OddVille
Oddly enough, several of you have been hired to build the city of OddVille, home to four powerful worker guilds.
Cleverly place your buildings in order to obtain greater power and fame, while thwarting your opponents' plans. Manage your workers to obtain the resources, coins, and building projects you need in order to make your mark on the city. Plan the city streets to get access to resources or coins from nearby buildings, even if not yours.
Impress the right guild, and you will get a visit from a guild member, who will gladly help you out while enjoying your hospitality. The guild comes first, though: At a moment's notice, every guild member will return to the guild hall, regardless of how much that inconveniences you. Of course, the person who "inspired" the guild meeting may be chuckling gleefully at the "unfortunate" timing of your guest's departure.
OddVille is a card-based city-building game in which all actions are carried out by playing one of your four Worker cards. Each Worker card has a different power and can be used in different ways: to get a project, to obtain resources, or to collect coins. During your turn, you can either play a card or add a building to the city. Connect it to adjacent buildings with roads and you will gain their bonus.
The city grows with each player's contribution, ever changing the values of players' buildings. As soon as a player builds his sixth building, the game ends and the player with the most points wins.
User Reviews (1)
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Never have I ever seen such an odd collection of people in a single game, there are some real characters alright. Oddville to me is a whirlpool of randomness, borrowing mechanics and rules from this game and that combining them into a city building fusion that feels so familiar. This could have been themed as a more serious Euro and it would probably be ranked much higher, instead it is plastered in ridiculousness. Does it work? Flawlessly. Here’s a bit about how to play, how the game did with my gaming group, what I like best about it and who I think would most enjoy Oddville.
Objective:
Your goal is to be the player with the most points when the game ends. The game ends when someone has placed their 6th building inside the city.
Setup:
1. Each player takes the worker meeples and worker cards of his/her colour
2. Shuffle and turn over 6 of the building cards and place them in a single line.
3. Place the village square in the center of the table
How to play:
On your turn you have 2 choices, play a Worker Placement Card or Spend Resources to Develop Oddville.
This is the weakest worker card, your options are
limited but he is still useful despite his sad appearance
Worker Placement Cards:
Each player has the same 4 worker cards and must either play them all before they are returned or pay to have them returned early. Each worker can perform one of three actions.
1. Give you the amount of gold coins listed on the card (Maximum of 5)
2. Allow you to place a worker onto the resource board to pay for the construction of future buildings
3. Let you purchase or take one of the 6 face up building cards depending on its corresponding cost
You are allowed to place a worker on any
resource space with this worker card, however
you must pay all coin costs required by the
corresponding space on the resource board
Resource Board:
The Resource board was a little bit tricky at first, there are unlimited number of spots for each resource, however depending on when you place your worker on a certain space they will either be free, 1 coin or 2 coins.
You always place workers and take them off (spend them) from the lowest value space on the resource board. The first
player to place a worker obtains the resource for free, the next two spaces cost 1 coin and then there are an infinite
number of resources available for two coins.
Buildings for Sale:
There are always 6 buildings face up for sale laid out in a line. When one is purchased slide the remaining cards to the left and add a new building card to the far right hand side of the line of buildings. The cost of the building depends on which Worker Card you are using to buy it, some buildings can be made free by using a more valuable Worker Card but a couple of the rightmost will always cost coins. Once you have purchased a building for coins you do not add it to Oddville but simply place it with your supply of available workers and worker cards until you have the resources and action to construct it.
Recovering Played Worker Cards:
This is a very key mechanic that adds a layer of subtle strategy to Oddville, if at the beginning of your turn you have no available Worker Cards to play you simply pick all 4 back up again and proceed as normal, however if you would like to pick 1 card back up early you must pay 1 coin and can then proceed with your turn. Deciding when to best use your less powerful Worker Cards and when to recover the most powerful can completely change a game around.
Develop Oddville:
At the bottom of each Building Card there are pictures of different resources, in order to place a Building Card from your possession into the city of Oddville you must pay each resource shown. Then based on the symbols in the top right corner you will get a reward that serves as a bonus to help finish more buildings. The symbols shown in the top left corner along with where you construct the building in Oddville depict the amount of points the building is worth at the end of the game. After you have placed a building and are happy with where it is located, place a worker on it, collect the rewards from the newly placed building and all adjacent buildings that are connected via a road, now end your turn.
One of the key rewards are Guild Members who provide you with a bonus as long as you control them and victory points at the end of the game if you managed to hang on to them. If you are required to take a guild member and none are left to take then ALL PLAYERS including yourself must return their members of that guild, shuffle them and then draw 1.
How did I like Oddville?
I rather enjoyed it, it was a very interesting combination of mechanics, It feels something along the levels of Lords of Waterdeep and I can’t quite pin where the city placement mechanic feels borrowed from, but I definitely recognize the style from a different game. I ended up pleasantly surprised with how good of a game Oddville was, the Guild characters look hilarious but I think were a little imbalanced eg: (The one that lets you build every time someone else builds for only 2 coins). Some of the building cards don’t work as well with 2 players, as a 4 player game Oddville is great, takes much less time than games with similar levels of choices, I found the timing with a 3 or 4 player game is just right but with 2 I found it ended too quickly. Oddville may not have any ‘unique’ mechanics but I have never seen a game fuse so many mechanics together, specifically I really like how you score points / construct the city is really awesome with a worker placement game and instead of being able to unlock more workers as you near the climax you will have less to utilize which I found helped to keep scores closer together.