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Chairman of the Board: Building on a grid

> ‘Quadropolis’ board game review

Ed Appleby
Senior Columnist

 

kkeknkx

ll admit it, I’m a city-building slut.

Whether it’s pumping hours into
traffic management in Cities: Skyline,
or over-designing a peasant village
in D&D—which the PCs will just ride
through, every time—I love working the
ins and outs of a good city simulator.

Quadropolis (2016) is a city-building
tile placement game for two to four
people designed by Francois Gannon
and published by Days of Wonder.
In the game, players are tasked with
building their own metropolis on a
four-by-four grid by selecting buildings
from a common pool. Buildings can
either contribute or utilize power or
people in order to score points. Points
are scored based on building type
and placement with regards to the
players’ grid and proximity to other
buildings. The player with the highest
score after four rounds of play wins.
Like any good city builder there

are several rules and stages, yet there
is also an element of simplicity in the

gameplay. When selecting buildings
from the pool—which is also laid out
on a grid—you must use one of your
architects numbered one through four,
and then only place that building in a
corresponding slot in your own city.
Once a tile is placed from the pool,
the next player cannot take a tile from
the same horizontal or vertical from
the grid. This, in addition to a first
player token—the Mayor—can add

a pretty strong element of strategy
and psychology to the game.

The placement of your own
buildings has a heavy tactical element
as well. There are several ways to score
points, and you will need to decide if
youre going to specialize or generalize
in your builds—a similar strategy to 7
Wonders (2010). Generalizing allows
you to pull from a larger pool of points,
while specializing generally gives
you more points, but puts you at risk
of being blocked by other players.

I love this game. It’s quick and
fun with a healthy dose of strategy.
Both casual and more experienced
players will find this game engaging,
and its fun and simple style makes
it a good game for younger players
who are just being introduced to
more complex strategy games.

6¢

 

“It's quick and fun with a healthy dose of strategy.”

Horror next door

‘Overcooked 2’ picks up where the original

Illustration by Ed Appleby

 

A true (and funny) depiction of Vancouver

> ‘Avocado Toast’ theatre review

Jerrison Oracion
Senior Columnist

 

kreknknk

ast year, the Vancouver

TheatreSports League put on the
production Oh, Canada, which explored
the country’s history in an improvised
way. In that show, they played a game
where they did the same scene in
three different Canadian cities. Now,
imagine the same game over an hour
and a half and you get Avocado Toast.

Created by League member
Lauren McGibbon, the show tackles
everything related to Vancouver, and
it is one of the best shows that the
League has ever made in my opinion.
In it, a tour guide gives us a tour of
the city and shows us the aspects that
make Vancouver so distinctive.

In the opening night performance
on July 5, McGibbon played the tour
guide and the Vancouverites in the tour
included Margret Nyfors, Ken Lawson,
Rae Lynn Carson, Jullian Kolstee, Taz
VanRassel, and Ed Witzke. Throughout
the show, the tour guide uses an
umbrella as a stick. The cast performs
a game where they do the same scene
in different places, except this time

they do it in three different Vancouver
neighbourhoods. In the show I
watched, they acted out going through
the Grouse Grind normally, and then
they did the same scene in Yaletown
depicting the wealthy residents of that
neighbourhood, and finally in Main
Street, depicting the people in that
area. The cast’s depiction of those
neighbourhoods was exactly like the
people that I see in those places.

Next, two construction workers
(VanRassel and Kolstee) go inside the
theatre and tell the tour group that
they will demolish it, and they have
to convince Miss Concord Pacific by
9 pm that the theatre is a place where
they make people laugh and that it
should not be demolished to make
way for apartments. This references
the increase of apartments being built
in the city as well as the #SavetheRio
campaign. Miss Concord Pacific is
played by someone in the audience.

The cast then plays a game where
they get someone in the audience to give
them a word in a foreign language and
they say something that sounds like the
word. On opening night, the members
found someone who also speaks Japanese
and worked the words that they used
into the scene they were doing.

The Vancouverites next
sing a song about something on

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the spot around a campfire.

In the second half of the show,
they pay tribute to Vancouver being
recognized as Hollywood North by doing
a film in the style of a Hallmark Channel
film that takes place in Vancouver. In
the performance I watched, the tour
group did a film about an employee
in Science World taking a break and
finding his purpose in the world. During
certain points, Lawson and Carson
came in as fitness enthusiasts and had
the audience do a fitness trend. I was
laughing a lot when Lawson said that
the previous fitness trend they did
was a fad. There were a lot of funny
moments from each of the members
throughout the whole show, especially

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when they referenced something
about the city that I recognized.
The design of the set has a
lot of aspects of a typical street in
Vancouver. Before the performance,
they served avocado toast in the
lounge—which is the name of the
show and is a stereotypical part of
Vancouver cuisine. I had a few great-
tasting pieces myself, and I hope they
offer this during every performance.
Avocado Toast makes fun of
Vancouver in a way that is very
funny and relatable, and it’s one
of the shows to see this summer.
Avocado Toast is now playing at the
Improv Centre until September 1.

Image by Vancouver Theatre Sports