Barcelona

• Designer: Dani Garcia
• Publisher: Board&Dice
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 60-90 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Barcelona is one of my favorite cities in Europe to visit; I have been there on a number of occasions, and I am already planning to be there again next February.  Part of what I love is the architectural beauty of the Eixample – the expansion of the old city, masterminded by Ildefons Cerda.  The filled city blocks and street grid with diagonals is easily recognizable.

In this game, “It’s the mid-19th century. The city of Barcelona is the most densely populated city in all of Europe. Shortly after the old city walls were finally destroyed, Ildefons Cerdà, who is now considered the inventor of urbanism, presented the plan for the creation of the “Eixample”, the expansion that Barcelona so desperately needed. Its construction began in 1860. In Barcelona, you will take on the role of builders in 19th-century Barcelona who are working on the new expansion to the city. Your main goal is to construct buildings to accommodate the citizens who want to leave the old city, and in the process, you will also build streets, create tram lines, and build public services. You may even decide to explore “Modernisme”, a new architectural and arts style that has been gaining popularity among the rich.”

To set up the game, you’ll need a fairly large table as there is a main board, a side board, and each player has their own player board as well – and there are still stacks of tiles and currency chits to be kept somewhere too!  The main board has a street grid of part of the Eixample with 16 blocks in play.  At the end of each vertical, horizontal and diagonal street is an action tile.  Beneath this are the citizen tracks (with a Cerda scoring tile over each of the three sections), and to the right is the Cerda scoring track.  The side board has room for the Modernisme tiles, the Public service tiles and the cobblestones.  Each player board has a Sagrada track at the top, areas for Modernisme tiles beneath it, and then tram passengers below that.  The bottom of the player board is for storage of your pieces and chits.

In short, Barcelona is played over a variable number of rounds interrupted by three scoring phases before a final scoring phase. Every round, each player takes a single turn consisting of two or more actions, a building phase, and then preparation for their next turn. At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins.

On a turn, there are four mandatory steps:

1] Place 2 Citizens 

2] Construct a building 

3] Check to see if a Cerda scoring is triggered

4] Take 2 Citizens from the bag

Placing Citizens – place your two citizens in either order on any unoccupied street crossing. If there is a cost printed on the board there, you must pay those coins. Then, you may perform any or all of the actions corresponding to that intersection; trace the 2 or 3 roads to the edge of the board to see the possible actions:

• Gain 1 Cloth+3VP or Gain 2 coins.  Store coins and cloth in the bottom row of your player board.
• Place Cobblestone – take Cobblestone from bottom row of your board (making more resource storage), place it on side board adjacent to any other Cobblestone tile. Gain benefit of space you cover
• Build 1 Wide street or 2 narrow streets; placing them on appropriate board spots and gaining whatever benefits you cover on the board.  Next, gain VPs for connected street tiles (regardless of ownership) in your current street – 1VP per narrow tile, 2VP for wide tiles.  Always take from the leftmost stack on your player board, as you empty a stack, you will advance on Cerda Board as indicated.
• Build an Intersection – Place an octagonal Intersection tile from your board onto any street crossing that does not already have one. Take any printed benefits still visible (i.e. not yet covered by street tiles).  As you place intersection tiles, you will reveal Benefits; and you can gain some of these each time someone places Citizens on one of your Intersections.
• Take a Modernisme tile – Take one of the 4 face up tiles from the side board and place it on one of your player board spaces, paying a cost if visible on that space. Each tile has a scoring condition and each space has multiplier slots to the right of it.
• Improve a Modernisme Project – On your player board, move one of your 5 Mondernisme cubes from the bottom space to the top space. This lets you score the tile multiple times as shown.  Pay the cost if there is one.
• Build a Public Service – Build a Public Service tile type you have not already built, cost seen on the tile as well as VP reward. You always get 2 Cerda track steps and each type of tile gives you a “free” action – though you’ve had to pay coins for the tile, so it’s not free.
• Move your Tram – The first time, place your tram on any unoccupied street; afterwards, move your tram 1 or 2 street spaces (though you move through your own street tiles for free). When you stop, if there is no Passenger on that street space, you can place one of your own from your player board (usually with a cost). If it is on a Street tile, the owner of the street tile scores points as if that Street tile had just been placed.  The owner of the Passenger gets to take the action associated with the street it was placed on.

