in your placement of these tiles. Group Goals, Shield Goals and Line Goals.
Group Goals score all of the same colors connected in a district, for example, this would earn the player 5 money for scoring their yellow district, 1-2-3-4-5.
Line Goals score 3 or more tiles in a straight line like so. This Yellow Money Shield would gain the player 4 money.. 1-2-3-4.
Shield Goals score one point for every single adjacent shield tile. For example, this Red Influence shield would score 3 Influence. 1-2-3. While this Green Shield would score 6 Prestige.
At the end of each year, these resources may be used to help each player prepare for the next year. Magic can be converted into influence, money or prestige, Influence will determine the end of year bonuses as well as who purchases first. Money can be used to purchase additional tiles. Prestige are the victory points within the game, used to ultimately determine the winner.
Magic is converted into another resource because at the end of each round each player will play one of 3 cards face down in front of them. The card they place face down converts their magic into additional resources of whatever resource they played, influence, money or prestige.
The player with the highest influence gains prestige based on what year it is and they use the effect of the card placed below that year. The 2nd player gains either the prestige or gains the effect of the card, the third player gains whichever the 2nd player did not choose. The last player, no matter the number of players will receive 1 free tile based on what year it is.
Money is then used to purchase tiles from the center pool of tiles. Each player may purchase up to two tiles unless the player has at least 20 money in which case they will be allowed an additional tile purchase.
All players convert their Prestige into victory point tokens and then all players reset their resources to 0 before starting the next round.
What I haven’t told you yet, however, is that when you were flipping those tiles at the start of the round, you were being timed. All players take their turns simultaneously and they must complete their city in under two minutes! When the timer runs out, all players must immediately stop what they are doing! This becomes increasingly difficult as players are gaining more tiles each round…
Speaking of tiles, at the end of each year, each player must gain a monster tile from the stack of Monster tiles. These too become stronger with each passing year. They will negatively impact your districts by covering up goals, destroying tiles or even cancelling out adjacent goals. You will have the opportunity to stop these monsters through the purchases of tiles that counteract them.
Each year you’ll be scoring more influence, prestige, money and magic allowing your powers to grow and prestige to stack. At the end of the 5th round there is only a first place influencer winner who gains prestige for their efforts.
Players will then count up all of their Prestige and the player with the most at the end of the game wins.