Welcome To... - First Play!

23rd June 2022

It's a Thursday evening and we're in Aldershot for some gaming goodness!

Welcome to the jungle, we got fun and games
We got everything you want, honey, we know the names
We are the people that can find whatever you may need
If you got the money, honey, we got your disease

OK, Welcome To... isn't a game about Guns N' Roses or in fact jungles. It's full name is 'Welcome to... your perfect home' and it's about suburban planning - and that's just as equally as glamorous!

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What's in a game?

• ​Player sheets: The top half of these sheets depicts a pleasant looking leafy suburb with 3 rows of residential streets of slightly varying length. Along these streets are fencing markers between properties while some of the homes have pools. Additionally, alongside each row is a tracker for 'parks'.
  The bottom half of the sheet is filled with trackers for the various different ways of scoring VPs,, importantly, it also tracks building permit refusals.
• Construction cards: These are double sided cards, one side shows a house porch along with their street number ranging from 1-15, these numbers are not evenly distributed and the extreme numbers, e.g., 1, 2, 14 & 15 occur less often on the cards.
  ​The other side of each card shows an icon related to one of the game's actions or effects.
• City plan cards: These provide additional scoring objectives for the game and are further subdivided into 3 types. They are based on creating housing estates of the specified size.

​The player sheets come in a pad of 100 pages and thus are used up over games, although they will probably last a long time. Now, this is only a personal gripe of mine but I'd rather have a handful of dry erase sheets instead. There's something unsettling about having your game slowly but inevitably eroded. Would dry erase sheets cost so much more?
The cards are the average quality you'd expect from a modern game.
Finally, I will add that the game does not come with any pencils or pens which feels a bit like an omission to me

The game has a subtle 50's Americana aesthetic to it's art direction, since there isn't a great variety of art used throughout the game, it's not immediately apparent (Other than on the cover!). Artwork on the construction cards are essentially a variation on a theme.
Having said that, the art that is used is attractive enough and looks good to me.

The game uses iconography for its 6 effects and also to convey information on the city plan cards. None of it is hard to learn and won't pose an obstacle.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Players: give each player a blank sheet.
• City plans: Sort the city plans into their relevant types, then shuffle each type and draw 1 card from each. This gives players a variety of 3 extra scoring opportunities or goals.
• Construction cards: Shuffle all the construction cards, then deal them into 3 decks in a line with the house number side face-up.

On to play
In Welcome To... players are attempting to create the best neighbourhood with their urban planning skills by creating houses and housing estates.
Welcome To.. does not use a traditional turn order, since players do not influence each other, all players' actions are resolved simultaneously.
In each turn, the following actions are performed.

• Flip construction cards: 1 card from each of the 3 decks is flipped over and placed adjacent to the deck it came from.
  Thus, there will be 6 cards showing - 2 lines of 3 cards. One line shows house numbers and its adjacent line shows effects.
• Choose combination: Now each player chooses 1 pair of cards from the 3 available pairs, that is 1 house number card and its adjacent effect card. Players cannot choose 2 house numbers or 2 effects cards, nor can they take from different pairs.
  Once a pair has been chosen, the player must write down the house number and resolve the effect.
• Write house number: The player must write down the house number they chose in one of their available empty houses with the following restrictions.
  • Sequential: Numbers can be written anywhere along a street, however the numbers must always be sequential. E.g., numbers must go from left-to-right and increase in value.
    Gaps: It's perfectly acceptable to leave 1 or more spaces between houses. A player can put a '1' in the first house in a street, leave the on house on the right empty and place a '5' in the third house.
    Skipping numbers: It's also acceptable to skip numbers, using the numbers above it would be fine to put the '5' in the 2nd house on the right directly to the '1' in the first house.
    So long as the numbers always remain sequential it is acceptable. Obviously there are some risks inherent with some of the choices players will have to make but more on this below.
    Can't use a house number: If a player cannot use any 3 of the currently available house numbers, they cross off a box on their building permit refusal tracker.
  • Effects: Now players may resolve the effects that they've chosen. There are 6 effects. When used, most effects will result in something being crossed off in the score tracker in the lower half of the player sheet.
    • Bis: This effect allows the player duplicate a house's number on a empty space house directly adjacent, furthermore this can be done with a house multiple times. However, use of this effect will cost VPs at the game end.
    • Landscaper: This effect allows the player to create parks in the same street where they placed their house number, allowing them to cross off boxes on that street's park tracker.
    • Pool Manufacturer: If the player puts their house number into a house with a pool, that house will gain a pool, allowing the player to cross of a box on the pools scoring tracker and earning VPs at the game end.
    • Real estate agent: This effect allows players to cross off spaces in the housing estate tracker and increases the VP value of each completed housing estate (See below for more on housing estates.).
    • Surveyor: With this effect, the player may put fences between 2 houses. 
      Estates: When 2 fences have been put into a row AND all the houses between those 2 fences have been numbered, it is considered a completed housing estate, housing estates can contain 1-6 houses.
    • Temp Agency: This effect allows the player to alter the house number they are about to use by 1 or 2, thus increasing the range of numbers to 0-17.
  • City plans: If a player creates all the necessary housing estates to fulfil a city plan, then it is scored on their player sheet. The first player to fulfil a city plan earns the larger VP score, all subsequent players score the lesser VP value.
  • End of turn: Once all players have resolved their house number and associated effect, the turn is over. The 3 construction cards showing house numbers are flipped over on to the effects cards, thus revealing 2 new house numbers while their other sides now show 3 new effects.
    Then a new turn begins.

