London (Second Edition) Review – An Engine Built to Spontaneously Combust

London (Second Edition) taps into the same mindset as Dominoes. Where after you spend time meticulously setting up each domino. Then, once you’re ready, you tap the end domino and watch in excitement as one hits the other until they’re all knocked down.

Then, you start all over again.

In London (Second Edition) you trade dominoes for 17th-century architecture. During your turns, you use a hand of cards to create a line of buildings. Sometimes adding a building costs money, but it always costs you a card of a matching colour – which is sent to the market.

Usually, this row of buildings means very little. It isn’t until you spend a turn running your building row that the buildings activate and pay dividends.

During this run, you can activate the buildings in any order, by paying their activation costs. However, once activated most buildings are deactivated and flipped facedown for the rest of the game.

Now the exciting thing about running a building row, and creating a thriving suburb, is it brings people looking for work. However, unless you’ve provided these new arrivals with space to live, poverty will seep in.

This is represented through poverty tokens gained throughout the game. These don’t take effect until end-game scoring, but still, they’re scary to look at as they accrue.

Fortunately, these tokens abide by zombie rules, whereby you don’t have to be the fastest runner to survive, just don’t be the slowest. Whoever has the least poverty, removes all of theirs, while everyone else reduces their poverty by the same amount.

This cycle of building, running, destroying, and gaining poverty continues until there are no more cards left to draw. Then everyone tallies up their points, and whoever has the most wins.

Knocking it all down

London (Second Edition) took me a while to enjoy, although it follows a similar pattern of play to other engine builders. It’s missing the heart. There’s no feeling of growth until you run your city and then it sputters to life for a moment of brilliance before spontaneously combusting, forcing you to build it again.

This is a far cry from what I enjoy in engine builders like Jump Drive. Where you start weak but throughout the game grow to become a world-beater.

In London (Second Edition), every time you feel comfortable, and build a great combination of cards, the game takes off its white velvet glove and slaps you across the face. Destroying your engine, and challenging you to do it again.

However, once you get into the groove of the impermanence of everything you do, you begin to enjoy it. Maybe that’s Stockholm syndrome at work, but maybe it’s the other mechanics at play.

Discarding cards to buy cards is always a difficult yet interesting decision. Meanwhile, the decisions around poverty are equally fascinating. Deciding whether to play an extra city card to your building or run the city when you still have a healthy hand of cards will be a cause for consternation.

Beyond these though, there’s the Buying Land action. This allows you to buy plots of land all around England, and to gain a semi-permanent passive ability. These plots will change the way you play the game and usually offer sizable accommodation for your city. The devilish detail here is that buying a second plot replaces the ability of your current one.

So you’re often torn between what you’re using, and what you’ll be getting. As it’s not always an upgrade.

Please, sir, I want some more

There’s this fantastic line within the rulebook, that gives you a grasp of how you should play and doubles as sound life advice.

Money will affect your ability to do things but is not the goal itself.

Because you’re constantly reconstructing your building row, you have no form of steady income. The money you get throughout the game fluctuates based on the card draw.

With no guarantee of more money, the question then becomes what you’re going to do with limited funds becomes a lot tougher.

Do you put it towards solving poverty? Reinvesting into more money? Buying a new plot of land or new development? Or paying off an existing loan?

Without a clear answer, you’ll be guessing, and second-guessing what you’re doing throughout the game.

However, not saying you have to, but you can always take a loan. Of course, this may come back to bite you during end-game scoring. But similarly to poverty, this is only a problem if other people aren’t also taking loans.

London (Second Edition)‘s scarcity of resources is a brilliant piece of design that puts you in the pressure cooker. What makes it more interesting is usually in resource management games you’ll have multiple resources to consider, but here there are only two: money and cards.

Meaning how you spend every single resource counts. You might not get it back again.

Good show, old chap

Thematically, London nails the feeling of being an English gentry. While the artwork is both gorgeous and time-appropriate, it also makes you feel like a right snob.

Osprey Game’s production of London (Second Edition) also feeds into this snobbery. With its luxuriously thick, smooth cards, simple minimalist box art, and the linen-finished board.

The gameplay is similarly thematic, whereby the card’s abilities make sense. For example, statues provide no value other than looking good and giving you prestige. Meanwhile, Street Lights cost money to run but reduce poverty because people work longer hours and therefore don’t need homes.

Overall, London (Second Edition) already has a fantastic reputation. So for a lot of people, I’m not saying anything new. But for those who haven’t, this is a brilliant card game that’s stood the test of time. My personal preference is for a shorter game with more excitement. It’s still a fantastic card game, and I would happily play it if asked.