Solving the Puzzle of Magical Districts in Sorcerer City
Organize districts and find ways to gain valuable resources as the city constantly takes shape in Sorcerer City.
I’m pretty sure that my number of unplayed games continues to grow even as I get more solo games to my table… It’s fine. Ha ha! One intriguing title I enjoyed multiplayer was Sorcerer City. Naturally, it was about time I tried out the solo mode! There were lots of interesting concepts going on with this tile-laying puzzle, including all the monsters. Whoa!
Game Overview
Game Name: Sorcerer City
Publication Year: 2020
Designer: Scott Caputo
Artists: Many (5 Credited)
Publisher: Druid City Games
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
Over the course of several rounds, tiles must be drawn one-by-one to form connected districts that utilize scoring effects. Monster tiles offer challenges, while the bustling market provides ways to augment the small city. With a timed element, speed can be the key to high scores!
First Play
April 20, 2022
Complexity
2
Latest Play
April 20, 2022
Expansions
0
Setup Time
10 Minutes
Lifetime Plays
2
Play Time
45 Minutes
High Score
145
Game Area
40" x 30"
Low Score
94
Busy City Streets
So many components! Actually, it isn’t as overwhelming as the play area might indicate. Each area has its purpose and it isn’t necessary to look at everything at once.
Vendors provide new tiles to add to the stack. This slowly grows in size, while the timer stays consistent to make sure there isn’t too much analysis paralysis going on.
Influence rewards provide bonuses at the end of each round, which is also when the dreaded monsters enter!
It’s an almost entirely tile-driven puzzle that evolves and presents different challenges with the best ways to score.
Taming the Magic
Although the character artwork isn’t used that much, there are some pretty awesome sorcerers in the mix!
Most important of all, though, is the resource track. Magic must be transformed into a single resource at the end of the round, which can be helpful… Or not so much.
For as we all know, magic can’t be split! Another interesting mechanic is how these resources all reset.
That’s right: Victory points are tallied per round, yet any unspent gold disappears. Influence also resets, so to manage everything takes careful work from start to end.
Choosing New Tiles
Decisions about new tiles are also very tricky. Having a huge stack with fairly low-value tiles can clog things up.
I should note, though, that I ended up doing away with the timer. This was a personal choice, also due to the fact that I lost track of it and didn’t want to deal with an alarm.
My play style was still very quick, often placing a tile in the first decent spot. I most certainly didn’t over-analyze.
Purchasing new tiles was almost a conundrum. Although I had a ton of gold some rounds, the cheapest tiles actually seemed more useful in many cases.
Managing Monsters
As if connecting city districts in an ever-growing puzzle wasn’t enough, monsters entered the fray, too!
I took a tile at the end of each round, and the remainder had to cover up market tiles. Effectively, I gained more and more so the game wouldn’t end in immediate defeat.
There are plenty of different monsters that interact in unique ways. For instance, the dragon can actually destroy other monsters… Quite useful in a lot of situations!
These form an exciting part of gameplay, which can lead to more placement decisions when a tile is placed.
A Modest City
With my starting tiles, I put together a decent sort of city. I didn’t maximize the best placements, yet I still managed to generate a fair number of resources.
It seemed like the shields were a lot more lucrative: These required many to surround them in order to count, yet I had a better time with them than some of the others.
My gold was enough to help me pick up a few cheap tiles from the vendors, and the magic translated into scoring.
This was a pretty tiny area, yet I knew what was coming next as I continued to pick up more tiles… A huge city!
Helpful Examples
When more and more monsters came out, I had a couple of questions that were covered well in the rulebook.
Entire sections provide lengthier descriptions and visual examples of what might happen with every monster. Very useful! I didn’t have any other questions.
That’s one important part of playing solo: Quick summary or reference cards are awesome, but detailed examples in the rulebook help eliminate any rules ambiguities.
It looked like I lucked out with my random assortment of monsters. Those dragons were hungry. Ha ha!
A Bustling City
Towards the end, my city was definitely much larger. So many fancy tiles and plenty of ways to find synergies.
Perhaps it would have made sense to have a timer, but I already felt a little rushed with every decision. That felt like enough for a solo play. Not cheating. Not at ALL.
Limited time would have added a challenge, yet I also played every tile. Each tile back has a small icon, so I could have stopped early to avoid monsters. Bring them on!
A dragon helped me out, while the invisible stalker was a menace. Still, I had a pretty nice outing this first time.
