Disclaimer: Games&Grub received a copy of Sandwich City personally from the designer, Jason Tagmire through an under the table deal involving an early prototype of Pixel Lincoln and a plastic duck painted to resemble the 16th president of America. Because we didn't pay for said game, this review is completely invalid and shouldn't be read by anyone, anywhere. Thank you for reading this far. </sarcasm>
The hipster in us likes to say that we knew Jason Tagmire before he hit it big with Pixel Lincoln. However, we quickly feel dirty for having any part of our being be hipster and remind ourselves that this simply amounts to meeting Jason at Origins this year, 2 days before he launched the PL campaign.
Before THAT, though, Jason won an award on The Game Crafter for a little game called Sandwich City. As you might have guessed, this game about grub was something we wanted to get to the table badly. Lucky for us, Jason is a pretty generous fellow and traded us a copy for a plastic duck that looks like Abraham Lincoln. Yes, seriously.
For those of you unfamiliar with the game, Sandwich City is a resource management/set collection game in which you play cards from your hand to gain money. Money collected allows you to purchase various vegetables and meats from the market (i.e. the game board) ; the closer to the center of the market, the cheaper the item is to purchase. Purchased items may then be placed on the counter, in the fridge, or in the freezer, with each of these respective places giving the food placed there a certain shelf life. Keep an item on the counter too long and it gets discarded. Keep an item in the fridge too long and it starts growing mold. Sure, you can always keep the food indefinitely in the freezer, but then you have to account for thawing. It's all a precarious balance that works out pretty well.
If you manage to balance your resources properly, you can build one of 52 sandwiches in the game. Jason and his crew have come up with a wide array of sandwiches: from "The Salad,' (a carrot between two slices of bread) to "The Carnival" (Chicken, 2x Fish, a Carrot, Pork, and a Brick). Obviously, the more ingredients in the sandwich, the more points its worth.
For those of you unfamiliar with the game, Sandwich City is a resource management/set collection game in which you play cards from your hand to gain money. Money collected allows you to purchase various vegetables and meats from the market (i.e. the game board) ; the closer to the center of the market, the cheaper the item is to purchase. Purchased items may then be placed on the counter, in the fridge, or in the freezer, with each of these respective places giving the food placed there a certain shelf life. Keep an item on the counter too long and it gets discarded. Keep an item in the fridge too long and it starts growing mold. Sure, you can always keep the food indefinitely in the freezer, but then you have to account for thawing. It's all a precarious balance that works out pretty well.
If you manage to balance your resources properly, you can build one of 52 sandwiches in the game. Jason and his crew have come up with a wide array of sandwiches: from "The Salad,' (a carrot between two slices of bread) to "The Carnival" (Chicken, 2x Fish, a Carrot, Pork, and a Brick). Obviously, the more ingredients in the sandwich, the more points its worth.
To me, Sandwich City is an enjoyable, lighter game to break out as a starter to the evening or to use with Family members in order to teach them about certain aspects of set collection and resource management. Curiously, my favorite part of the game has nothing to do with collecting the custom wood pieces or making sandwiches. Rather, it's the end of turn bonuses given by making three of a kind with the various colors. As you discard cards in your hand for money, you place them in one of three piles. If, in discarding a card, you create a row whose top cards are all one color, you get an end-of-turn bonus that lets you do anything from taking a free 1$ item from the board to taking a card from an opponent's hand, to major screwage via mold outbreak or freezer failure.
I also enjoy the watercolor-esque artwork style in the game. Admittedly, it's not super detailed, but I think it evokes the feeling of the game's open air farmer's market; it feels "Natural" for what that adjective is worth. I might add some clouds to the blue exterior so it doesn't look like the farmer's market is occurring on a circular island floating in the middle of nowhere, but that's a VERY minor qualm.
That aside, there are some things about the game that make me scratch my head ever so slightly. First is the random but not-so-random placement of the tokens onto the board. Per the rules, players are dealt cards and then place tokens onto the board. What this means, to some degree, is that experienced players can place their pieces in a way that will give them the most benefit from materials sliding toward the center. This is certainly easier said than done, but the possibility is there, and the ability of a player to choose which material replaces a purchased token later on in the game just bugs me for some inexplicable reason. Personally, I'd rather have a random chit/token pulling system to determine what goes where. Start the game by placing on grey squares in a clockwise fashion, then blue, then purple, etc. Yes, this takes control away from players (which I generally hate) but it serves to make things a little more equal in my opinion. In either case, I'm sure Jason had a reason for making the system this way, and I'd love to hear it.
Secondly, I'd like there to be a way to manipulate your hand more than just discarding a card for money. If there's a horrible shuffle, one player may get all 4$ cards and another play may get all 2$ cards. To some extent, the player with all 4$ cards is stuck trying to make larger sandwiches, which will take longer, but there's nothing to say that he/she can't discard a card, buy 4$ worth of items, and then draw into a 2$ card that uses the resources he just purchased. This isn't to say that there isn't a good balance of cards from 2$ to 8$, there is, I just wish there were a few more ways to manipulate your hand. Again, pretty minor worry.
