Forbidden City

RRP: £19.79
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RRP £19.79
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The new Chinese Emperor Wei Zu Yang is still too young to rule. His advisors hope to strengthen their influence throughout the imperial palace – better known as the Forbidden City. In turn in Forbidden City, the advisors place down room tiles in an attempt to close off the rooms when their influence is the biggest. To increase their power, they also need as many imperial dragons as…
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Awards

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You Might Like

  • The increasing build of strategy.
  • The filler game feel.
  • The ease of learning and teaching to others.

Might Not Like

  • The way everything is loose in the box.
  • Having to punch out the middle parts of all the coins.
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Description

The new Chinese Emperor Wei Zu Yang is still too young to rule. His advisors hope to strengthen their influence throughout the imperial palace – better known as the Forbidden City.

In turn in Forbidden City, the advisors place down room tiles in an attempt to close off the rooms when their influence is the biggest. To increase their power, they also need as many imperial dragons as possible on their side. The advisor with the most influence in the Forbidden City wins this exciting game of power!

During your turn, you play the tile from your face-down pile and place it face up on the table. You may place your tile only against a tile of the same color, unless they are divided by a wall. When you close off a room — that is, when it's completely surrounded by walls with or without archways — you calculate its total value. Each tile forming part of the room generates 1 point, each dragon in the room generates 3 bonus points, and any other rooms directly accessible from the closed off room through an archway are also added to the score.

The player with the most advisors in a closed-off room receives the total value in Chinese coins. The player who has the second-most advisors in the closed off room receives half the total score. In the event of an uneven total score, the amount is rounded down. If there are two or more players with the most advisors in the closed off room, each of these players is awarded half the total value.

The player who has the highest amount in coins at the end of the game is the most powerful advisor of the Forbidden City and therefore wins the game!

 

Reiner Knizia is the designer behind Jumbo’s tile laying game; A 2-4 player back and forth struggle of power and influence in the Forbidden City.

Components

Jumbo is no stranger to quality punch board components, due to their good standing within the jigsaw puzzle world. Forbidden City comes jam-packed full of strong thick punch board, with 108 square tiles (30 of each of the four colours), 84 Chinese coins – which are also victory points in values one, two, 10 and 20, a double-sided start tile and a self-assemble Imperial Temple that creates the centre piece to the playing area.

Why not look for yourself inside the box with my video below.  

Gameplay

In Forbidden City, players start off with a stack of their own coloured tiles and draw the top one every turn into their hand. They then place the tile following these two rules; the tile must at least border on one other tile and the tile placed must be the same colour as the joining tile, unless separated by a wall.

The aim of the game is to score the most coins/points by completing rooms where you have the most advisers present. Dragons within those rooms add more points. Completing a room that is linked by an archway to another room, completed or not, also gives the player additional points, and when placed well a tile can add up many more points this way.

When each player has only two tiles left in their stack the game ends, and depending what is on those remaining tiles depends on if extra last chance points are scored.

Coins are totalled up and whoever has the highest amount, is the most powerful adviser of the Forbidden City and wins the game!

Final Thoughts on Forbidden City

Forbidden City is a good, quick, no longer than 30-minute game, that is easy to learn from a well written and laid out rulebook. 

The level of strategy is medium, although at first glance looks to be lighter. As the game goes on the higher points to be scored are from the rooms that are adjacent to the room you are completing that turn, and so looking for quick wins and small rooms linked to bigger rooms with archways becomes more the focus than creating a huge room where the adviser power struggle maybe more problematic.

I think Forbidden City has a good level of replay-ability as different player counts and the shuffling of tile order will mix things up every time. Plus, after getting used to the game the Starter tile can be flipped for a more advanced start, changing gameplay up again.

Forbidden City would be a great gateway game for teaching strategy as it builds steadily throughout, but also has enough appeal for more competent players to enjoy a quick filler game.

Zatu Score

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You might like

  • The increasing build of strategy.
  • The filler game feel.
  • The ease of learning and teaching to others.

Might not like

  • The way everything is loose in the box.
  • Having to punch out the middle parts of all the coins.