City of the Big Shoulders: Be a Stock Market Magnate (SU&SD Review)

chicago hog butcher for the world tool maker stack  of wheat player with railroads and the nation's   freight handler stormy husky brawling  mighty morphing big bad beetle borgs   this is city of the big shoulders kindly  provided to us by parallel games and this   is a game of stocks and trading you'll  spend a small fortune making high quality   shoes this little piggy will go to market and then  be purchased by a stranger who will turn them into   soap and the winner at the end of it will be  the business person with the most money but   there's a chance that money won't actually  be yours if you're not savvy at the concept   of juggling multiple wallets now this is a  fiddly economic doozy of a game framed within   the historical setting of the city of chicago  around 150 years ago a period in which the city   boomed and thrived alongside an explosion of  livestock and steel it's moniker at the time   the city of the big shoulders or as i personally  prefer to call it the massive pork grenade now there are a whole bunch of different companies  you might be taking control of during any game of   big shoulders and you'll be delighted to discover  that all of these boring ass company names are 100% real if you flip over the cards you can see a  bit about the history of those things alright   cracker jack you've probably heard of these  haven't just been dredged from the annals of   time for your pleasure some of these companies are  still around today n. k. fairbank and company for any   european viewers such as myself still produce a  soap called fairy fairy liquid started in chicago   i think that's neat it's 1875 the markets are just  about to open and the general public is ravenous   for products people want wheaty goods they're  hungry for sewing machines they want pork-based   products and they want shoes and now if  your company is able to fulfill this demand   and to be the player of the company who puts down  goods on one of these cards finishing it you're   going to get a cash bonus in addition to all the  money that you would have made from selling those   goods in the first place also the demand in  this game is not permanent bad news the great   depression is just around the corner which means  as things go on this is going to get filled up   in different places and it means things like shoes  and port-rate porkbased- pork based products are not   going to be in demand and you might have to end up  selling them at half price that wasn't so hard was   it come on matt pork-base pork-base port-based ohhhh  brullocks with this initial idea of what the public   might want at the start of the game you're going  to choose one of these companies to run investing   some of your own money into 30% of that company's  stocks opening the remaining 70% of stocks to the   wider market you've got a little range of options  about where you can set your initial share price   bad news is you've probably just spent almost  all of your personal money on a company but the   good news is the money you spent on shares  then goes into the coffers of that company   and while that's good news you're going to have  some money to spend with your company it's crucial   that you remember that your company's money  is not your money that's an important concept   this is a non sequitur and i know you haven't  prepared but if i steal money from my own company   that's called embezzlement that that literally is embezzlement that's what the word embezzlement means dictionary definition of embezzling i need that 20 pounds back oh you want your 20  pounds back i want the company's 20 pounds back yeah so welcome to the confusing  and adamantly bland world of 18xx  games uh and to explain what this genre is well  we've got an expert on hand shut up and sit down's   very own queen fiddle it's ava foxfort ava: there'll be a variety of companies and they will be building   routes like train-y tagliatelles spilling over a  map with little hexagons that're a bit ugly and   green and yellow and brown and they will slowly be  creating a network onto which they can run trains   build routes and make money for the stations they  can stop at that money gets distributed to the   shareholders or withheld by the company so they  can save up to buy a bigger better nicer train   just like in city of the big shoulders players  aren't companies they are individual investors in   companies so punctuating all of that train gaming  you've got stock rounds where people are buying   stock selling stock and occasionally manipulating  the market to make stuff more valuable less   valuable or do even tricksier things like dump  companies on people and if you time that right   you can dump a company on someone when you've just  emptied the coffers so it's got no money and they   are about to have a train that's going to rust in  the train yard and they're going to have to pay   out of their own pocket for the replacement  train nasty very nasty they are ruthless   and complicated in a way that i don't think many  games get to be it makes everything in the game   so much more scary and brutal like every decision  in this has your heart in your throat which isn't   something i expect to say about a game about trains matt: on a turn in city of the big shoulders   you're gonna be able to send a business partner  onto this tableau of options which is quite bare   at the moment but will fill up as the game goes  on