BOARD OF WONDER

Do you dream to be an architect in an ever growing city?
Do you want build a great engine in a board game?
Will you able to tackle anyone in your way?
If you say yes, then this is might be a perfect game for you.

In Ginkgopolis you’re taking a role of an architect that build shared city plan, you’ll be proposing your idea to develop the Ginkgo Biloba city with the help of your team.

The game itself is very simple because all you got to do is draft a card that also function as your engine, then do one of the action such as : exploit its resources, expand the city, or build it vertically.

In each and every action you take there will be some micro rules, but the player screen will be very helpful as reminder in the middle of the game.

For me the game itself contains several combined mechanic which work really well and produce fun interesting gameplay.

The base game itself have a large amount of replayability not just from the variations that come from initial tile placement, initial draw, and its starting engine, but also for me it comes from the interaction between players using the same tile area.

Players will have to reconsider to think tactically to anticipate opponents movements while still have to strategically expanding and gaining majority.

This game nature is really cutthroat, player cannot be a solitaire player and do things their own way, because players will be encouraged to cut opponents area majority to destroy their points while adding some to your points

In the game, player will have 3 actions that can be chosen each turn after the draft. The first is “Exploit” where player gain their desired resource.

The second one is “Urbanize”, where player will expand their teritory while expanding the city.

And the third one is “Construction” action and for me the idea in this action very clever, it really streamlined the game where you’ll reduce the card in draft while making it as your engine and then mark it with construction token so players won’t forget to add new cards to the deck.

The “Construction” action also create highly interactive environment in the game which I mention above, because beside it will potentially give you points, it will also deny other player potential points and a lot of times it will cut off their chain of area control and also creating the main engine in the game.

To me Ginkgopolis is like playing 4X or precisely a 3.5X because we can’t eliminate other players.

In the game you’ll be like exploring when gaining new tile, exploit when using “Exploit”, expand when you “Urbanize”, and exterminate when doing “Construction”. The only difference is the theme which are very unusual in 3.5X or 4X game.

The setup and tear down in this base game are quite time consuming, although i already using boxes to separate the initial setup cards and tile.

The table space usage is also quite large, at 2 players game it consumed almost 70% of the table (I’m using a 120 x 150 cm/ 4 x 5 ft). I really hope there is an efficient way storage this so saving little of my time and using less space.

Other than 2 minor comments, all i can say that this game is awesome. I play it solo once, but it still missing the interaction i really wanted because the AI will target too randomly. But after trying with 2 players, me and my wife really love it and always having fun to play it.

Considering the interaction among players, adding the 3rd player maybe will spice up the game by giving another target another opponents.

Even though i see the potential in 3 players, i suppose with 4 players it will potentially will become too chaotic and heighten the luck of draws.

How about yourself, how is your opinion on the player scaling?