Rebuilding Seattle First Impressions

Rebuilding Seattle has players doing just that…

…against each other for reasons.

The great fire of 1889 has burned down most of downtown Seattle, and you are the city planner tasked with rebuilding it. Manage economic resources to improve neighbourhoods, erect new buildings and iconic landmarks, and address the needs of an ever-growing population to make Seattle better than ever!

Rebuilding Seattle Game Overview

Quick Rules Summary

Players each run a borough of Seattle and take turns taking one of three actions.

The first is to build by paying for a card and resolving the action on it. This will mostly allow you to move on your tracks and will always allow you to add a building tile into your borough.

The second is to activate one of the six event cards, resolve it and turn it face down. These will have effects to gain points and money not just for you, but all other players too.

The third action is to enact a law by choosing one on your player board and resolving the effect.

How do you win?

When all six event cards have been activated, the round ends and players gain income from certain buildings on their boards and certain end-of-round card effects.

After 3 rounds, the player with the most points wins.

Main Mechanisms

There is tile placement from the building tiles which is the main one. This involves playing polyomino-shaped building tiles on your player board.

USP

Nothing new here really, It’s a bunch of things done before, put together into one tidy package.

Theme

Not much in the game, but I did find reading about the Seattle fire quite interesting.

Setup

Lots of things everywhere. It is a bit of a table hog.

Components & Artwork

The components are very standard and the artwork is incredibly minimal. The graphic design is pretty good though.

Ease of Teaching

The game is very easy to teach with all three of the different actions very straightforward and each of the three phases of the game even more straightforward.

I think explaining the importance of the Quality and Amenity tracks is key. The value of the Quality track score is based on how far the position of the matching cube on the Amenity track is behind the population meeple on that track.

So if the restaurant cube on the Amenity track is on 9 and the meeple on 12 that is -3. If the restaurant quality track is on 14, you would score 11 points (14-3). Each of these tracks is activated once per round due to the event cards so it’s key to have these in a decent position.

Similar Games

If you’re going to play a city builder where income and reputation are key, I’d always go with Suburbia. For a polyomino game with a different theme, give Barenpark a go! It’s cute.

Rebuilding Seattle Review

Positives

Very simple gameplay.

Tricky choices at every turn. All the cards offer different buildings and abilities, but each pair on the card won’t always match up with what you need. The buildings have symbols that can benefit you but buildings also cover up symbols on your board that score for a certain event card.

Money is tight, especially early on.

Each player board has different laws for a spot of replayability.

Polyominoes are always fun!

Negatives

The fun bit, the building placement, isn’t all that important. This could have been a tableau builder, just keep the card instead of placing a building tile.

The scoring as I mentioned earlier… you can get left behind.

The 6 event cards stay the same in each game. Hopefully, more sets and options will become available.

It’s a table hog.

Summary

A very fun (if not a little pointless) use of polyomino tiles in a nice medium-weight euro.

Jesta ThaRogue