Pyramid Review
Rocketville
Published by Avalon Hill/Wizards of the Coast
Designed by Richard Garfield
Full-color boxed set with 5 Popularity Markers and 100 Campaign Promises in five player colors, game board, Campaign Rocket Token, 21 Robot Cards, 20 Endorsement Cards, 6 Undecided Tokens, 64 Campaign Promise Cards, four-page 8"×8" rulebook; $35
Rocketville is a bidding game set in a large space city. All players tour together with the Campaign Rocket until it has toured every district, and the player with the most popularity at the end is elected mayor (which is presumably a good thing). The first aspect of Rocketville to grab the eye is the use of a 1950s future look (not unlike the film Robots). The colors are generally soft and do not detract from game play. The score and rocket tokens are pleasing to the eye. The board is a six-by-six playing field surrounded by a white victory track over a starfield. In the playing area are six contiguous districts in four colors (each of six squares). The iconographic bonuses depicted on each square indicate slightly different attributes to be possessed, including Zone (such as "Residential," "Rich," and so on), drawing a Robot Card, drawing a Robot card, drawing a Campaign Promise card, or +/-1 Popularity. The Campaign Promise deck holds two kinds of cards: white (10-39), which can be played equally in any region; and color cards, which are better than white (40-48) in their home region, but poorer elsewhere (1-9).
Setup is fast, assuming all . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: October 17, 2008
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