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UptownList Price: $19.95
Regular Price: $15.95
 
from 5 customer reviews
Product Awards:
Major FUN
Award Winner, 2008
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Uptown is a tile-laying game that can be played by 3-5 players (special rules for 2). Uptown is great for serious gamers, new gamers, families, friends... in other words, everybody! The rules are very short (see below), and a typical game lasts 30-40 minutes. But allow more time because you will want to play again and again!
What's the goal?
The goal of the game is to try to connect your tiles
together into as few groups as possible (maybe just one!).
A group consists of adjacent tiles of the same color, but diagonal 
connections don't count. The player with the fewest groups at the end is the winner!
So how do you play? Everyone chooses a color, takes those tiles, and places them face down in front of them. Then draw 5 of these tiles randomly into your rack so only you can see them.
Let's begin! On your turn take one of the tiles from your rack and place it on the board. As shown in the picture to the left, number tiles go in one of the nine spaces in the corresponding number column, letter tiles go in one of the nine spaces in the corresponding letter row, and symbol tiles go in one of the corresponding symbol spaces. Your single "money tile" ($) can go anywhere!
You may place your tile on an empty space, or you may
capture an opponent's tile by replacing his tile with your tile. However, as shown in the picture to the right, you may not capture an opponent's tile if that action would split that group into multiple groups.
When you capture a tile, take it tile and put it face up in front of your tile rack for all to see. At the end of your turn, draw another one of your tiles and put it in your rack. Next player!
All done? Play until everyone has no face-down tiles remaining, and then everyone plays one more turn. The winner is the player who has the fewest groups on the board, and the tie-breaker is fewest number of captured tiles. If you're still tied... you should play again!
Kory Heath, the author, has put together an Uptown strategy guide to get you started:
Uptown Strategies (322 KB - PDF) Some of the other reviews tell you nearly all the rules, because there are not many of them. Each turn is short and sweet, and so the game moves along. However, since every tile you have can be played in many places, there are still lots of decisions to make. There are many reasonable strategies, and Funagain has a link to a strategy guide. The game rewards long-term thinking and good positional play.
I enjoy the variety of strategies, how each game feels different, and the short turns. I'm good at positional games, and this game is short enough that if you do terribly, you can play again and learn from your mistakes. And yet, a player may have failed to plan for certain tiles and have to make one or two new groups near the end, handing the win to another player who may have seemed to be losing for much of the game. I've seen both aggressive and passive strategies work, when done well, and I've seen them both fail. And although there is some luck, experienced players nearly always beat new players.
Like all of Kory Heath's games, this one is new and different from all other games on the market, and different from his own games. This game has been a joy to play.
Another great game by Kory Heath:
Uptown is a very simple tile laying game that is surprisingly addictive. It is simple to learn, the turns are quick, and there is a great deal of interesting decision making that gets packed into 30 minutes of play. This is one of those rare games that will be enjoyed by your gamer friends as well as your non-gamer relatives. After your first game, it is pretty likely that someone at the table will say "Let's play that again."
Pros:
Cons:
The object of Uptown is to play 24 of your 28 tiles in as few interconnected groups as possible.
Although described as a tile laying game, that really doesn't do justice to what Uptown is, because this is nothing like Carcassonne, Entdecker or others of the genre. Really Uptown is a game about building connections across the board, battling with your opponents to try and make sure you build in front of them. As such I found it more like Twixt, Knots, PUNCT and other edge-to-edge connection games. This sort of connectivity isn't exactly a requirement in Uptown but it's definitely a good idea, and thus superior gameplay reflects this fact.
Overall Uptown is a great filler. It's a short 30-minute game that nonetheless manages to pack a lot of game into that time period.
The game, played well, is very aggressive. It's a bitter fight to the end as you try and cut through your opponents, ensuring that you're the one that is able to build a solid line from one side of the board to the other (and thus connect all the different rows, columns, and sections you'll need to). Implicit to this is brinkmanship and trying to suss out what you can do that your opponents either won't or can't respond to.
Some of the players I played with complained about the randomness in the game, and it's definitely an element, as is the case in any tile-drawing game, but I think it's a smaller element than they do. Throughout the game you will see all 28 of your tiles, and you will have an opportunity to play 24 of them that you choose, so you can plan for what you'll draw in the future, you just have to be careful to do it in ways that your opponents can't interfere with.
If there's a random element in the game, it's the chaos introduced by other players; if everyone decides to go after you, there's little you can do. This is controlled somewhat by their own self-interest, but it nonetheless can be an issue--but that's a pretty common factor in games which allow very direct attacks between the players.
Overall, I'll stand with my original statement: this is a great little game, and my favorite filler game thus far of the year.
The only downside of the game, and what kept it from a perfect score, is that the components -- though good quality -- are plain.
