Steamopolis Review
Image: Corax Games
INTRODUCTION
Every now and then, a board game comes along which catches my attention. It may be because the game in question is created by a designer I have great respect for, or possibly a genre that I am particularly fond of. A recent example of such a board game is Steamopolis, the 1 – 4 player game designed by Gerhard Hecht and published by Corax Games in 2019. For me, the idea of combining worker placement with engine building wrapped in a steampunk veneer is not a tough sell to put it mildly.
Full disclosure: a review copy of Steamopolis was kindly provided by publisher Corax Games.
COMPONENTS
Photo: Fredrik Schulz
I am not sure if the term is applicable to board games, but the fact remains that Steamopolis has one of the best “graphical interfaces” I have ever seen. At a cursory glance, one might find themselves a bit overwhelmed regarding the numerous icons and action locations displayed on the main board. But take a closer look and you will find some truly clever examples of how to integrate art with mechanisms. Tubes extending from the top of the machine tiles connect with your steam pipeline on your airship, creating a sensation of interlocking apparatuses. Each column of the market rows has an emblem that corresponds with each category of tiles, which in turn facilitates the set-up of Steamopolis. The steam gauge on your airship has icons indicating how far certain tokens can be advanced on the various tracks, allowing you focus on your strategy rather than wrestling with the actual components. In my book, this is undoubtedly one of artist Dennis Lohausen’s finest work to date.
As for the actual components, publisher Corax Games has ensured that Steamopolis is a board game of high quality throughout: from the thick cardboard tiles to the icy blue acrylic gem resource tokens. Everything has a nice look and feel to it, making the game a joy to behold when setup on the table. Although I must issue a fair “warning” to those where table space is a premium because the main board in Steamopolis is huge! I had to resort to flipping it 90 degrees and playing it horizontally because it was impossible to fit on my dining table when set-up in a vertical orientation. Still though, a very pretty board to behold.
OVERVIEW
Steamopolis takes place in a wonderous world of imagination and ingenuity, where steam powered airships float majestically above the clouds heralding the dawn of a new technological era. No other landmark embodies this mentality of inventions and technology than Steamopolis: a monolith of a building, reaching to the sky as far as the eye can see. The time has come to elect a new mayor, and no one is more suited for the job than a highly skilled engineer of steam such as yourself. You will outfit your airship with upgrades and gadgets in order to generate greater amounts of steam, thus allowing you to take to the skies as a demonstration of your engineering prowess to the cheering masses at ground level. Only by carefully planning your aeronautical route throughout the various city levels will you be able to amass enough support from the people in order to become the new ruler of Steamopolis.
In order to be elected as the new mayor, players will need to amass enough votes from the citizens of Steamopolis. In practice, as is tradition within the Euro board game design philosophy, this amounts to earning victory points throughout the course of the game. This is achieved primarily by purchasing and installing Machine tiles from the various market rows of the city. By adding these intricate gadgets and upgrades to your airship you will be able to generate more steam and collect resources in the form of crystals and/or gears, allowing you to travel to the higher situated levels of the city where the more powerful factories i.e. worker locations are situated. Richard Ham once described Steamopolis as a cleverly disguised worker placement game and I am inclined to agree.
By outfitting your airship with Machine tiles you will be able to utilise the steam to acquire resources and bonuses. Photo: Fredrik Schulz
On their turn, players must perform one out of three available main actions where the first one is known as Build Pressure. Your airship is powered by steam, in order to reach the higher levels of Steamopolis you will need to generate greater amounts of vapor which will be used to propel the zeppelin to the higher situated market rows and factories of the city. This process of accumulating power is represented on your personal player board as the Pressure gauge, at the start of Steamopolis each player has three tokens steam tokens at their disposal. The Pressure gauge is numbered 1 through 8, which correlates to the eight levels of the city. In order to perform the associated action on a particular floor of Steamopolis, players will take one steam token from their Pressure gauge and place it on the selected city district. Seeing that you start the game with only 1’s and 2’s, if you want to reach say level 7 you will need to generate more steam. This is achieved by the number of boilers currently outfitted on your airship. For each boiler, you are allowed to move a steam token one space to the right on the Pressure gauge which rewards you with more power. Each airship has two built-in boilers and more can be acquired through installing certain machine tiles, the more boilers you have in your possession the further you can move your steam tokens on the track. And here is the best part: when moving the steam tokens, you are allowed to skip currently occupied spaces on the Pressure gauge. This mechanism creates a momentum where players can essentially leapfrog past their own steam tokens, allowing for a more rapid increase in power which they will utilize during future turns of the game.
