The Golden City Board Game First Impressions

Build a store on the coast and spread inwards to the Golden City

Paper money and big hands.

From far away, the adventurers have come to the island with the golden city in its center. Just arrived, they open up the first shop directly at the coast. Already it is possible to open up other ones in the villages along the street connections.

That’s worth it because through that you’ll get goods, keys, money, and concessions that you need for getting ahead. And finally the first is able to establish himself in the golden City and thus get the most precious trading contracts.

So you build Stores by using sets of cards which you bid for at the start of each turn. The cards are in the 5 different land types and you need two of the same type to build in that area.

Around the board are 4 different areas in 4 different territories around the Golden City in the middle.

Bidding for the cards involves putting a big cardboard hand on the set of 2 cards you want, that was my favourite bit, the big hand!

When you build, you start at the coast and the area you build on gives you a bonus. This is either more land cards, money, goods etc Most importantly, 4 of the spaces give you a key.

The goal is to work your way along the roads to the Centre of the board and the Golden City. You need a key to build in the middle of the Golden City and that’s where the big points are.

Every so often there’s a scoring round where you get points for building in certain areas or owning certain types of goods.

The player with the most points wins.

The Golden City Summary

I enjoyed playing this. It’s part of the same series as Valdora, which I also enjoyed.

Hand management and set collection are something I like in games. I love the choices and the diversity required in goods and the building areas required.

I preferred Valdora but this is a good game in itself.

Update Sepetember 2022

Back in 2013, I was very new to the hobby and played as many games as I could as often as possible.

A lot of them were unique to me at the time but clearly not very memorable. There were a lot of medium weight Euros where you collect stuff… a LOT!

Jesta ThaRogue