Skyrise board game review

In 2016, I played a fun board game at SaltCon 온라인 슬롯사이트 that left me thinking about it long after – Metropolys. The only problem was that the game was first published in 2008 and was out of print, and I couldn’t find a copy anywhere. I’ve kept an eye out for it ever since. That’s why I got super excited a few years ago when I heard the board game was being reimplemented as Skyrise!

And I was even more excited when I learned it was being designed by Adam Wyse (a game designer I’ve met, played some games with, and reviewed a couple of his games, Head of Mousehold and Gorilla Marketing) and published by Roxley Games (a publishing company that produces fantastic games and that we’ve also reviewed a bunch of).

But the real questions you’re asking are, “What’s the Skyrise board game all about?”, “Why did you find it so fun?”, and “Is the reimplementation any good?”

Skyrise board game
The game components are fantastic too.
 

How to play Skyrise
At first glance, Skyrise looks like a city-building board game. After all, the game board is a cityscape in the sky and players are placing buildings all over it. However, it’s really a spatial auction game with territory control and resource collection.

The goal in Skyrise is to get the most points by winning building sites, earning favors across islands and factions, and accomplishing public and secret objectives.

Set up
Each player begins with a player board and gets the 12 buildings and Wonder matching the color of the player board. Each of the buildings has a number on the bottom. And the distribution of the numbers various depending on the color set. Those numbers with a dot plus the Wonder building are set to the side for Era 2. The rest are placed face up by the player board so all players can see the number on the buildings remaining in player areas.

Skyrise board game
I’ve got my starting set of buildings and I’m ready to go.
The central board is composed of island boards. The number of islands equals the number of players. So in a 3-player game, 3 island boards are connected to make the game board. Players then randomly draw and place a resource disc in every neighborhood section on the board.

Skyrise board game
The island boards connect together well with the central island piece.
The Island Control card is placed by the board as well as 2 Panorama cards (randomly drawn from the 5 cards). These cards list some ways to gain points for this game. The Patron Value tiles are randomly placed face down on each Patron spaces (A, B, C, and D).

Lastly, the 20 Wonder cards are shuffled and each player draws 3 Wonder cards. They don’t have to choose which one to use until Era 2 of the game. The also draw 1 random Secret Objective card.

Skyrise board game
I don’t have to choose which Wonder card I want to use until the start of Era 2.
Playing
The game is split into 2 Eras and players tally points at the end of each Era. Each Era is played over a series of auctions for building territories – which are the heart of the game.

So let’s talk about the auctions!

The player who won the last auction begins the next. The first auction in Era 1 is started by a randomly chosen player and the first auction of Era 2 is started by the player with the lowest Wonder card.

To start an auction, the player chooses one of their unconstructed buildings and places it on an unoccupied neighborhood on the central connecting board or next to an existing constructed building.

The number on the bottom of the buildings indicates their bid value. So during an auction, players place their building bids number-side up. Going clockwise around the table, the next player can choose to increase the bid or pass. If they choose to increase the bid, they take one of their buildings with a higher number and place it in an unoccupied neighborhood adjacent to the most recent bid.

Skyrise board game
The auction bids get bigger as they go.
The auction ends when one of the following occurs:

All players except the most recent bidder passes.
There are no unoccupied neighborhoods next to the most recent bid.
A player places their Wonder building (which can’t be outbid).
Once the auction ends, the winning bidder flips their winning building over to construct it. All other bidding buildings are returned to their owners. If a Wonder was constructed, the player enacts it’s effect.

That player also collects the resource disc in that neighborhood and places it on their player board. If it’s a Patron disc (A, B, C or D), the player also gets to peek at the corresponding Patron Tile to know it’s secret value.