New York 1901 Review

It’s the dawn of the 20th century and the time is ripe to put your mark on the city’s skyline. In New York 1901, players are attempting to construct ever larger and more prestigious buildings. While this title isn’t as complex as many “gamers’ games,” it hits all of the right notes to be a solid, family-style affair.

Each player is given a set of tiles featuring various buildings. The tiles come in Tetris-like shapes. But you can’t just play them willy-nilly. If you want to construct a tile, you have to own the land it will sit on.

Most of the available land is parceled out into small, two-square plots, though a rare few are on three-square plots. There is an offering of four plot cards from a deck of cards. On your turn, you can take any one of the four plot cards. Say you grab a two-square green card. You can then look on the board and claim any of the two-square green spaces. That might be enough to build a small building. Or perhaps you want to save up until you secure some additional neighboring plots. Once you own all the necessary land, you can build bigger and weirder shaped buildings for greater points.

Buildings also come in three levels of sophistication: bronze, silver, and gold. At first, you can only build bronze. But as the game progresses, you gain the technology to build silver and eventually gold. In addition, instead of taking a new plot card, you can demolish your old buildings and build new ones on the rubble as long as you replace them with a better technology. You can’t tear down bronze and put more bronze in its place. That’s not progress!

Add to that some common special powers and semi-randomized bonus scoring, and you’ve got yourself a fun little title. One of the greatest assets is that New York 1901 is easy to explain. This is a key when playing with the family or non-gamers. There are no long or complicated rules, no litany of exceptions to basic actions, and no text-laden cards to introduce confusion. You have plots, construction, and demolishing and that’s basically it.

New York 1901 is highly interactive. Once you claim a plot, nothing can take it from you. So if I see an opponent trying to get a bunch of plots together in order to build a large building, maybe I snag an adjacent plot just to prevent him from getting the necessary land and spoil his plans. The amount of spoiling you’ll see is group dependent, of course. But you should expect at least some.

Some will prefer to play with a relatively minimal amount as everyone constructs in their own way. Others will find the potential for cut-throat action to be a huge boon to shake up the gameplay. After all, it’s the interaction will provide the most replay value here. The nice thing is that, once you’ve got the plots and buildings, there’s nothing opponents can do to take it away. Before then, though, it’s no holds barred.

It may also seem like there’s a great deal of luck in the plot cards. After all, three-square plots are typically better than two-square plots. And if none happen to show up on your turn, you may be at a disadvantage. But this is balanced against once-per-game abilities available to each player that let them take two cards from the offering or replace it entirely in the hope of getting what they want. And, if you’re trying to secure a group of adjacent plots, a two-square card can be much more attractive than a three-square card.

The semi-random bonuses also tweak the game just enough to provide different incentives. In one game, you might get bonus points for building gold structures next to opponents’ silver and bronze skyscrapers. So, the quicker you can get to gold, the better. But, in another, you may get bonus points at game end for having the most bronze buildings. Suddenly, demolishing has a bit more of a cost and it isn’t always clear how you should proceed. While these bonuses don’t fundamentally alter the game, they do provide enjoyable little modifications that subtly impact how you will acquire land and interact with your opponents.

New York 1901 should succeed fantastically among casual and family gamers. It’s easy to understand, simple to play, yet with enough decision-making to make it interesting. And there is certainly enough substance that hobby gamers can enjoy it as well. While I wouldn’t necessarily bring this title to game night, I absolutely keep it in mind when visiting family or introducing non-gamers to the world of hobby gaming.