Episode 196: Ginkgopolis

1) The Pegs discuss their recent game plays including Sleeping Gods, Vampire the Masquerade: Heritage, Ride the Rails and many more;

2) All the Pegs review Ginkopolis; and

3) Look back at Egizia: Shifting Sands.

Show Notes

00:01:11 – Trivia: Multi-User Dungeons!

Banter

00:06:43 – Aldabas Knock Knock Joke Contest

00:08:25 – More Dorfromantik

00:12:25 – Tough Mudder Time!

00:16:20 – DC Visit and International Spy Museum Gift Shop

00:21:58 – Peghead Spotlight

Plays

00:23:12 – Sleeping Gods – Red Raven Games ; Designer: Ryan Laukat; Art: Ryan Laukat;

00:38:10 – Ride the Rails * – Capstone Games; Designer: John Bohrer; Art: Ian O’Toole;

00:48:03 – Vampire: The Masquerade – Heritage – Nice Game Publishing; Designer: Babis Giannios; Art: Lukas Siegmon;

01:03:08 – Ruins of Mars – Atheris Games; Designer: Don Riddle; Art: Ronan Le Fur, Sebastián Koziner, Calder Moore;

News

01:12:27 – Keystone North America Kickstarter

01:15:42 – Stormlight Archive Boardgame

01:18:32 – Dice will find a way: Jeff Goldblum plays an RPG.

REVIEW: Ginkgopolis

01:22:00 – Rules Breakdown

Ginkgopolis is a hand management, tile-laying game designed by Xavier Georges, with art by Gaël Lannurien and originally published in 2012 by Pearl Games, then reprinted just this year.  In Ginkgopolis, players compete to expand the city of Ginkgopolis through card play, tile laying and stacking, and area control.

Every tile in Ginkgopolis has a number and a color, the color representing both the resource that the tile will grant under certain circumstances, as well as the set to which the tile belongs.  Over the course of the game, players will add tiles either to the exterior of the city, or by stacking on top of existing tiles.  In either case, when players add a new tile to the board, they will place one of their control tokens on it as well as a crane token to remind them this is a new tile during a later phase in the game.

Actions are taken via card play.  Players will select a card from their hand and place it facedown before them, either with or without a tile.  Cards are revealed simultaneously and actions taken in player order.  If a card is played with a tile, that tile is added to the city as mentioned above. In addition, the card is then kept in front of the player and will grant bonuses to future actions.  These bonuses will stack on bonuses already earned through previous cardplay, so as the game goes on actions may trigger powerful combos.

If played without a tile, resources are gained based on the level of the tile whose number matches the played card – level here meaning how high up the tile appears on on the stack, with the number of gained resources matching the tile’s height.

After actions are taken, all players pass their cards to the left and then draw a new card.  When the draw pile is depleted, play is paused to rebuild it.  Here, the existing discard pile is reshuffled, and new cards are added to the deck matching any new tiles that have been added to the city – this is where the crane tokens mentioned before come into play.

The end game is triggered when either a player has placed all their resources or the tile draw pile has been exhausted twice.  Players will score points from any end-game power cards they have played into their tableau, as well as their presence in the city.  The player with the most control cubes in any contiguous area of three or more of the same colored tile will score one point for EACH control cube in that area, both theirs and their opponents’.  Players with the second and third most cubes will score points equal to the number of their OWN control cubes in the area.  The player with the most points, wins.

01:24:34 – Review

01:44:44 – Ratings

ReRoll

01:53:22 – Egizia: Shifting Sands – Stronghold Games; Designer: Acchittocca, Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli, Stefano Luperto, Antonio Tinto; Art: William Bricker;

Check out our original review for Egizia: Shifting Sands during Episode 171.

Gameplay Photos

* Disclosure: These titles were received free of charge by the publishers or distributors. If you are interested in submitting a title for review, please read our Review Policy.