Constructing a building – If you are able, you MUST construct a building – even if you don’t have any Building Markers left.  Each building shows the types of citizens that must be visible in adjacent intersections.  To the right of this are the bonuses/maluses you will get for building that tile. Remove the citizens used to build to their respective tracks at the bottom of the board and then score VPs equal to the lowest visible number on any track.  Place your leftmost Building marker on the tile, and if you have exhausted a stack, move up on the Cerda track as indicated.  There are 3 different levels of square buildings, you can build any level on an empty space; and you can always overbuild a higher level building on a lower one.

Check for Cerda Scoring – If any of the three Citizen tracks has reached the end of an unscored block or passed into the next block, the Cerda scoring will happen for that block. All players look at the scoring tile over the block, calculate their score for it and multiply it by their current multiplier based on their Cerda Track location.  For the first two scorings, all players who are past the starting space on the Cerda track have their marker returned to the starting space. Do not reset pieces after the third and final Cerda scoring.  It is quite possible to score zero here, either because you have not met the scoring criteria or because you are in a x0 multiplier space on the track.  

The game continues until the third Citizen block is scored.  At that point, you continue playing to the end of the current round so that all players get the same number of turns.  Then it’s time to calculate the final scores.

• VP have been gained through the game
• VP for the rightmost visible number in the Cobblestone row on your player board
• VP for the rightmost visible number in the Tram Passenger row on your player board
• VP for each Modernisme tile on your board, base score of the tile multiplied by the position of the marker to the right of it

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken by higher final position on the Cerda track.

My thoughts on the game

As I mentioned at the top, I love traveling to Barcelona, and as a result, the theme was very appealing to me.  I like the way that the rules have Historical Note sections in green where the designer gives some context to certain game mechanisms and how they relate to actual historical events in the development of the Eixample.   While it is not necessary at all to know this, it certainly adds a bit of flavor and realism to the game (and let’s face it; oftentimes Eurogames can have pasted-on themes – so it’s nice to see some of the reasons for the design elements). 

The game has a lot of meshed mechanics, and while most everything furthers your scoring, you’ll need to figure out how to maximize your scoring – generally in things with multipliers – whether that is for particular Cerda scorings or for the Modernisme tiles at the end of the game.  Timing for the Cerda scorings can also be important because you reset to the start space with each block scoring.  That being said, if you’re not going to score that many points from a Cerda score, you might be better off ignoring it and working on more long term plans instead…

It can be hard in your first plays to figure out how to take efficient actions, but once you’ve seen how the game plays out, you’ll get a lot better at it.  The games can also play out differently if you set up the game with randomly placed actions; there may be particularly good intersections for particular strategies; and playing the solo game also helped me get more experience at determining the best places to place my Citizens. 

The action selection mechanism is really interesting to me, and I love the many different options that you have to consider on each turn – trying to decide which two or three actions suit your current position.  In games where the tram action is in a central location, you can often use your tram and some well positioned street segments to move to various places and get even more flexibility to your options.  I also like the positional play of the citizens; sometimes I might consider building a suboptimal building (for my own scoring plans) in order to leave citizen tokens on a particular intersection to stop anyone else from taking actions there on their turn.

You can definitely try to plan ahead as play moves around the board, but ultimately, you probably have to wait until your turn starts as there are so many moving pieces to the game.  You really might not know what you want to do or where you’re able to do them until that time.  It makes for an interesting puzzle, but also one that requires some thinking, and the game length of 60-90 minutes feels accurate. 

Ergonomically, there are a number of mildly frustrating issues – mostly with bonuses that are covered up by chits; and there is enough room to place them somewhere else on the board so that you can see what you might gain without having to move all the chits around.  Likewise, the intersection cost might be covered by Citizen tiles, and you have to shuffle things around to see that.  On the positive side, though the game is complex, the back page of the rulebook is a nice succinct reference of turn structure and reminder of the most common icons that you will see.  All of the tiles have explanations in the back section of the rules as well.   I would have also liked some of the asymmetric setup details to be printed on the player board itself as opposed to only have been in the rulebook.

