Who doesn’t want to be an urban planner?
There was something about the theme of Chandigarh that really grabbed me. The art looked fantastic and although I hadn’t heard a lot about the game prior to picking it up, everything I had heard about the game sounded really positive. Chandigarh is a game where you undertake the role of urban planners in1951, helping build the new city of Chandigarh assisting Le Corbusier through moving your architect around the city and placing buildings to match corresponding project cards for points. After all, determining who the best urban planner is probably comes down to points at the end of the day!
How does it play?
Who doesn’t want to be an urban planner?
There was something about the theme of Chandigarh that really grabbed me. The art looked fantastic and although I hadn’t heard a lot about the game prior to picking it up, everything I had heard about the game sounded really positive. Chandigarh is a game where you undertake the role of urban planners in1951, helping build the new city of Chandigarh assisting Le Corbusier through moving your architect around the city and placing buildings to match corresponding project cards for points. After all, determining who the best urban planner is probably comes down to points at the end of the day!
How does it play?
Chandigarh is not a complex game, although the board can become a little crowded towards the end of a game. On your turn you can take one of two actions, move your architect through one of the city’s streets and in doing so you may place a building on an empty plot each time you stop or you can take a new project card which helps you acquire new buildings through placing it adjacent to one of your existing project cards. Moving is simple, you can’t end your turn or build where another player is and you can’t backtrack on the same turn, and you get to move as many steps as denoted on your project cards.
Scoring occurs during the game, when you place your 4th project card down, you score every instance of the pattern occurring on one of your project cards at the far end of the row. At the start of the game, you will choose a project card to give you something to begin working towards, as well as two buildings of your choice.
There are 4 building types in the game, shops, amenities, temples and parks, and corresponding specialists for each of the colours which will help give you special ongoing actions each round if you build the appropriately coloured building on their spot. There are a large number of specialists included which keeps the game feeling fresh with each play and they’ll do things like allow you to swap buildings, move across the map or score points by placing certain buildings.
As an addition to those basic actions, you also get to place a disc of your colour in the centre of a plot if you are the last person to place a building in the last vacant space, and this contributes towards a small area majority for bonus points at the end.
The game ends when one player takes the last building of one colour, at which point you complete the round and you all have the opportunity to score one of your remaining project cards that you haven’t yet scored. Then you add up all your points acquired through the game, including for any specialist tiles, and then finally score for the area control of each street based on the score markers at the top.
Any negatives?
I have a couple of minor gripes with the game, I think the rulebook and the examples in it could be a little clearer. There are some street tiles with two vacant plots on one side and it is unclear, at least to us, whether these can both be built on if you are on the edge of that street but on the whole we were able to get set up and play quickly without referring to the rulebook too much. It also can be a little chaotic towards the end which makes scoring and taking the turns a little longer than towards the beginning and the abstract nature of the game might be a little overwhelming at this point for some players. A solo mode could probably have been implemented too, although I’m sure someone will probably come up with one in the future.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I am delighted by Chandigarh , and I think it works really well at all player counts. The art and theme are delightful and the game never feels like it is running too long, coming in at around 60 minutes and less with subsequent plays. It has a really nice take on pattern building, where you can be aided or hindered by other players happily pottering around the city placing the buildings they want. I also think the replayability is really good, with a large number of double sided specialist tiles which you can use, and a variable map set up meaning no two games will ever play out the same. There are two sides to the map tiles, depending on player count, as well as removing a certain number of buildings dependent on player count which helps keep the game balanced.
It strikes me that Chandigarh is one of those games that will go under the radar for a lot of people, it won’t be commonly talked about in end of year best lists, and it doesn’t have the hype of other pattern building games but I think it is really quite special and well worth having a look at with enough simplicity that means players of games like Cascadia and Harmonies could pick up but just a little more depth and challenge due to the shared map of the city you are all building up.
Zatu Review Summary
Zatu Score
80%