When Great Ideas and Mechanics Drag On
In the end, I thought everything worked together really nicely to create a very clever sort of tile-laying puzzle. The monsters created challenges and although I bypassed the main timer element, I still went as quickly as I could to create a city each round. There was a lot going on, and it was awesome! Yet there came a point when I felt like it was too much.
Maybe it was simply that there was a round too many. Although it was a great moment to see all of my collected tiles together, there was the sense that the game overstayed its welcome. With a somewhat lengthy setup process, too, it just felt like it missed the mark for me. Although a solidly good or even great game, it just fell short of my hopes.
That’s not to say that I won’t ever play it again! There are some excellent concepts here, and nothing quite like it in my collection. Even the resource reset each round was great: Getting too much gold was pointless, and I had to make a few adjustments as I went to make sure I used each tile in the most efficient way. Give me the magic. The MAGIC! Ha ha!
At the same time, I didn’t explore some other strategies… Like the rainbow tiles! These are like wilds, and I only used a single one. My scores during back-to-back plays were all over the place, yet still far from the top tier. Still room for improvement! I might wish for a few changes, yet this is still a very different and interesting title to play again.
A Dominant Strategy
It didn’t take me long to cut down my play time a lot, even though I wasn’t using the timer. Still not the way it was intended to be played… But closer than I figured.
As I worked on picking up different tiles, I quickly figured out that the shield scoring was very lucrative if I could pull it off. Shields were less finicky, and easier to complete.
The monsters kept throwing some wrenches in my plans, yet this worked out much better… Almost too good!
I wondered if this might be the secret to scoring well. Not the most promising in terms of variety, but still fun.
Session Overview
Play Number: 1 and 2
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
Play Details: Standard Difficulty Level
Outcome: 94 and 145 (1 Win and 1 Loss)
Randomized cards provided me with some information about how much influence I needed each round, and I did pretty well in picking up these special rewards! I enjoyed this one in many respects, although it felt like it was missing something… Or had too much? Perhaps a little more streamlining would have made it excellent for me. Still, this was an interesting take on a tile-laying game!
%
1 Play
Affordability
Price & Value
5
Functionality
Challenges & Mechanics
7
Originality
Design & Theme
7
Quality
Components & Rules
9
Reusability
Achievement & Enjoyment
7
Variability
Distinctness & Randomness
7
+ Pros (Positives)
- Figuring out how to build the city every round is a very fun sort of challenge that constantly changes.
- Monsters provide additional challenges that can actually be helpful in certain circumstances with other tiles.
- Resetting resources between rounds encourages a diverse strategy of creating different city districts.
- The rulebook provides excellent, detailed examples for the monsters and other parts of gameplay to help a lot.
- Influence rewards are never guaranteed, and the threshold for winning these cards is only partially known.
- Speed makes it difficult to make the best decisions, yet finding out the results during each round is quite fun.
– Cons (Negatives)
- Although the included insert is excellent, the setup and cleanup processes take up a noticeable amount of time.
- The idea behind a lot of the elements is fun, yet the game can feel like it overstays its welcome in the last round.
- Many of the higher-cost market tiles aren’t as useful as the lower-cost options, making them feel unbalanced.
- Having a timer provides a sense of urgency, yet this can be a little too tense and hard to track when playing solo.
Victory Conditions
Score 120+ Points
- Overall Goal Progress 50%
Goals and Milestones
Score at least 100 points.
Score at least 150 points.
Continue the Conversation
What do you think of Sorcerer City? I had a great time working through the puzzle, despite some of my concerns over gameplay. Are there any other games that this one reminds you of? It sits in a class all its own in my collection, which is pretty awesome! I don’t have the inclination to play for a bit, but I’m very interested in trying out other strategies!
I think it’s better for a game to end too early (“I want more!”) than too late (“Bored with this now”). Morten Monrad Petersen has some excellent blog posts on this, as well as on the “tipping point” in many games between buying things that make your engine better and running your engine to generate victory points.
Very true, and Morten is awesome! There have been times I haven’t loved a game because I only got to use my fully-developed tableau or engine maybe once or twice… But stepping back, that’s what makes them great! Having those final few turns generate the victory points makes all of the earlier work worth it. When I maximize what I’m doing too early, it feels like I already won and am just going through the motions to gain more victory points without doing much else.
The idea of a game ending too early or too late is really important. Thanks for bringing it up! It also doesn’t necessarily have to do with time, either: I’ve had 20-30 minute games drag on, while excellent games can keep me wanting more even when they end after 2-3 hours.