Cozy city building board game Tenby hits home in more ways than one

Ah, Wales. That wet bit on the west end of the United Kingdom. Home to more castles per square mile than anywhere else on the planet. A nation that the English crack jokes about as a cultural pastime. A country our American cousins only seem to have heard of if they have a great-grandfather from there.

It’s also my home. I’ve lived in South Wales for seven years, and as the home I chose, I have strong, sentimental feelings about it. That also means I have strong, sentimental feelings about Tenby, a recent board game that celebrates one of Wales’ most famous towns.

This is the debut design from Cozy Cub Games, a company staffed by a single person: Tenby’s artist and designer, Benjamin Talbott. Talbott is Wales-born and Cardiff-based, so I expect he has strong, sentimental feelings about the country, too.

In fact, I’m almost certain of it. Tenby is a simple, soothing city builder, oozing with nostalgia for a place that never went away. If you ask the board game, Tenby’s primary export is warm, fuzzy feelings. It’s a firm contender for the ‘cozy’ board game genre that’s spreading across the industry like an incoming tide.

The goal, as with many of the best board games, is to score the most points after 10 rounds. Doing so involves building the most beautiful seaside town possible.

A round begins with some turn order drafting. A selection of ‘Day’ cards are revealed, each with a list of actions you’ll perform if you place your player token there. These cards also have a number that decides the order they resolve. The lowest-numbered card decides the first player, while whoever picked the highest goes last.

Actions on a turn mainly involve more drafting. You’ll collect a combination of Terrace, Pier, and Landmark cards, each with their own scoring condition. One card might reward you for the number of lampposts on adjacent cards. Another offers points for the number of clouds in the entire street.

Once a card is drafted, you place it immediately, either adjacent to an existing card or alone to start a new run. You can have as many of these streets as you like, but new cards must go on the ends.

They must also meet the requirements of attachment. If the edge of your card shows a piece of Terrace, it can only be placed next to a Terrace. The same goes for piers. You can shuffle your street orders about a bit by spending Life Ring tokens, which are acquired from Day phase cards. Beyond this, your constructions stay put.

There are 25 different feature icons that could score your street points. ‘Most beautiful town’ apparently means something different for everyone. Some are wowed by streets full of red houses, while others want to see flower boxes under every window. I’m pretty sure no one wants to live on a street with 20 seagulls, but Tenby still gives you points for it.

It’s a full-on points salad, with a huge web of architectural decisions to make. And that’s before we even get to the Residents. These cards are drafted like any other, but they stay in your hand. Residents score you serious points for fulfilling their whims, though you’ll only earn the top scores if your streets are complete – bookended by cards that can’t be expanded from.

It’s a small but significant choice to have so much of your points pool come from Residents. In reality, Tenby’s economy relies heavily on visitors. All that natural beauty and quaint history is, it turns out, a double-edged sword.

Tenby, like many tourism towns, has a huge number of holiday homes. Over a quarter of its housing comes under this umbrella. While second homes and Airbnbs persist, locals earning below-average wages struggle to get on the property ladder. Government action to remedy this, however, previously led to a mass exodus of property owners that threatened Tenby’s economy in a different way.

Tenby is, for the most part, a game about building residential houses in a town that’s overwhelmingly reliant on tourists. I can certainly see the political side of that gameplay loop, intentional or not. (Maybe all those Residents are buying seasonal second homes, who can say?)

However, the only sure agenda this game has is (as it says in the rulebook) “a celebration of the town”. On that front, it excels.

The houses and businesses you build are fictional, but the game’s Landmark cards pay homage to real places in Tenby. Plus, your drafting pool almost always cycles through the entire Landmark deck, no matter the player count. It’s like taking an actual tour, ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ included thanks to Talbott’s charming illustrations.

My only gripe is that these trips to Tenby go on just a tad too long. There are many decisions to make, but the core gameplay loop is incredibly simple, meaning turns can feel repetitive by round nine or 10.

This is mostly a problem with high player counts. A full five-player game is bloated by extended thinking time and lengthy scoring sessions. Solo and two-player, on the other hand, fly by in the blink of an eye (like all the best holidays).

I do think Tenby would be stronger if it were a little shorter, but it hasn’t quite overstayed its welcome with me. That’s because it’s just so damn versatile.

Tenby is well-stocked with optional rules that add variety. There’s rules for a more generous final round, additional ‘accolade’ goal cards that shake up scoring, and even a line in the rulebook that suggests switching from open to closed hands. None of these changes are complex, but they can totally transform the feel of a game – and the tactics needed to win.

Tenby, like my love for Wales, is strong and sentimental. It could be tighter, but overall, it’s a splendid way to put Pembrokeshire on the board gaming map. I look forward to many return trips.

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A copy of this game was provided by the publisher, Mighty Boards.

Source: Wargamer