Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 20-30 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

The Components

Lucca Citta comes with 110 cards and 1 rulebook.

The Cards: The cards are all printed on medium-heavy stock. They're full color on the front and have some of the regular daVinci logos on the back. Both sides actually look pretty plain because they each tend to be pretty monochromatic.

100 of the cards form the play deck.

96 of these are palace cards (16 each in 6 colors) which each show the palace color, a street number (1-96), one to three shields, and one to three windows. It's pretty easy to make out all the distiniguishing characteristics, and because of the way they're laid out they can even be stacked as you accumulate more cards, to save table space, which is a good plus. Each color also features a unique shield icon, a unique drawing implement (for the building plans, one presumes), and a unique background texture, which should help to keep the colors distinct (though no one actually had any problems in my group as the six colors are pretty distinct).

The last four play deck cards show towers.

The other 10 cards include 5 quarters cards and 5 Coat of Arms cards, one per player. The two cards have a nicely designed, matching coat of arms, which is pretty easy to distinguish. The quarters cards also show the three possible states for a palace: under construction, completed, and opened, though I found the icons for the completed and opened states to be totally opaque, as did some of the other players.

Overall the cards are fairly utilitarian and easy to use, but not particularly attractive (though I think the coats of arms add a nice dash of color to the table).

Rulebook: A standard daVinci rulesheet, which is to say a multiply folded sheet of paper. It seemed OK to follow & pretty easy to reference.

Overall the quality of the cards is slightly above average, the utilitarianism is pretty good, but the cards themselves are relatively plain, though they start to gain a little bit of beauty when laid out together on the table. I give the game on the whole a slighly above average rating for Style: a high "3" out of "5".

The Gameplay

The object of Lucca Citta is to successfully build palaces and open them amidst huge parties.

Setup: Each player is given a quarters card and a coat of arms. Each player is also given four cards from the play deck, from which he chooses two for his initial construction. These are placed by all players simultaneously in their Under Construction area.

The Quarters. The quarters simply define the status of your various palaces. They can be under construction, completed, or opened. Palaces will start under construction, then move to completed when you've added enough cards, then move to opened when you choose to introduce them with a party.

The Palace Cards. Each card has a numer of aspects. First is color: each palace must be all one color, and you can only have one palace of each color. Second is windows: they give you points when you complete a palace. Third is shields. They determine turn order and also can give you some end game bonus. The number of shields plus windows on a card always sums to three. Last is a street number, which is used as a tie breaker for turn order, and also gives some points at the end of the game. The only street number visible on a palace is the one on the last card played.

Order of Play: The game is played over 5-7 turns, depending on the number of players. Each turn starts with determining player order. Whichever player has the most shields on palace cards in his under construction area goes first, with ties broken by highest street number. The rest of the players go in descending order based on their shield count.

(The coat of arms cards are laid out to denote this turn order.)

To start a turn a number of triplets (which is to say a set of three cards) are laid out face-up equal to the number of players plus one. On their turn each player takes the following two actions:

• Open Palaces
• Play a Triplet

Open Palaces: A player can open one or more palaces on his turn. This must be an already completed palaces (from a previous turn). He holds a party and then moves the palace from the completed to opened area. This gives him a number of points based on other palaces in the same color. He gets one point per card of the same color in other players' under construction area and two points for each palace that has been completed but not opened in that color.

Play a Triplet: Next the player takes one of the face-up triplets and plays it. For each card he can do one of the things:

Build it as a Palace. This means adding to an under construction palace of the same color or starting a new palace of that color if he hasn't constructed that color yet. New cards always go to the bottom of a palace, covering up the previous street number (though not windows or shields).

A palace is completed when it has 3, 4, or 5 cards in it (depending on the number of players). When the palace is completed it's moved to the completed palaces area and the player earns 1 point per window in the palace.

Build it as a Wall. This means playing a palace card face-down to the completed palaces area, where it becomes a "city wall", worth points at the end of the game if you can support it.

Build a Tower. If you drew one of the four towers when you selected your triplet, you play it to the compled palaces area as a "tower", and it too is worth points at the end of the game, if your city walls are all supported.

