Chandigarh

It's 1951. The Indian government has just decided to build a new capital city for the Punjab region. You are one of the urban planners working on this project. This city will be called Chandigarh. As you build the city, there are opportunities to score points. When the city is completed, the highest scorer wins. 

The play area is a 4x4 grid of tiles. On each tile there are empty plots for buildings. The edges of the tiles are streets. One of your two possible actions is to move your architect pawn along the streets and then construct a building next to the junction where it stops. The other action is to take a project card and add it to your project. Taking a project card has several implications. You can have at most three project cards in your play area. When you take a new card and add it to one end of your row of cards, you will knock the card at the other end out and score it. The card being removed will show a condition and specify how many points you gain for each occurrence of this condition on the board. You want to claim cards where the conditions are met (even better if it is met several times) or can be easily met. You will be spending effort to create such conditions so that you can score more points when the card is removed. Some examples of conditions are buildings of two specific colours being right opposite each other across a street, and three tiles in a row having buildings of a specific colour. 

Your project cards affect two other things. They determine the buildings you can take from the supply. You start the game with only two buildings. You will need to take project cards to take more buildings. They decide which colours you will take. Project cards also determine the number of steps you can take on your turn. A project card shows zero, one or two footstep icons. The more of these you have in your play area, the more times you can move and place buildings. 

There are four specialists in play. These are randomised every game. There will be specialist pawns in the city. If you meet them and construct a building of the matching colour, you engage them and you will get to use their power for the rest of the game. These can be very nifty, for example letting you move your architect pawn to any spot next to a green building (park), or scoring you a point whenever you fill up a tile. The specialists themselves also give you points at game end. The different combinations of specialists every game create some variability. 

When you construct a building at the last available spot of a tile, you get to place one of your supervisors on that tile. These will score you points at game end. Every horizontal and vertical street will be evaluated to see who has the most supervisors. The perimeter will be evaluated too. The player with the highest presence in each case scores points. 

In the game I played, I prioritised engaging specialists early. This makes sense because the earlier you get them, the more opportunities you will have to use them. However I found that I didn't use them very often. What a waste. What am I doing?! It is challenging to manage several things at once. You want to create conditions that will help you score points, while at the same time you want to pay attention to how others plan to score points and avoid helping them. You need to pay attention to the available project cards and you probably don't want to create the conditions on them, because someone else might take them before you do. Your choice of project cards affects the building colours you are going to take. Sometimes the buildings you want don't come with the project cards you want. This is a challenge. Timing when to score a card is also tricky. You may need to take a project card, but you feel you are forced to score your other project card at a less-than-ideal moment. Dilemmas! While considering all these factors, you also need to compete to place supervisors. 

Chandigarh is a game about recognising and building patterns. I find it tactical. Project cards available are your opportunities. You want to spot good opportunities to score points. Creating patterns takes some effort. You want to make use of buildings already placed on the board. You need to take the right buildings into your hand before you can place them. The scoring conditions are quite specific, and it is not easy to score many points. The supervisors are your long-term strategy. If you do well, they give you a boost at game end. In the game I played, I completely neglected them. I was too busy scoring points from the project cards. In hindsight, that was probably not a good idea. I found that I tended to score often, but each individual card didn't score much. That seemed to work okay for me, but I think it is also viable to prioritise quality over quantity. You can pick a card which scores more points, or you try to fulfil the condition multiple times before you score it. I feel it is important to watch your opponents' project cards. You don't want to help them fulfil their conditions. In fact, you probably should try to block them by placing buildings where they need to place theirs. 

If you are looking for a mid-weight strategy game with a spatial aspect to it, check out Chandigarh. It offers a few fun twists and presents an interesting challenge.