For eons, Incubi (bad, negative dreams) and Sognae (happy, positive dreams) have dwelled in Equilibrion, opposed but complementary. As the king of this City, you must establish and maintain the delicate balance between those dreams: place them in the various districts, harness their power, and beware of the Chaos – fearsome entities that thrive on discord and hatred.
Urbion is a solo/cooperative card game: You (and your partner) must work (together) against the game and claim all the cards from the City deck before the Dream deck runs out! Victory is achieved by balancing the twelve City cards: when the sum of all Dream cards played next to a City card is equal to zero, you may claim it. In order to prevail, you must play your Dream cards skillfully or discard them at the right moment to trigger helpful effects. And you will have to dodge the penalties of the Chaos cards...
Two expansions are included with the basic game:
"Arch-Squares and Metas" introduces more City cards, and a new type of Dream: the double-sided (positive and negative) Metas.
"The Books of Powers" gives more effects from which to choose when discarding a Dream card at the cost of starting the game with fewer Dream cards.
- Onirim series
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Hey everybody, I'm Tom Vassal. Welcome to a pile of mid games where I take a look at games that are ranked 3,000 or below on BoardGameGeek.
- Risk, this is just a the original trilogy Risk. I've not played this one but you look at it and you go, "Ah."
- Cuphead fast rolling dice game. Well, they ain't lying. This is a game you're rolling dice as fast as you can to beat the different enemies as Cuphead and you're just rolling dice and trying to get different matches and I don't particularly like it.
- Sabotage, this is a game from Tim Fowers Fowers Games and two teams are competing. This one, oh I remember this was a very big game. See how big this box is and there's back and forth going between the players. There's a lot of really cool things about this game. The size is not the best in the world but the back and forth, but it just missed the mark for me.
- The Settlers of Nürnberg, this is a a stand-alone game, one of the first ones they did, I think, that was not just Catan.
- And then finally, Urbion. I've not played this one. I know that this is one of the Philosophia edition games, uh the the Onirim series, and I know that many of the guys in the Dice Tower love this series. I can't speak to this one either way cuz I have not played it.
- So, I think I'm going to have to give it to Mhm, 10 Days in Asia. That's my favorite of this bunch.
- Hey, thanks for watching another video here on the Dice Tower. Uh we really appreciate you stopping by and checking our things out. Thanks so much for joining us today.
References (from this video)
- clever two-architect line-of-sight mechanic that drives placement decisions
- district-based scoring creates meaningful spatial tension and long-term planning
- high-quality production with attractive wooden components and aesthetic board
- teaches nicely on stream; approachable to viewers while maintaining depth
- rules can be tricky for new players; early teach is essential to prevent confusion
- endgame can be hard to grasp and may feel slow to resolve for beginners
- board complexity and spatial constraints can feel punishing or opaque at first
- city-building through abstract, line-of-sight interactions
- Italian Renaissance city of Urbino
- abstract with historical flavor; non-narrative mechanics
- Turn Coats
- High Tide
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- block and adjacency rules — houses, palaces, and towers have orthogonal adjacency constraints; only one block per color per district; diagonal adjacency does not count
- district-building and scoring — buildings form districts; districts score based on blocks of both players with value by building type
- endgame condition — the game ends when neither player can make a legal move in succession; board fills quickly and moves taper off
- Line of Sight — two architects look outward along radial lines; intersections dictate where buildings may be placed
- line-of-sight architect movement — two architects look outward along radial lines; intersections dictate where buildings may be placed
- movement and placement sequencing — on a turn, you may move one architect and then place a building; moves must leave at least one legal placement
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Urbino, uh, is a two-player abstract game about building, not cooperatively, but competitively together, building a city.
- The end of the game will occur when neither of us in succession can take a move.
- Diagonal adjacency does not matter.
- Towers can never be directly orthogonally adjacent to towers of either color; palaces can never be directly orthogonally adjacent to other palaces.