Originally published on Board Game Geek.

Skyway claims to be a city builder in the vein of Sprawlopolis, to which I thought “Impossible! Sprawlopolis uses custom cards that have a grid of four blocks and variable scoring criteria. How can that be done with standard cards?”

Ok, I didn’t think that verbatim, but I was skeptical. And I was wrong. City-building games go back to at least SimCity map building concept. Drop in new zones, watch people move in, build them something cool like a stadium, see crime and pollution build up, and, because you’re a jerk, send in a natural disaster to see what happens. It’s a sandbox with no objective besides fun. Unlike SimCity, Sprawlopolis has a scoring system that allows wins and loses. Getting good at these games requires dealing with increasingly complicated tradeoffs between the various scoring mechanisms.

There’s no variable scoring in Skyway. Either you build a city that includes a path of 5 increasing cards for each suit or you don’t. The city you create can’t sprawl outside of 3x3 grid. Nor can it grow taller than 3 cards. The rules only hint at the thematic meaning of the cards by calling them “blueprints” when you draft them from the market.

Drafting begins by dealing 2 sets of 2 cards and 1 singleton. You may select any grouping to place in order on any space in the 3x3 grid. Undrafted cards are discarded as are cards at the bottom of a pile larger than three on the grid. These will reappear in the next round.

When you start there doesn’t seem to be much to think about. Grab one of the 2-card stacks (why bother with the 1-card option?) and throw it on the grid. Next turn draft another set that has one or two cards that match the suit of the first stack and put them adjacent to it. By the end of the first time through the deck, you might have paths of 2 or 3 cards for all the suits. Or maybe a completed path of 5 for one suit and one suit that hasn’t really started yet. That’s alright! There are two more rounds coming.

It’s in the second round that the devilish puzzle reveals itself. You might find the perfect card to add, but it’s paired with a card you really want to put in another spot. Maybe pick something else and hope it comes up in a better configuration next round? This is also where you start to see the value of the singleton card in the market. It can safely be stacked on one of the blocks with two cards. But sometimes you do want to go over the 3 card limit to eject a card at the bottom that isn’t helping.

The third round, at least for me, devolves into abdication of responsibility. My plans lie in ruins and building stuff makes everything worse. Decisions that seemed good in round one turn out to be disasters by the game’s end. I gather up the cards in disgust . . . and shuffle them for another go. I have a new theory of city design that I’d like to try out.

With hardly any theme on offer, Skyway somehow becomes an evocative simulator of the challenge of city management. Your constituents have competing needs and ignoring one comes with a cost. Growth often requires destruction of patterns that once worked. Effect play in round 1 requires planning for the distant future of round 3. I’m not very good at it yet and have yet to win. Even so, I give the design ⭐⭐⭐⭐ out of 5.

A bit of housekeeping. This is the second in my series of reviews of Wil Su’s Isaludo series:

1. The Sandwich Guy