Overview

Black Metro is a strategic area control game where players battle each other to amass the most power and become the next ruler of the dark city. Gather resources to research powerful technologies, build fortifications and upgrade units. Control districts through military strength and dominate your opponents. Gain massive power through syndicate support and mission objectives.

Features

• ▶   Workers have dual use: Winning spaces and using spaces
• ▶︎   Winning spaces prevents other players from fully using them
• ▶︎   Spread workers to use more spaces or consolidate for control
• ▶︎   Powerful technologies to ‘mix and match’ playstyles
• ▶︎   Minimal tokens for ease of gameplay management

Gameplay

Each of the six game rounds has the following four phases.

1. Assignment Phase: This first phase is where the ‘Heart and Soul’ of Black Metro’s design lies. Players will assign their personnel to districts in preparation for dominance and resolution. The rule is that a player cannot reinforce districts which already contain their personnel, but may assign as many personnel as they wish to a specific district when they initially assign their personnel to that specific district.

2. Dominance Phase: A quick, deterministic combat system takes place, where the player with the most strength at each district, dominates those districts and acquires power for doing so. Any losing players at those districts suffer strain as a consequence.

3. Resolution Phase: Players then resolve districts, allowing them to utilise the effects of districts which contain their personnel. If there is a dominating player at a district, then the losing players at that district may only resolve the first effect of that district. Otherwise, all players with personnel at a district may resolve both effects of the district.

4. Standby Phase: A clean-up administrative operation in preparation for the next game round. Players can receive backing from public objectives known as the Syndicates during this phase, allowing players to acquire more power before the next game round commences.

Gameflow

What typically ends up happening in a game of Black Metro is that the early rounds sees players spreading their personnel far and wide to utilise as many district’s abilities as possible. In later rounds, players need to start considering assigning more personnel (and therefore strength) to districts and bunching up their forces to increase resiliency against other player’s personnel; thereby utilising less districts overall but increasing the chances of being able to use the districts where they have bunched up their personnel.

Players must also consider the sequencing of their personnel assignments. Remember, districts cannot be reinforced with personnel, once personnel has been assigned. A player’s early assignments are therefore more exposed to being opposed than later assignments.

In this manner, as the game progresses, strength becomes increasingly important and the utilisation of districts diminishes, in a fairly organic manner.

Victory

Because Black Metro is akin to a sandbox game, there are various pathways a player can take to ultimately claim victory. Players acquire power throughout the game by dominating districts, fulfilling missions and receiving syndicate backings. Players acquire power at the end of the game based on their total strength, number of researched technologies and stocked resources. Depending on a player’s play style, the ratio of where their power comes from, will vary.