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Game Preview: Rocketville
By Rick Thornquist
February 28, 2006
Publisher: Avalon Hill
Designer: Richard Garfield
Players: 3-5
Ages: 10 and up
Playing Time: 45 Minutes
Price: 35.00 US$
Rocketville is the next boardgame coming from Avalon Hill. The game was designed by Richard Garfield, the designer of Magic: The Gathering.
Here’s a description of the game from publisher Avalon Hill:
| Congratulations, citizen! Your application to enter the race for the office of Mayor of Rocketville has been approved. Please report immediately to the central launchpad – your game is about to begin!
In this fast-paced game of luck and strategy, you and the other candidates travel via rocket from district to district campaigning for votes, making promises, garnering endorsements, and recruiting robotic assistance in a mad dash to win the hearts, minds and CPUs of your fellow sentient beings. |
Here’s a description of the gameplay from developer Bill McQuillan:
| Your goal in the game is to become the new mayor of the retro sci-fi town of Rocketville.
The game board represents the town and is made up of 36 spaces, each of which has a color and ability associated with it. The spaces are equally divided among 6 different neighborhoods: Space Port, Robo Ally, Grav Train, Jet Way, Astro Hills, and Chrome Way. Each turn, you’ll compete against the other players to claim one of the 36 spaces. To do so, you’ll secretly choose a Campaign Promise card from your hand and lay it face down on the table along with the other players. You’ll all then reveal your promises, and the player with the best promise (highest number) wins the space and determines which space will be competed for next. Some promise cards are better in particular spaces, so you’ll need to be careful when choosing where and when to play your best Campaign Promise cards--especially because the main way you’ll get more of them is to skip a turn. Once all the spaces on the board are claimed, Popularity points will be awarded to the players who have claimed the most and second most spaces in each of the 6 neighborhoods. Popularity will also be awarded to any players who met the requirements of any of their secret Robot Campaign Assistant cards. At the end of the game, the player who accumulated the most Popularity points is the winner and becomes the new mayor of Rocketville! |
Here’s a list of the components:
| Game Board x 1
Rocket x 1 Campaign Buttons x 100 Undecided Markers x 6 Popularity Markers x 5 Campaign Promise Cards x 64 Campaign Planning Cards x 5 Endorser Cards x 20 Robot Cards x 21 Rulebook x 1 |
Rocketville is to be released on March 10, 2006.
(Thanks to Bill McQuillan and Toby Nelson of Wizards of the Coast for the information and the pictures.)
| Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version | |
 | The Box Front |
 | The Board |
© 2006 Rick Thornquist
Posted by Rick Thornquist on Feb 28, 2006 at 05:00 PM in Game Previews / 1731