Discard. You can discard a card you drew if you just don't have any use for it (and this is vaguelly possible at the end of the game.)

Ending a Turn: At the end of the turn the remaining triplet is discarded. A new round is now begun, with new turn order and new triplets.

Ending the Game: After the final turn, turn order is determined one last time, and then each player has one final opportunity to open their palaces.

Players now score points for their city walls. You add together your sum of city walls and towers and multiply that by your sum of opened palaces, but you only score this total if your city walls were all supported. This requires two shields per city wall in your under construction area. (Note that towers don't require support, but don't score if your walls weren't supported.) If you don't support your walls, you score for none of them.

Finally whomever has the lowest visible street number in the under construction area gives 3 points to the player with the highest visible street number in the under construction area.

The player with the most points now wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Lucca Citta is a card-drafting set-collection game. I've reviewed three other card games in the same general genre: Coloretto, King's Breakfast and The Hollywood! Card Game. They're all very quick plays, but on the face of it, Lucca Citta is a less elegant & more complex game than any of the others. They all have petty simple drafting rules, but Lucca Citta's set collection rules are much more complex since there's interactions with what other people are doing and some fairly severe limitations on play.

A lot of people have pointed out similarities between Lucca Citta and Reiner Knizia's Palazzo, largely because of the near identical theming: the construction of buildings in specific colors via multiple cards/tiles with some scoring ultimately dependent on windows on each card/tile. I think that the similarity is largely superficial. Palazzo is a more intricate and more full-length game with a greatly increased palette of choices and an interesting auction system, while Lucca Citta doesn't really rise beyond the card drafting and set collection mechanics mentioned here, and actual choices are much more limited. Palazzo is a short game too, but probably runs 2x the length of a Lucca Citta play.

The Game Design

Lucca Citta is first of all a simple filler. I was actually amazed with how fast it played. We played this game twice during our initial review runs, and each game whipped through play in about the twenty minutes advertised on the box. I find it a pretty rare multiplayer game which can offer any complexity and still be done that quickly; Lucca Citta offers a lot more choices than most other games of its length.

Overall, the main choice in the game has to do with the card drafting: which triplet do you take. It allows for some interesting tactics and interesting social dynamics, as you're constantly trying to make a successful pick for yourself, and at the same time not allow your opponents to get any runaway successes. Some of the social choices really worked out, but I also felt like they were too many things to keep track of and further, if you worked too hard to keep your opponents from getting what they needed, it ultimately seemed to hurt you as well.

There's some good strategy as well, centered on which palace colors you decide to build and when. Here it was a bit easier to keep track of all the other players and to make real and meaningful choices.

It's worth noting that I also found Lucca Citta a little obtuse. I don't know what it is about daVinci's design process but they've more than once created games which just felt awkward to play--or at least to learn. I had similar feelings of just not getting it from Oriente when I first read the rules, and to a lesser extent from Ostrakon and Fredericus. Lucca Citta wasn't as bad as some of the others, but it was a bit challenging to learn and teach. That issue had gone away by our second game, which played smoothly. And, this feeling of being a bit off-balanced with so many daVinci Games also implies to me that they're new & original.

On the whole Lucca Citta is a clever filler card game with some neat mechanics that seem to work. It's also a little dry & the theming doesn't yell out at me. After a couple of games I find it slightly above average: a high "3" out of "5" for Substance. I think that's where it's going to stay there for me, but I could see it dropping to an average "3" or rising to an above average "4" through multiple plays.

Conclusion

Lucca Citta, the newest release from daVinci and Mayfair, is a well-designed card game of card drafting & set collection. It's in the same general family as Coloretto, King's Breakfast, and The Hollywood! Card Game, but has some additional complexity. The gameplay works, has some depth, and is interesting, but not amazing. The game's biggest strength is that it plays very quickly while still allowing for that strategic & tactical depth. If you're bored with For Sale, Coloretto, and others, and need a new filler to start off your gaming sessions, this one is a good choice.

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