Over the holiday break from work, I had the opportunity to play a bunch of different board games with friends and family. It's been awhile since I've done one of my game reviews so I thought it'd be fun to take a look at one of the favorite games we played over the break: Welcome To.
Welcome To is a game that belongs to the "roll and write" genre, though in this case it's "flip cards and write" as there are no dice included in the game. The game itself plays 1-100 according to the box, was created by Benoit Turpin, and is published by Deep Water Games.
The 1-100 player count isn't a typo since this is a game that can support as many people as A) you have player sheets and B) that can see the cards that are flipped over. I should note that the one player game is actually a different game entirely, there's a set of solo rules (and corresponding cards) but that's not something that I've really explored.
Ostensibly, Welcome To is a game where you are an American architect in the 1950s. Your goal is to create the nicest three streets, complete city plans, and ultimately win by scoring the most points. Each player gets his or her own player sheet (simply rip them off of the included pad of player sheets) and each player will need a writing utensil.
Players all play simultaneously using the same cards in the middle of the table. Through careful planning (and perhaps a healthy dose of luck), the goal is to score as many points as possible before the game ends.
I should note that the game that I own was one that I bought off of Kickstarter last year and so it's possible that some of the components in my game will be different than what is available in the retail version. Kickstarter has been a fantasticmoney sink source of new board games for me for a few years now! In fact, I imagine a few of my future game review posts will also feature other games I bought from Kickstarter.
To start a game of Welcome To, players shuffle the 81 construction cards and split them into three equal stacks. Then, the top card of each stack is turned over.
On one side of each construction card is a house number and on the other side is one of six possible symbols. Once the cards are flipped over, players then look at the three pairs of cards and pick exactly one pair to use in their city plan. You must place the house number on one of your three streets (with the streets being like "real" streets in that houses must go up numerically from left to right). In addition, you may also use the associated symbol if you can (and if you want to, it's optional).
The special symbols allow you to do things that (usually) score you more points including placing pools, building parks, or simply raising the value of specific sizes of housing estates.
For example, in the photograph above each player would have three choices: They could write the number 2 down on one of the houses on any of three streets (remembering that smaller numbered houses have to be on the left) and then add a fence, they could write the number 3 down on any house and then increase the value of a specific size of housing estate, or they could write a 9 on a house and then take a "bis" penalty (which allows you to fill in a second house on a street with a "B" designation, such as 10 then 10B before you get to house 11).
Once all players have made their selection from the three options (and written everything on their player sheet), the top card of each stack is flipped over and the process repeats.
The game ends when either someone completes all three City Plans, someone fills up every house on all three streets, or someone can't make a legal move for the third time. At that point, the game ends and everyone adds up their points. Highest score wins.
The one thing that I can say for sure is that once the game is over, someone at the table is bound to say "let's play again, I think I have a better idea this time." The game is pretty quick, especially once you know what each symbol does (the game does come with super helpful player guides which is nice). A full game shouldn't take more than 25-30 minutes once you have the rules down (and quite honestly, you might finish closer to the 20 minute mark if everyone makes decisions fairly quickly).
The Bottom Line:
Pros:
Cons:
Overall Score (out of 10):
8: Very good - enjoy playing and would suggest it
Welcome To is an excellent little game that is plenty of fun for everyone. The game is basically a competition with yourself, that is, during each play you kind of want to see if you can beat your score from the last time...and if you just so happen to beat everyone else at the table so much the better. In fact, I'm super competitive but I found myself lost in my own little world when playing the game and simply didn't bother trying to pay attention to how anyone else was doing until the end of the game. I actually didn't care if I won overall, if I made my own little town plan that I was happy with then I felt like I won!
On the flip side, this is a solitary game disguised as a multiplayer game in a lot of ways. The only true interaction with other players is that the first person to complete each City Plan (there are three total) gets a few bonus points then everyone else who completes the same City Plan on a future turn gets a standard amount of points that doesn't change for anyone else. In addition, at the end of the game the player who used the Temp Agency the most gets 7 bonus points, the person who used it the second most gets 4 bonus points, and the third most person gets 1 bonus point (everyone else gets zero bonus points). Games can certainly be decided by those bonus points but overall it's really not worth it (or necessary) to pay attention to what everyone else at the table is doing (which is why the game could theoretically be played with super large groups of people all at once).
Welcome To is a game that belongs to the "roll and write" genre, though in this case it's "flip cards and write" as there are no dice included in the game. The game itself plays 1-100 according to the box, was created by Benoit Turpin, and is published by Deep Water Games.
