Suburbia Collector’s Edition Review – When “Excessive” Actually Makes Sense

This week I spent a lot of time playing Suburbia, and in particular Suburbia Collector’s Edition. The more I played it, the more I marvelled at this expensive, all-included edition. So much so, that I couldn’t finish the week without writing up a detailed review of what’s in it, and why I think it’s such a great board game product.

But before we dig in, please note I’ve already reviewed Suburbia and all its expansions. So I won’t be going into how to play, or reviewing them as games.

Instead, this review is aimed at the components, and changes made, in the Suburbia Collector’s Edition. Starting with what’s in the box, rulebooks and references, the market board & tower, the multi-use storage solution, and the one rule change, before finishing on the question – is it worth it?

What’s in Suburbia Collector’s Edition?

Within Suburbia Collector’s Edition, you’ll find the previous two expansions in Suburbia Inc and Suburbia 5 Star. You’ll also find a new expansion made for this edition in Suburbia Nightlife, as well as the two smaller promotional expansions Suburbia Con Tiles and Suburbia Essen Tiles.

With regards to Suburbia Nightlife, previously it was only available through Suburbia Collector’s Edition. However, since 2021, you can buy it separately in the Suburbia Expansions box along with all the other expansions mentioned so far. The only thing missing from this Suburbia Expansions box is the Suburbia Collector’s Edition Tiles.

As part of the Suburbia Collector’s Edition crowdfunding campaign, you could select what cities your player boards represent. So your red player board could be Dubai or Toronto for example. Depending on which cities you picked, you also got a tile representing a landmark within that city. For Dubai and Toronto, you received the Burj Khalifa and CN Tower tiles respectively.

Also within the Suburbia Collector’s Edition, you received a series of Game Trayz inserts and an instruction pamphlet on how to store them within your box.

You also receive the special tile tower and market board. Being one of the more noticeable features of this edition, this board lets you set up and maintain the market quickly and easily throughout the game. Solving one of the small issues with the original Suburbia.

For owners of the original board game, you’ll also be pleased to note that the scoreboard has been updated. It used to zig-zag back and forth up the board, which got quite confusing. Now, thankfully, it only goes in one direction.

Rulebooks and references

In Suburbia Collector’s Edition, all the rules for the base game, and all expansions, are within one rulebook. I am a big fan of when publishers do this, because of how easy it makes referencing rules during the game.

As a counter-example, my big box of Empyreal: Spells & Steam has the expansion rules in a separate booklet. Much of my time, and frustration, has been spent on figuring out which rulebook I need to reference for which rule or component. So I’m extremely glad Bezier Games decided to include it all in one.

If that wasn’t enough, they’ve also included a tile reference booklet with every single tile within the game. Organised by expansion, these two booklets solve 100% of any rule issues with military precision.

The market board & tower

One of the main promises of the Suburbia Collector’s Edition was that the tower and market board would make it easier to play. Having played a fair share of games with these components, I’m a lot more impressed with the market board than the tower.

Smartly, the market board now has a setup guide front and centre, with tiles for purchase around the outside in a trough. This allows you to add and push tiles effortlessly into the market, without them spreading out all over the place. This worked better than expected, as we spent a lot less time straightening and rearranging market tiles.

Meanwhile, the tower wasn’t as smooth, often when you go to pull out one tile, you end up pulling out two or three. It also changes the way you set up the game. Adding in an additional couple of tiles reminding you to stop and score Bonuses and Challenges. This isn’t better or worse, but it took some time to get used to when first playing.

Multi-use storage solution

What Game Trayz has done with Suburbia Collector’s Edition is magic. So much love and thought has gone into how to pack away this game. From the way it fits perfectly into the box, to how everything is organized with imprinted symbols to let you know where things go.

Everything was made not just to store, but to help you get Suburbia to the table. There’s no better example of this than how the storage containers double for display areas of game components. On the top of one container, there’s space to put all of the borders in the market. On top of another, is a space to store all public objectives.

These podiums speed up your setup process, as you no longer need to think about what goes where. It’s all in front of you. So any time or energy usually spent here can be spent on playing the game instead.

One rule change

With the release of Suburbia Collector’s Edition came one important rule change:

If playing with any expansions, swap out an equal number of tiles from each stack of the base set with tiles from the expansions.

Before this, with each new expansion, you would shuffle all market tiles together before randomly selecting the required amount for your game. This created weird games where you wouldn’t have any airports or too many airports. Making it tough to combine tiles satisfyingly.

With this rule change, this is no longer a problem. It’s a wonderful change that takes Suburbia 5 Star off my ‘never play again’ list, and puts it onto the ‘play sometimes’ list. Given how much I loathed the original version of Suburbia 5 Star, this is a big deal.

However, it’s not perfect. Specifically at the lower player counts. They use fewer tiles than higher player count games, so you end up with a game of all Suburbia Inc tiles, for example, instead of a nice blend of expansion and base game tiles.

This is of particular issue when using Suburbia Nightlife. It needs the base game tiles to balance out the negative effects of tiles within the expansion. Otherwise, it’s extremely easy to build a suburb that loses both money and population each turn.

Price comparison

Now that I’ve hyped it up for almost all of this article. Let’s talk about the big reason why you wouldn’t buy Suburbia Collector’s Edition: price. There’s no getting around it, this is an expensive all-in package.

Given that everyone’s financial situation and love for Suburbia are different, this is a personal decision. So despite my appreciation for this edition, I’m not advocating you rush out and buy it. However, I do advocate that if you’re buying Suburbia then you need to also pick up the Suburbia Expansions Box. As Suburbia Inc adds a special sauce turning the base game into something amazing.

As you can see, from a gameplay point of view you wouldn’t be missing out much. However, from a storage solution and quality of life perspective, I think there’s enough here to justify the expense. But what do you think? Is Suburbia Collector’s Edition worth the cost?