Sam & JT's Top 5 City-Building Games

Skyrise… the more I play, the more I enjoy the strategy with the auctions and when you try to win or maybe lose some to help you in other strategy aspects of the game.

Great stuff! I'm looking forward to the upcoming videos.

Where is Glen More II? That's the best one. Building out your little highland clan territory. So good. Underwater Cities would probably be number 2 for me.

I absolutely love Underwater cities. Great list. Thank you for the video.

Suburbia is a great city builder

I swear Sam would call Monopoly a city builder on account you build houses and hotels!

Carcassonne is one of our evergreen games and the Princess and the Dragon expansion makes it even better (and meaner 😉). Carcassonne was the first game I bought back in 2007 and didn't know I was starting a new hobby. For that reason alone, it would be one of my top picks. We picked up the older edition of Kingsburg in the last year and that would be somewhere on my list since I love dice placement games. Castles of Burgundy would be close to the top of my list, but BGG doesn't list it as a city builder despite having to place several different building tiles (I guess it's considered geographically bigger than just a city). It's been a while since I've played Underwater Cities, but I remember really liking it and we have the New Discoveries expansion on our shelf of shame so maybe we will get it back to the table next month (this month, we're still working through the games themed on real cities on our shelf of shame for your July contest). Lisboa is a heavy city (re)building game that is also quite good once you play it a couple times (it has a steep learning curve). As with the other Lacerda games we've played it has interesting, interrelated actions and lots of replayability. I was thinking Lisboa might have made JT's list, but alas, no. Another really fun city builder (and defender) with interrelated actions is Merv: The Heart of the Silk Road. Some game reviewers have described it as "Lacerda-light" since the interrelated mechanisms feel similar (and Ian O'Toole also did the artwork). If you're intimidated by heavy Lacerda games, Merv might be an easier introduction to medium-heavy games. The only negative comment I have about Merv is it ends just as it feels like it's ramping up. In a game of Merv, each player will only get 12 turns, there are lots of different routes to scoring, and you won't have time to chase them all. It's one of those "if I only had a couple more turns..." kinda of games. Good fun though and the art and components are excellent.