Between Two Cities (from now BTC) was first published in 2015 by Stonemaier Games and in 2022 the Essential Edition came out which features the base game plus the “Capitals” Expansion.
In BTC players take the part of renowned land planners who are invited by two cities to help them reshape their city centers. It can be played by 1 to 7 players and lasts about 30 minutes. Players build simultaneously two cities, cooperatively, one with the player on their left and one with the player on their right. The form of each city must be exactly 5×5 tiles. At the end of the game, each city is scored, and each player’s score is the lowest of the scores of the two cities he helped design.
At the beginning of the game, a 3×3 landscape mat together with a City Token are randomly placed between players. There are seven mats available, each one with a different theme and layout. Each mat has four spaces where building tiles can be laid out and five landscape spaces which will remain as is.
The game consists of three rounds, during which players, draw a certain number of tiles, then secretly draft two city tiles, then simultaneously reveal them and place them, one in each of their cities. Subsequently, players pass the remaining tiles to their neighbouring player. In the first and third rounds players draft regular building tiles whereas in the secord round they draft duplex tiles. There are seven different types of building tiles: Houses, Civic, Factories, Shops, Taverns, Parks and Offices.
Each building type is scored differently at the end of the game, so players must study their city carefully in order to decide which tile to pick during the draft. For example each house is scored according to the total number of different building tiles present in the city whileas parks as scored as a set with 1 park tile scoring 2 points, 2 connected tiles scoring 8 points, 3 tiles scoring 12 points and 4 tiles scoring 13 points as a group.
Now, let’s see how the game scores in our usual scoring categories.
Components
Stonemaier games has some of the greatest components in its games and this game isn’t an exception. The Landscape mats are eye-catching. There are also some interesting City Tokens that depict famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower or the Pyramids but they are only used to mark the time that players are ready to reveal their chosen tiles during the draft. The building tokens are made of high-quality, thick cardboard and beautifully depict different parts of the city. It’s very useful that they also depict the way they are scored at the end of the game so practically all the information is there and there is no need for checking with the rulebook. The way each building tile is scored is also depicted in reference cards which are available, one for each player.
It would be nice if there was an insert in the box, for keeping the building tiles more organized and use it also to select tiles for each draft, like in the similar game by Stomemaier games called “Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig”, which actually is a reimplementation of BTC. 9/10
Gameplay
This game lasts about 30 minutes. Players choose cards simultaneously during the drafting process although some discussion occurs between players to anticipate for better planning.
Playing BTC is like trying to solve a puzzle, which yet has multiple solutions. I found the process entertaining and not very mind-boggling. The final score for each city usually is very close to one another. That means that success hides in the details so you must take your time to think which configuration of building tiles works best for you: A city with many houses, shops and parks or an industrialized city with factories and offices?
A nice thing to consider is that the game, which normally plays with 3 to 7 players can also be played by 2 or even 1 player with slightly changed rules. Especially for the 2-player games, 2 different variants exist so you can choose whichever suits you best. In the first variant, players don’t cooperate at all, instead they build autonomously 2 cities each and at the end whoever achieves the bigger score by adding the score of his 2 cities, is the winner. In the second variant, players build a common city and a second one with an imaginary player called “Jamie”. As in the normal game for 3 players and up, the lowest score of each player’s cities is his/her final score.
Gameplay can further be enhanced by using the “Districts” variant in which you score extra points for your city if you have certain types of “districts” in it, that means zones that include one or two certain types of buildings.
All in all, I found the game’s gameplay quite fulfilling, featuring original mechanisms. My son, 7 years old, enjoys it too and is quite good at it as well. 7/10
Learning Curve
BTC has pretty quick setup and easy rules. As soon as you learn how to fill your 5×5 grid and how each building type is scored at the end of the game, you are ready to start your master planning. When teaching the game to my little son, at first he was bored by the explanation of rules and a little confused by the different types of buildings and how they are scored but he quickly got it all figured out. 8/10
Theme
The question is if you feel like a land developer or not by playing this game. I personally did feel like I was shaping a city and I like that the scoring of each building is related to their actual value. Three pieces of park, for instance, produce a very good score. If you add a fourth one, it doesn’t add too much to the value. Houses don’t want a factory adjacent to them. Pretty logical. So, in general, the theme of the game is well represented during gameplay. 7/10
Replayability
There are many games out there fitting the 30-minute-duration slot. Does BTC have what it takes to be able to find a place in your gametable often enough? For me it seems that it does have the key elements for the task, namely: easy rules, variability, challenging gameplay. Variabiblity is enhanced by the different landscape mats that are randomly placed for each city and form the base on which each city is built. The ability to play with a great variant of player numbers (from 1 to 7) without losing any of the game’s joy certainly helps to replayability. Easy rules mean that anyone, from a kid to an elder can equally enjoy the game. 7/10
Player Interaction
BTC is a cooperative game. Interaction has the form of discussing with your partner for each city about the placement of tiles. There is nothing you can do to interfere with other players’ plans except for the two-player variant which plays with a third “ghost” player. Because of the nature of the game this is not a criterion that should really be scored so I’ll not score it and exclude this criterion from the final scoring.
Final Thoughts
Between Two Cities is a fine little game in which you try to build a better city than your opponents while also cooperating with them. Its main mechanism is drafting but it also includes an original type of play in which you build a city together with your neighbour players and get the score from the lowest scored city of the two. This brings a bit of fresh air to boardgaming and combined with easy rules, great components and intriguing gameplay results in a fine game that could find its way to your gametable more often than you could imagine.
Recommended for: Everyone
According to our scoring system for board games, scoring categories have different weights. Components have 13% weight, Gameplay 35%, Learning curve 6%, Theme 5%, Replayability 26%, Player Interaction 15%. According to this system and the above scoring in each category, overall weighted scoring of the game is:
Overall: 7.38
