Episode 163: Sorcerer City

Sorcerer City is a 2019 tile-laying game published by Druid City Games and designed by Scott Caputo, with art by Noah Adelman, Lina Cossette, David Kegg, and Damien Mammoliti. Players take on the role of rival wizards using magic, influence, and gold to grow their cities, fight monsters, and compete for victory.

At the start of the game, each player receives a set of identical tiles, each containing patterns of shapes, colors, and scoring shields. A scoring shield indicates how tiles connected to the shield’s tile will score at the end of the round, and different shields score in different ways – for example, a shield my score for every tile of the same color in a row connected to that tile, or for every other shield tile adjacent to the scoring tile. Tiles used to score for one shield tile may also be used to score for other shield tiles, forcing players to make careful decisions to make each placement as efficient as possible.

The players each shuffle their stack of tiles, and then will have two minutes to simultaneously draw and place tiles, keeping in mind that once a tile is placed it cannot be later moved.

At the end of two minutes, each player scores their resulting city. Each shield scores in one of four categories based on the color of the shield: victory points; gold, which will be used to buy new tiles; influence, which will determine shopping order and some special benefits for the round; and magic, which players will choose to add to one of the other three categories before the market phase.

After scoring, players will have the opportunity to purchase new tiles or possibly obtain tiles for free via special abilities. Tiles purchased from the market have a variety of effects – some similar to the effects in the starting deck, some adding additional scoring opportunities or special abilities when later placed in the city.

After the market phase is done, the monsters arrive. Monster tiles are chosen in secret at the start of the game, and each player will receive at least one monster tile to be shuffled into their deck. Monster tiles are placed like normal tiles during that phase of the game, but each monster “breaks” the game in unique ways, such as blocking the player from placing new tiles next to it, forcing tiles to be moved or switched, or implementing end-of-round effects that players must plan for as they complete their city.

Each round, the number of tiles in a player’s supply will grow, but the amount of time they have to place them never increases above two minutes.

After the end of the fifth round, the game is done. Players add up their total victory points – whoever has the most points wins!

01:44:51 – Review

02:15:35 – Ratings