Play and Create two cities tile by tile

If you’re in the market for a light, accessible, easy-to-learn game to play with non-gamers, there are a number of quality options out there. However, games that can handle player counts from the usual 3-4 all the way up to 7 are a rarer breed indeed; and that’s why we’re taking a look at Between Two Cities.

Between Two Cities is a competitive tile-laying game where you use tiles that represent shops, factories, offices and the like to create your very own city — well, cities actually, because you’ll be responsible for two of them. It’s also a drafting game which means that, every turn, you’ll select two tiles to play from your ‘hand’ of tiles (one for each of your cities), put them on the table face-down, and then pass the remaining tiles to the next player. When everybody’s decided what they’re going to play, everybody reveals simultaneously — and that’s usually where the yelling starts.

Why? Well, those cities you’re building? You’re not doing it alone — you’re building them along with the players on either side of you.And that is the heart of Between Two Cities — it’s a competitive game, there can only be one winner, but you have to work together with your neighbours if either of you are going to stand a chance. Because, and this is a delightfully fiendish touch, your final score is the number of points scored by your lower-scoring city. So self-interest, if nothing else, will drive you towards ensuring that your little slice of suburbia is all that it can be.

And now we go back to the yelling I mentioned earlier. You see, whatever plans you might have had while choosing your tiles, you were in complete ignorance of what your neighbour might have chosen. And that can lead to frantic (and loud) negotiations. “Don’t put that park in your other city, it’ll be perfect for ours!” and so on. You’ll be forced to adapt and make changes as the situation demands because no player is an island in Between Two Cities. This takes place over three rounds, at the end of which every city will be a complete 4x4 grid, and then you score.

A word on drafting, here — as game mechanisms go, drafting is easily one of the most engaging. Although it might take a round for new gamers to get it, they immediately understand its ramifications once they do. The pain of having to pass some really good tiles to the next player makes for some deliciously hard decisions. However, Between Two Cities tempers that pain because you’re at least nominally allied with the player you’re passing to, making this an interesting twist on the formula.

I’ve seen Between Two Cities played by a number of different players, from experienced gamers to newcomers to the hobby, and it’s gone down well almost every time. It has enough decision-making to be interesting and not intimidating and, at an approximate playtime of about half an hour, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. What’s not to like?