Each city district provides the option to either perform an associated action or visit the Market to purchase upgrades and banners. The blue and orange meeples are passengers you can transport to the various city levels for rewards in the form of added steam or victory points. Photo: Fredrik Schulz
Once you have accumulated enough steam, the next step is to Set a Flight Plan. This is where we get to the part that Richard Ham previously alluded to, the fact that at its core Steamopolis is indeed a cleverly disguised worker placement board game. The main board is divided into eight rows, each one representing a level of the titular city. During this phase of the game, players will choose one of their steam tokens from the Pressure gauge and transfer it to a city row of equal or lower value than the chosen token. This mechanism can most definitely be described as a classic example of the worker placement genre, seeing that no two steam tokens can co-exist on a particular city district i.e. worker allocation spot on the main board. It is important to note that players are not executing the chosen action, they are simply reserving the right to do so during the final available action which we will get to in just a moment. Because there is one more key feature of the Set a Flight Plan action that is worth emphasising which is a sub-mechanism called Release Steam Trough Your Machines.
Remember earlier in the review, when I mentioned the Machine Tiles? Apart from being a source of increasing amounts of victory points, these tiles also serve to generate income in the form of resources, points or additional bonuses of sorts. When taking the Set a Flight Plan action, before actually placing the selected steam token on a corresponding city district you have the option to use the accumulated steam to power the installed machine tiles. By basically paying a cost of one steam per machine tile, players are able to activate their installed upgrades and in the process reap their associated reward. The catch being that you are lowering the value of the chosen steam token for every activated machine tile. This mechanism creates a really interesting dilemma, for example do you use your level 7 steam token to reach the more lucrative city districts that are situated at the high end of Steamopolis or do you use it to generate income but can then only place the token on the lower-tier levels?
Each tier of Machine tiles has an increased cost but also rewards larger amounts of victory points. This particular tile would reward you with one crystal if installed and activated on your airship. Photo: Fredrik Schulz
Once you have placed all your steam tokens, or as many as you see fit given your current strategy, then it is time to proceed to the third and final action you can perform which is to Visit the City. During this action, one at the time you will activate each district where you have placed your steam token(s) during the previous step Set a Flight Plan in the order of your choosing. It is important to emphasis this mechanism because this is the part that is so fascinating about Steamopolis. The ability to choose the order of activation generates a very dynamic state of play, allowing players to visit a certain location and spend resources only to then acquire additional revenue through a later activation of another floor of the city. Upon visiting a city row, you have the option to either perform the action of the associated district where you have positioned one of your steam tokens. Alternatively, you can opt to visit the Market row with the purpose of acquiring the leftmost face-up Machine tile.
These tiles serve a dual-purpose, one way to utilize them is to pay the associated cost of resources and then install the purchased tile on your airship. By taking this course of action, you will be able to activate the installed upgrade during the optional Release Steam Through Your Machines activation. But instead of using the newly acquired Machine tile as an upgrade to your airship, you also have the option to outfit your airship with Banners. By adding a banner to the aft of your zeppelin, you will immediately be rewarded a certain number of votes i.e. victory points depending on what category of banner you purchased. Some banners grant you points based on how many machine tiles you currently have installed on your airship whilst others reward you with votes based on the number of banners that are hanging from your aeronautical vessel. Regardless of which application you choose, for each Machine tile purchased the cost of resources for future purchases will increase but so too will the reward of victory points. Each of the markets in Steamopolis has a statue token at the final tier, once the market row has been emptied of Machine tiles the statue token is revealed and placed at the top of the main board. Once three of these statues have been erected the end of the game is triggered and then one final round of play commences. The player with the most votes is then declared the new mayor of Steamopolis.
THE SOLO MODE
As far as rules or game mechanism goes, playing Steamopolis in solitaire differs very little compared to the multiplayer experience which is a quality I truly appreciate in any given board game. Much like Uwe Rosenberg’s Nusfjord, the solo mode in Steamopolis turns the human player into their own worst enemy or rather their Shadow. In addition to your own supply of steam tokens, at the start of the game you will also collect a matching set from an unused player colour. These will be utilized during the Visit the City action, for each city district that contains one of your steam tokens you will add a Shadow token. On subsequent turns, your Shadow nemesis will block your access to these city districts until the next time you visit Steamopolis resulting in a new placement phase of shadow tokens. At the end of the aforementioned action you will discard a certain number of the currently available Machine tiles, simulating progression in the market availability caused by the acquisition from another player and also acting as a timer for triggering the end-of-game state by uncovering the statue tokens as previously described. The second key difference that separates the solo experience from the multiplayer equivalent is the fact that performing the Build Pressure or Visit the City results in you losing a victory point before taking the action in question, allowing for some pretty tense decisions early in the game when points are a scarce commodity.
Each character provides you with a unique set of engineering skills and/or starting resources. Photo: Fredrik Schulz
FINAL THOUGHTS
I will be the first to admit that I am a huge enthusiast of the worker placement genre of board games, especially if the game in question manages to present a new take on the tried and true formula. That is one of the reasons I personally enjoy Architects of the West Kingdom, Paladins of the West Kingdom or Nusfjord to name but a few of the board games I have previously reviewed and I will happily add Steamopolis to that roster. This is a board game design that truly emphasises the proverb “getting all your ducks in a row”, which happens to be a game mechanism I thoroughly enjoy. If you like the idea of mastering a board game based on its design and underlying system then I highly recommend taking a closer look at Steamopolis.
