Yet another Tower Game?

Got a chance to play this new title from daVinci Games this afternoon and thought I'd write a review on it. The game "Lucca Citta" at first seems to yet another reniesance tower building game such as Campanile or Clock Tower, and well it is. But hey, you never know maybe they've added some flare to the game to make it different? We'll see

The components are staright forward. It comes in a small boxx with two decks of cards. The cards consist of a Player shield card and a player building card. The shield card is used to show turn order and the building card is used to show what phase a building is in. Then there are four "tower" cards. The remaining cards are the building cards. These cards com in six different colors, and have three distinguishing features; shields,  windows, and address numbers. The number of shiels plus the number of windows always add up to three. Yet there maybe three windows and zero shields, or two windows and one sheild and so on. The numbers on the address go up to I believe 100. That's it for components. Simple, clean.

The players "field" is made up of three sections. The first or the bottom is the "building" field. Her a player may build one tower of each color by placing one card section on top of another card section. These must be placed in order, they may not be shuffled around once they are placed. The second field is the "completed" tower field. These are where the towers are placed once it reaches three levels. The last field is the "show" tower field.

The game is played in rounds. In a five player game we had five rounds. Before the first round, each player is given four cards. The player will choose two out of the four, then the other two are shuffled back in the deck. These two card are all showed simultaniously. This will show the starting build field for each player and then player order is determined. whoever has the most shields showing from card in their build area goes first and so on. ties are broken by the player that has the largest address number showing. Then at the beginning of each rounds a set of three cards are laid out up to the number of players plus one. So in a five player game there would be six sets of three cards dealt to the middle of the table.

So on the first players turn he does these set of action. First he "may" show a completed tower to the show field. By doing this he scores his completed tower equal to the number of the same color cards as all other players have in both their build and completed pile. Then the player chooses one set of three cards showing and plays them. He may place cards in his build area by placing it on top of an existing tower or start a new one( a player may only build one of each color up to six). Or he may lay a card out for the city wall. Or he may discard the card. Once he plays his cards, any tower that was completed goes into the completed field and is scored. He gets one point for every window in the completed tower. If he gets a "city tower" card he may place that off in his city walls area.

After the first player plays, then every other player in the turn order does the same actions. The last set of three cards is discarded.

After the fifth round the game is completed. Then in turn order each player may "show" a completed tower, and score them accordingly. The final scoring deals with the city walls. For each card a player set aside for the city wall(placing them face down) he first must determine if he can support them. To support them he must have in his building area 2 shields for each wall segment. And he must be able to support ALL the wall segments or he looses the bonus. Then if he has wall segments and any "tower cards" he add them together and multiplys that number by the number of completed towers he has. So is he has 2 wall segments( and four shields to support), 1 tower card, and 4 completed towers then 1+2x4=12 bonus points.

Thats it. The person with the most points wins.

My feeling of the game. I liked it, it seems to have a nice balance of tradoffs in turn order collecting shields and scoring windows. Timing is everything. You don't want to "show" towers too soon, as you won't get as many points as waiting for other players to play the same color cards. However on the flip side, there is only five rounds of play, an you need to squeeze as many completed towers in to score. The luck comes in of course with the card draw, as it is random what each pile will contain. Which may work for you or not. But it didn't seem to screw anyone in the game I've played. I did notice that by the end it was quite close the number of towers and number of wall segments that each of us had played. So the scores for the bonus was quite close. I think the real scoring happens in looking what other players have been playing, and determining when to complete and show a tower to recive the maximum points against others unfinished towers. Remember, you don't score the same color cards in other players "showed" towers. So turn order is important, timing is important, and paying attention to what other players is playing is important. Very interesting play. It also plays fairly quickly, you can get a full game in in about 20-30 minutes tops. I'm not sure how it will scale with less players, but with 5 it seems quite balanced and solid.