Lastly, is the implementation of the mold tokens (and I know this is something Jason has been concerned with and actively working to "fix"). Currently, for each turn an item stays in the refrigerator and is not moved to the counter or the freezer, it gets a green mold token. After 3 mold tokens accumulate on a token, it is discarded. Mechanically, I like the mold tokens. They make it harder to play a balanced game, because they skew decisions toward instant gratification (counter) or long-term planning (freezer). From a thematic standpoint however, it's a little questionable. Most chefs, at the earliest sign of mold on a food object, would throw the food in question away (in order to prevent any backlash from a customer who may get an overlooked item). Cheese is handled a little differently, but there's no cheese in this game, so that's not a concern.
I'm still thinking of possible solutions to this mold mechanic however. My initial solution was to have the player take the mold chips with the item, and any mold chips collected by the player at game's end would be worth -1 points, but that doesn't really provide any more thematic accuracy than the current rule. Likewise, forcing the item in question to the counter or into the freezer (thereby pushing out other items) doesn't really work either. Truthfully, the mechanic itself works, and if I had to choose between theme and mechanics I'm going to choose theme EVERY.TIME. That said, if you can get mechanics and theme to work together seamlessly, you should aim for that; but I digress.
So, though one might interpret the long winded paragraphs about minor mechanical tweaks as an indictment of this game, I find it enjoyable as a filler and gateway game. Stacking the pieces after obtaining the right materials for your sandwich provides a great tactile experience, and concocting a meal with carrots, bricks, sheep, fish, et. al is goofy enough to bring a smile to anyone's face. If anything, I'd simply say that Sandwich City is a good game with the potential to be a great game. Based on the reception and success of his latest project, I'm eager to see the directions Jason takes this game and what he comes up with in the future.
If you'd like to read more about how Sandwich City came to be, check out links HERE and HERE
If you'd like to purchase the game from TGC, click on the link HERE
I also enjoy the watercolor-esque artwork style in the game. Admittedly, it's not super detailed, but I think it evokes the feeling of the game's open air farmer's market; it feels "Natural" for what that adjective is worth. I might add some clouds to the blue exterior so it doesn't look like the farmer's market is occurring on a circular island floating in the middle of nowhere, but that's a VERY minor qualm.
That aside, there are some things about the game that make me scratch my head ever so slightly. First is the random but not-so-random placement of the tokens onto the board. Per the rules, players are dealt cards and then place tokens onto the board. What this means, to some degree, is that experienced players can place their pieces in a way that will give them the most benefit from materials sliding toward the center. This is certainly easier said than done, but the possibility is there, and the ability of a player to choose which material replaces a purchased token later on in the game just bugs me for some inexplicable reason. Personally, I'd rather have a random chit/token pulling system to determine what goes where. Start the game by placing on grey squares in a clockwise fashion, then blue, then purple, etc. Yes, this takes control away from players (which I generally hate) but it serves to make things a little more equal in my opinion. In either case, I'm sure Jason had a reason for making the system this way, and I'd love to hear it.
Secondly, I'd like there to be a way to manipulate your hand more than just discarding a card for money. If there's a horrible shuffle, one player may get all 4$ cards and another play may get all 2$ cards. To some extent, the player with all 4$ cards is stuck trying to make larger sandwiches, which will take longer, but there's nothing to say that he/she can't discard a card, buy 4$ worth of items, and then draw into a 2$ card that uses the resources he just purchased. This isn't to say that there isn't a good balance of cards from 2$ to 8$, there is, I just wish there were a few more ways to manipulate your hand. Again, pretty minor worry.
Lastly, is the implementation of the mold tokens (and I know this is something Jason has been concerned with and actively working to "fix"). Currently, for each turn an item stays in the refrigerator and is not moved to the counter or the freezer, it gets a green mold token. After 3 mold tokens accumulate on a token, it is discarded. Mechanically, I like the mold tokens. They make it harder to play a balanced game, because they skew decisions toward instant gratification (counter) or long-term planning (freezer). From a thematic standpoint however, it's a little questionable. Most chefs, at the earliest sign of mold on a food object, would throw the food in question away (in order to prevent any backlash from a customer who may get an overlooked item). Cheese is handled a little differently, but there's no cheese in this game, so that's not a concern.
I'm still thinking of possible solutions to this mold mechanic however. My initial solution was to have the player take the mold chips with the item, and any mold chips collected by the player at game's end would be worth -1 points, but that doesn't really provide any more thematic accuracy than the current rule. Likewise, forcing the item in question to the counter or into the freezer (thereby pushing out other items) doesn't really work either. Truthfully, the mechanic itself works, and if I had to choose between theme and mechanics I'm going to choose theme EVERY.TIME. That said, if you can get mechanics and theme to work together seamlessly, you should aim for that; but I digress.
So, though one might interpret the long winded paragraphs about minor mechanical tweaks as an indictment of this game, I find it enjoyable as a filler and gateway game. Stacking the pieces after obtaining the right materials for your sandwich provides a great tactile experience, and concocting a meal with carrots, bricks, sheep, fish, et. al is goofy enough to bring a smile to anyone's face. If anything, I'd simply say that Sandwich City is a good game with the potential to be a great game. Based on the reception and success of his latest project, I'm eager to see the directions Jason takes this game and what he comes up with in the future.
If you'd like to read more about how Sandwich City came to be, check out links HERE and HERE
If you'd like to purchase the game from TGC, click on the link HERE
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