With every game in existence getting a “Roll & Write” version these days it’s hard to care about each and every one of them. However My City was always a game that intrigued me and a faster playing, shorter campaign seemed like something I might get to the table with the family or the Games Night crew. My City Roll & Build is a campaign played over 12 different scenarios, split into 4 chapters. However, before you get too excited about those “different scenarios” they may not be as different as you might think! For example, the first three episodes, the training wheels are very much on. In fact the rules introduce you to building types, but then types are not even a thing until episode 2. And the big twist for episode 3 is the addition of a single scoring feature. The core concepts of the game are easy to understand though. Like many roll and writes, you roll a die and draw something on your map. In this case the dice you roll form a Tetris style block for you to draw, a third die gives you the type of building. You must place buildings so they are adjacent to other buildings and do not cross the river, mountains or forests. Trees you don’t cover up score you points, while rocks you don’t cover up lose you points. Groups of buildings together score you points. To allow you some mitigation the game also allows you to pass, not drawing a shape on your map but giving up some points as a penalty. At any point, instead of passing, you can choose to drop out of the round instead. Once all players have dropped out players tally up their points and the highest score wins. My City Roll and Build is a very gentle roll and write. It has a combination of simplicity and variability that makes it easy to get to the table and play several games back to back. Is it a great roll and write? It’s certainly not Cartographers, which has more depth, strategy and different ways to score, nor is it Welcome To the Moon which has vastly different game modes baked into its 8 episode campaign. But it is pleasant and straightforward and a nice way to pass twenty minutes at the end of a gaming session.
