Motor City is a strategic roll-and-write game about running an auto plant in the heyday of Detroit.
In Motor City, you have two player sheets, each with multiple areas. These areas are represented by tracks that you will mark off as you make progress. Many of the tracks are interconnected with other elements in the game, giving you bonuses along the way and opportunities to unlock more points. Advancing on all of these tracks offers various amounts of points, advancements, and bonuses.
The game lasts eight rounds. Each round, roll colored dice based on the number of players, then place them on spaces on the blueprint table based on value and color. Each player drafts one die and uses it. Once everyone has drafted a die twice, all players get to use the remaining die on the blueprint table.
After eight rounds, you score points for your progress in engineering, assembly, testing, and more. Whoever has the most points wins.
Motor City has a solo mode in which you try to top your own score against an auditor that drafts dice and blocks areas of your sheet. Its difficulty can easily be adjusted by changing the colors of dice during setup, with no added rules.
Motor City is game 3 of the Motor City Gameworks Loaded Roll and Write series.
Game 1: Fleet: The Dice Game
Game 2: Three Sisters
Game 3: Motor City
–description from the designer
- Tight engine-building feel with accessible rules
- Rich theme and replayability via different strategies
- Can be fiddly with some components
- Not as quick to teach as lighter roll-and-writes
- Industrial production and car design
- Detroit, auto manufacturing era
- Rolling-right, competitive drafting with dice
- Fleet the Dice Game
- Three Sisters
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Dice drafting and placement — Draft dice and place to gain actions and bonuses.
- Hub-style actions (engineering/production hubs) — Unlocks hub-specific bonuses when completed.
- Rolling-right — Draft and roll dice; place on blueprint board.
- Upgrade system and track scoring — Upgrade abilities and manage bonuses; speedometer track adds tension.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- "everything ties in now"
- "we've increased our space… 20 gig of space"
- "10 years, 300 episodes"
- "Ocean's Eleven energy"
- "it's a legacy game that's played over the course of 15 scenarios"
- "the branching storyline"
- "the speedometer scoring adds tension"
References (from this video)
- smooth orchestration of multiple actions
- strong theme integration with production flow
- not always the best fit for novice groups
- pace can slow with heavy planning
- production and logistics in Detroit
- Mid-century automobile industry
- industrial, strategic
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- rolling rights — dice drafting with resource management and timing
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
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- Dune Imperium the deck-building plus worker placement game
- Nucleum is a real heavy game about an alternate reality where we discovered nuclear power way earlier
References (from this video)
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I freaking love it
- we are not gonna spend time explaining all of the games
- this is also includes games from before Gen Con and we cannot be held accountable for our actions
- we will let you know if we forget to say it will be on the screen every time
- it's for one or two players I kinda want to bring this to Disney