Endgame
There 3 criteria by which the game can end.

• Once the 3rd box on any player's building permit refusal tracker is crossed off.
• If any player completes all 3 city plan objectives.
• If any player has numbered all house in all 3 rows on their player sheet.

Following this, the game goes into scoring.
There are a large number of scoring methods in Welcome To... and may come from:
generally, the first un-crossed off value is the score for that particular tracker.

• City plans: The combined VP of any city plans a player completed are scored.
• ​Parks: The combined score from all 3 park trackers.
• Pools: The score from the pools tracker
• Temp agency: This is a little different. Whoever has ticked off the most temp agency boxes will score 7 VPs, the player with the 2nd highest amount earns 4 VPs and 3rd place earns 1 VP.
• Housing estates: Ok, this is a little complex.
  At the basic level a housing estate has a VP value equal to it's size, so will range from 1-6 VPs each.
  However, crossing off spaces in columns in the housing estate tracker will increase the value of those sized estates.
  Thus, crossing off a box in the 'size 1 estates' column increases the value of each  size 1 estate from 1 to 3. Crossing off all the boxes in the size 6 estates column increases the value of each 6 point estate to 12.

Additional, they are 2 trackers which deduct VPs.

• Bis: Each time a bis effect is used, it will cost VPs.
• Building permit refusal: Each box crossed off will cost VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
Welcome To... is a fairly easy to learn game that has a brisk playtime that does not outstay it's welcome (SIC), having said that though, it can end very quickly if the wrong numbers come up at the wrong time!

The game provides players some meaningful, interesting decisions to make, this is because there are '2' axis of decision making at work here - house numbers and effects.
If the game only utilised house numbers, then it would be too straightforward but by pairing them with effects, it provides intriguing propositions.
Players will frequently find themselves in situations where they will want to use a certain effect but don't want the associated house number or possibly, having to think about choosing an effect that won't benefit them in order to a house number they want. 

Players will need to adapt and make use of what they're given to work with, find ways to exploit the effects they've had to use and make them work.

In the case of house numbers, quite often this will mean taking house numbers that are not immediately useful and putting them into one of the streets.
This can present various problems for players.
Leaving too small a numerical gap between houses can be risky because only specific numbers can go there. E.g., having a 7, then a gap, then a 9 means only a 8 will fit in the gap later on.
Conversely, leaving too big a gap will mean wasting numbers. Having a 7, then a gap and then a 12 means that most of the numbers in the 8-11 range will be locked out and cannot be used elsewhere in that street anymore.

This is the classic dilemma players face in a lot of roll and write style games: Having to try and plan ahead, hoping what you need will come up at some point later on the game. It's essentially a bit of gamble. 
In this regard, it's something Welcome Too.. does very well and is a solid entry in the roll and write (Or flip and write if you really want to be pedantic.) genre.

It means that if this style of game is not your thing, you probably won't like Welcome To.. but if roll and write games are you thing, Welcome To... is definitely worth a try.