Underwater Cities: The Deal

Hi! It’s Ryan from Nights Around a Table, and this is Underwater Cities, a route- and engine-building worker placement game for 1-4 players. Here’s The Deal.

Planet earth topside is pooched, so you and your friends are leading the expansion of humankind into the almost-final frontier by building … Underwater Cities. Underwater Cities.

You’ll simultaneously claim action spaces and play cards – 3 each per round – in order to build two different types of domed cities, the 3 different types of buildings that support them, and the 2 different types of tunnels to connect them, all while building an ever-powerful engine that you’ll get to run 3 times during the game. At the end of three production cycles, everything you’ve built gets you points, and whoever has the most points, wins!

Here’s the main game loop: each one of these ticks is a round. Each round, each player takes turns taking three different actions on the common board, and playing a card alongside each of those actions – and if the colour of the card matches the colour of the action, you get to build the card to your tableau, too! The actions and the cards let you build a bunch of stuff, and when you reach this first production phase, all the stuff you’ve built pays you a pile of money and resources and points. Then you repeat this process, taking actions and playing cards and building stuff until it all pays out again in the second production phase, and then one more batch of three rounds gets you to the third and final production phase where you get more money and resources and points. Then the stuff you’ve built gets you even more points, and you cash in all your leftover resources for money and money for points to see who’s won the game.

Well, does it sound interesting? If you want to learn more about the rules of the game, click the link at the end of this video or in the description below to watch my complete How to Play video, which includes the overview segment you just watched. And if you like what i’m doing, click the badge to subscribe, and the bell to get notifications. And now, we dance!