The 1-100 player count isn't a typo since this is a game that can support as many people as A) you have player sheets and B) that can see the cards that are flipped over. I should note that the one player game is actually a different game entirely, there's a set of solo rules (and corresponding cards) but that's not something that I've really explored.
Ostensibly, Welcome To is a game where you are an American architect in the 1950s. Your goal is to create the nicest three streets, complete city plans, and ultimately win by scoring the most points. Each player gets his or her own player sheet (simply rip them off of the included pad of player sheets) and each player will need a writing utensil.
Players all play simultaneously using the same cards in the middle of the table. Through careful planning (and perhaps a healthy dose of luck), the goal is to score as many points as possible before the game ends.
I should note that the game that I own was one that I bought off of Kickstarter last year and so it's possible that some of the components in my game will be different than what is available in the retail version. Kickstarter has been a fantastic
To start a game of Welcome To, players shuffle the 81 construction cards and split them into three equal stacks. Then, the top card of each stack is turned over.
On one side of each construction card is a house number and on the other side is one of six possible symbols. Once the cards are flipped over, players then look at the three pairs of cards and pick exactly one pair to use in their city plan. You must place the house number on one of your three streets (with the streets being like "real" streets in that houses must go up numerically from left to right). In addition, you may also use the associated symbol if you can (and if you want to, it's optional).
The special symbols allow you to do things that (usually) score you more points including placing pools, building parks, or simply raising the value of specific sizes of housing estates.
For example, in the photograph above each player would have three choices: They could write the number 2 down on one of the houses on any of three streets (remembering that smaller numbered houses have to be on the left) and then add a fence, they could write the number 3 down on any house and then increase the value of a specific size of housing estate, or they could write a 9 on a house and then take a "bis" penalty (which allows you to fill in a second house on a street with a "B" designation, such as 10 then 10B before you get to house 11).
Once all players have made their selection from the three options (and written everything on their player sheet), the top card of each stack is flipped over and the process repeats.
The game ends when either someone completes all three City Plans, someone fills up every house on all three streets, or someone can't make a legal move for the third time. At that point, the game ends and everyone adds up their points. Highest score wins.
The one thing that I can say for sure is that once the game is over, someone at the table is bound to say "let's play again, I think I have a better idea this time." The game is pretty quick, especially once you know what each symbol does (the game does come with super helpful player guides which is nice). A full game shouldn't take more than 25-30 minutes once you have the rules down (and quite honestly, you might finish closer to the 20 minute mark if everyone makes decisions fairly quickly).
The Bottom Line:
Pros:
- Easy to teach and learn
- Quick game play
- Can be played by virtually any number of people
- Theme oozes throughout the game, lovely art
- Reference cards are lovely (the game includes enough for four players)
Cons:
- Basically a solitary game (virtually no meaningful player interaction)
- Eventually you'll need to buy a new player pad (or make lots of photocopies I guess - this is mitigated in the Kickstarter version since it came with four laminated game boards that can be used with dry erase markers.)
Overall Score (out of 10):
8: Very good - enjoy playing and would suggest it
Welcome To is an excellent little game that is plenty of fun for everyone. The game is basically a competition with yourself, that is, during each play you kind of want to see if you can beat your score from the last time...and if you just so happen to beat everyone else at the table so much the better. In fact, I'm super competitive but I found myself lost in my own little world when playing the game and simply didn't bother trying to pay attention to how anyone else was doing until the end of the game. I actually didn't care if I won overall, if I made my own little town plan that I was happy with then I felt like I won!
On the flip side, this is a solitary game disguised as a multiplayer game in a lot of ways. The only true interaction with other players is that the first person to complete each City Plan (there are three total) gets a few bonus points then everyone else who completes the same City Plan on a future turn gets a standard amount of points that doesn't change for anyone else. In addition, at the end of the game the player who used the Temp Agency the most gets 7 bonus points, the person who used it the second most gets 4 bonus points, and the third most person gets 1 bonus point (everyone else gets zero bonus points). Games can certainly be decided by those bonus points but overall it's really not worth it (or necessary) to pay attention to what everyone else at the table is doing (which is why the game could theoretically be played with super large groups of people all at once).
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Note: I've gone back through all of my game reviews and changed my scoring to mimic Board Game Geek's scoring scale.
Board Game Geek's Rating Scale:
10: Outstanding - will always enjoy playing
9: Excellent - very much enjoy playing
8: Very good - enjoy playing and would suggest it
7: Good - usually willing to play
6: Ok - will play if in the mood
5: Mediocre - take it or leave it
4: Not so good - but could play again
3: Bad - likely won't play this again
2: Very bad - won't play ever again
1: Awful - defies game description
Pretty cool. I'll have to keep that one in mind.
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