None of the ergonomic issues are gamebreakers, and otherwise, the game is a beauty to look at.  The artwork on the board and tiles is fitting for the time period, and I do love watching the Eixample grow on the board – with both the streets and the iconic blocks of buildings sprouting up before your eyes.

Scoring seems complex at first with all the multiplication; but once you have played once or twice, it’s pretty easy to do.  If you are arithmetically challenged, just use the calculator on your phone!  Scores in our first game were in the 150-190 range, but there are VP tiles for +100/+200 and +300/+400!  I have been able to greatly improve upon my scores with more experience, so use this as a warning that you’ll likely need a few plays to see how things work out and how to really make sure you get the right multipliers with the right Modernisme tiles at the end.

For me, this is the right balance of complexity, game length and tactical decision making.  I obviously still have room to grow as I have yet to need the +400 scoring tile which is included in the game, and I have definitely enjoyed learning how to play the game better with each play.  At the moment, I look forward to another opportunity to try to do better.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Dan B. (1 play): My one game was with four players, and everyone in the game (including at least two people who had played before) agreed that the game was not that great with four. I believe the scorings happen at about the same pace as with fewer players (since spaces on the tracks get blocked off), but the number of changes taking place between your turns, combined with the small number of turns you get, made it feel too chaotic and tactical. Late in the game there were often very few useful options – I am not a fan of games that sputter out in this way. That all being said, I liked what it was trying to do and I would be willing to play again with fewer players.

Craig M. (1 play):Much of my thinking is in line with Dan’s despite playing with one fewer. We mentioned at the end of the game that adding a fourth player would make the game more tactical and chaotic. We were already feeling similarly with just three. I’m not sure our options petered out quite as much as they might have with four. The game felt like it needed a bit more editing with a few extras that could have just been left out (the victory point bonuses for the first initial builds are a good example of this). I think I would like to try this with two players as I feel what the game is trying to do might shine best at that number. The game looks great and as Dale mentioned. The production has a few small issues, but they don’t really get in the way of game play. There is an audience out there that is going to enjoy this very much.

Ryan P. (3 plays): I’m a big fan of B&D productions, Barcelona included. This one definitely skews to the tactical side and is surprisingly quick; I like that this sets it apart from the other B&D euros. I do agree 4 players isn’t for me – the tactical nature and evolved turns can lead to some large downtime. 3 was good – I look forward to trying 2 players as I could see it being my preferred count, but not sure yet. I find the grid system worker placement to be a great take on a classically familiar mechanism – fresh but easily relatable. My favorite game element is the Modernisme – it plays like a “build your own endgamer” which sings to me. My one turn off is the way points for buildings escalate so much. ~60% of the way into the game, it becomes about making the best of the actions available on the few build spots. I’d prefer tension in potentially deciding to take strong actions with no build, but I’ve never felt that tension because my experience so far says always build. Also, random tile draw from the bag can lead to not being about to build late, which can feel bad because of this high scoring. I’d probably be pounding the table for Barcelona if I wasn’t so averse to this one aspect. Overall, a very solid game that I am actively seeking an opportunity to hit the table again soon.

Alan H: (3 plays): My first game was 3 player and it worked really well. We all enjoyed the combinations that were possible and the results were close but there did seem to be a way to play to maximize your score. In the second game involving one of the original players, he took a completely different approach and went for trams. For over half the game he was a long way back in the scoring, but in the last quarter of the game he overtook the two other players and won by miles. So much for one way to play. Another game was called for soon. We found that there were many ways to make progress, but unlike the first two games we all took a more balanced approach on what to focus on. Scores were lower but tighter. We’ve really enjoyed it.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale Y, Ryan P
• I like it. John P, Alan H
• Neutral. Dan B. (4 players), Craig M. (3 players)
• Not for me…