Board&Dice have created something of a tradition in publishing heavyweight euro games that begin with the letter 'T', including Tawantinsuyu, Tekhenu, Tabannusi and Tiletum. Barcelona then is something of a departure. For sure, it's another heavyweight eurogame centred on a city, but where's the letter 'T'?
Barcelona is about the redevelopment of this Spanish city in the mid-19th century. It's a game where there's a lot going on but, inter alia, the 1-4 players are placing out tiles worker-placement-style at locations on the board to take the actions in that tile's row and column, and, if you pay extra, taking the diagonal action too. You'll be building accommodation for Barcelona's citizens. There are advantages in building for the middle and upper classes but in doing so you'll displease city architect Ildefons Cerda, who favours housing working class citizens. Through building and through various other actions over the course of the game, you need to keep Cerda happy because your position on his track determines the multiplier you get on your score...
Tiles taken off the board as you build go onto tracks which score you points but which also act as a game timer: as soon as a tile strays into the next 'era', it moves the game into that era and triggers the previous era's end-of-round scoring.
Pretty much everything you do in Barcelona will score you victory points, so you'll be juggling lots of different point-scoring actions. You'll be laying out trams to convey passengers, and you'll be paving a board with cobblestones to release bonuses and earn end-game points. You can lay out intersections that will earn you bonuses when they are used by other players, but if your games play out like ours at Board's Eye View, you'll find these mostly come into their own at higher player counts where the main board gets that much more crowded. Expect them to see less traffic in a two-player game. You get end-game scoring bonuses for taking and for upgrading modernism tiles and, as you might guess if you know the real-world city of Barcelona, you can contribute to the building of Antoni Gaudi's famous, albeit still to this day unfinished, Sagrada Familia Cathedral.
Tho' points can be plentiful (expect to lap the scoring track at least twice during a game), money is tight. You have the option to buy and add public buildings to the city. These give you victory points and a worthwhile extra action but tho' the 3-coin cost doesn't sound like much, you'll find it can be a painful expense.
Barcelona has proved to be a big hit with the Board's Eye View team, with several ranking it as their favourite Board&Dice 'T' game, even without the 'T' :-) Tho' its many moving parts make it quite a complex game, there's ample scope for players to make their own choices about what they want to focus on in order to maximise their score. Crucially, it all feels thematically sound, and the game is boosted by the bright artwork of Zuzanna Kolakowska and Aleksander Zawada.
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