How to play Cities

2–4 players Light–medium — worker placement with tile stacking

What is Cities?

Cities is a 2023 game by Steve Finn and Phil Walker-Harding, published by Devir, in which players become urban planners shaping a waterfront neighborhood district by district. You place workers to claim offers, then fit city tiles and colored building pieces into your personal grid — stacking structures up to four stories as the neighborhood rises around you.

The game visits real-world cities — Sydney, Venice, New York, Barcelona, and more — lending each session a sense of place. Turns are quick and decisions are satisfying: choose your offer carefully, slot your tiles cleverly, and chase the achievements and scoring cards that reward your vision of the city.

Setup

Choose a city board and place it in the centre of the table — it shows the shared offer area where city tiles, feature tiles, and building pieces will be displayed each round.
Lay out the offer area with tiles and pieces as the rulebook specifies for your player count. Reveal the scoring cards that will be active this game — these are the goals all players compete to fulfil.
Place the achievement board within reach of all players; keep achievement discs nearby ready to claim.
Each player takes a personal player board (their waterfront neighborhood) — this is where you'll place tiles and stack buildings throughout the game.
Decide the first player randomly or by agreement. Each player has one worker to deploy per round. The game runs for 8 rounds (4 rounds in a 2-player game), with players taking turns clockwise within each round.

How to play

Cities is played over 8 rounds (4 in a two-player game). On your turn you do two things in order:

Deploy a worker — take an offer: - Place your worker on an available action space to claim that offer. - Offers may include city tiles, feature tiles, building pieces, or scoring cards — take what the space grants.

Build — develop your neighborhood: - Place any city tiles you've acquired onto your personal board — tiles must be placed adjacent to an already-placed tile (or in the starting space on your board), fitting within the grid. - Stack colored building pieces onto matching tile spaces to raise structures; buildings can grow up to four stories tall. - Completing an achievement lets you place a disc on the shared achievement board.

At the end of your turn, retrieve your worker. Once all players have taken their turns, advance to the next round. Scoring cards and achievements collected during the game drive your final score.

How to win

The game ends after the final round. Players tally points from their scoring cards and achievements claimed during play — the player with the highest total wins.

Strategically, keep your scoring cards in mind from the very first round: every tile placement and building stack should push you toward the goals those cards reward. Don't neglect achievements either — completing them efficiently earns discs that add up quickly. Because the game is short, falling behind on your card goals early is hard to recover from, so draft offers with purpose rather than hoarding pieces you can't use in time.