In City of Iron, 2-4 players compete to build up a small nation in a world of machines, magic, and money. Become the leader of one of four rival nations: the industrious humans, the toad engineers, the scholarly Cresarians, or the clever hogmen. Produce goods like machine parts and bottled demons to gain wealth, or research steam-age technology and recruit mercenaries to control the continent. If you want to establish new cities, you’ll build schooners or airships to reach faraway lands and flying islands. Your cities have limited capacity, so you’ll have to decide what to keep and what to demolish when building advanced structures. The future of a nation is in your hands. Build unbreakable foundations for an empire or disappear into the dusty pages of history.
Build a civilization in a Steampunk setting
Customize two decks of cards in a unique twist on deck-building
Choose your path- build a powerful economy or conquer everything in sight
Includes hundreds of lavishly-illustrated cards, an extra-large board, land boards, coin tokens, and more
- Stunning art from Ryan Lockett
- Strong world-building and cohesion with the artist's style
- Can be complex for casual players
- city-building with narrative threads
- fantasy/futuristic city
- story-driven world-building
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Resource management — managing resources to take actions and score points
- story/narrative elements — embedded storytelling through city-building choices
- tile placement — placing tiles to build your city and gain resources
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I would commission him to paint pictures of my family kids
- he built this universe exactly
- he is a renaissance man he is a true artist in every sense of the word from beginning to end
- campy creatures is a fun game and most of that fun is well the game but also the amazing artwork cuz that artwork just finishes it off
- City of Iron beautiful game
References (from this video)
- deep depth of strategy
- heavy, well-integrated theme
- Ryan Lockett's passion shows through production
- complex and heavy to learn
- territory control, deck-building, engine-building
- fantasy-steampunk empire-building in a sprawling city
- epic, world-building
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- deck-building — build and optimize a personal deck to guide actions
- resource management and upgrading — manage resources produced by territories and upgrade capabilities
- Territory control — control territories to generate resources and points
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- this one is sort of a pure version of Rising Sun
- you get a hand of cards
- I can't beat the miniatures in the box
- I happen to like Norse mythology so I think this one just fits me a little better than Rising Sun
- it's such a heavy theme of like you're you get you have this attachment to your brothers in arms
- City of Iron is my absolute favorite