Town Center: Essen / SPIEL ★★★★★

An expansion for Alban Viard’s Town Center.

In Town Center, players build a city – in particular, the town center. They add cubes on their personal board and try to arrange them as best as possible in order to score the most victory points. Each cube represents a different type of module. Flats, shops, offices, generators, lifts, car parks, town hall can be built and stacked during the course of the game. Each module generates influence on adjacent land and on cubes directly below or above.

The Town Center: Essen / SPIEL expansion is comprised of 4 double-sided player boards, with the all-new Essen expansion map on one side, and the also all-new SPIEL expansion map on the other. There’s also an A5-sized rulesheet/cover that explains the special rules of each map.

The expansion was a special edition made for the SPIEL ’14 fair in Essen, Germany.

Both maps pay homage to the home of all of boardgamedom, that former industrial city by the Rhine, and the world-famous SPIEL fair. Essen is a spread-out urban/sub-urban environment with a distinct value placed on available parking spots, while SPIEL is divided into three large halls with very limited space in which to move around.