and you're gonna be able to do a whole bunch   of different things that benefit your businesses  maybe you come down here and purchase a full-time   asset which you might be able to slot into your  company to keep getting bonuses from that capital asset year after year maybe i'm going to hire some  staff to work in my factory probably probably a   good idea or you could get a little sales person  they'll boost the price that you can sell your   goods at i could get a manager that's gonna give  me specific bonuses when i run different parts of   my factories if i actually knew about business at  this point i'd make a joke about hey what's the   difference between a sales person and the manager  both bits of wood painted in slightly different   color paints insert a noise of like lonely wind  here lonely wind here oh right okay and each year   players are going to be choosing new tiles which  then get added to the selection of options of   things people can do letting you hire staff for  cheaper automating your factories allowing you   to actually replace humans with robots for better  efficiencies can't imagine the world in which that   would happen and the fun caveat here is that when  players use these spaces more than often they will   then give money from the company activating it to  the player character double wallet who placed that   tile which means there's an incentive not only to  put out things that you want but to put out really   expensive services that you know other people will  be hungry for as is often the case in games that   look like these most of these spaces can only  be used once each round with the exception of   a couple of green ones which can be used multiple  times meaning the opportunities disappear quickly   if you aren't quick to grab them after everyone  has placed all of their available partners you   then switch over from the human investor side  of the game to the business side running the   companies in the order of appeal as shown on this  side of the board running a company's production   capacity requires resources which come in four  flavors livestock wood coal and cool original   now the great news is your companies can  store as much of these resources between years   as you like and on your turn before you try  and run your factories you're going to get the   opportunity to buy some bonus resources last  minute from this little selection of markets   once you've done your spending over there it  is go time and from left to right you're going   to see if you can run the different parts of your  factory in this instance i can only run the first   part of my factory and then i'm going to get some  resources in this instance i'm going to get three   of these little white tubby things which  are apparently shoes in the context of   this company i mean look at these look at  these look at all of these beautiful shoes and now it's time to hammer on the white hot  pickle at the very center of this game let's just   say in a round i produce three goods because i  have a sales person i'm selling these goods at 60   a pop which means three goods that's 180 dollars  but i also get that 50 bonus for completely   fulfilling that demand because our current share  price sits at 60 dollars and 230 is more than   three times 60 it's maths 180 we get to move up  the maximum of three spaces on this share tracker   stocks now valued at $120 a share but that only  happens if you pay dividends if you don't all   the shareholders get in a huff and instead of  going up your share price will actually go down   by one space but if we do pay out dividends  then it's quite simple for every 10%   share that you own in the company the amount  of that profit that just got made there you're   going to get 10 percent of that so you're going  to need a calculator so now we've got a calculator   let's dividend let's just say for example that  with doggett bassett and hills those fine fine   shoe people i own 60% of the shares in this  company and at this point no one else has   bought any other shares this means that i as the  60% shareholder immediately gained dividends of $138 whilst the remaining shares still owned  by the company will get the company coffers   $92 that's fantastic a bunch of money for me and  a bunch of money for my company and here is the   spicy kicker in this economic omelette any money  in your companies at the end of the game it's not   worth anything your score is completely dependent  on hard cash money you have in your character's   pocket or stocks and shares that you own at  their current value at the end of the game and   did you catch a little thing there and what i said  companies yes that's right this might seem fiddly   already but throughout a game of big shoulders  you might end up running two three maybe even   four different companies which means two three or  four five different wallets that you have to keep   separate if you've ever run a business or  have a basic hobbyist's grasp on finances   then honestly the rules in this game aren't  actually that complicated but otherwise the the manual itself actually even recommends  that you don't play with the paper money included   and if you have some to grab some poke  chips instead makes it much easier to   keep those separate stacks although i must  say the poke chips are considerably harder   to rapidly stuff down your top in the event that  the law is catching up with you but i mean this   stop look it's it's caveat  confession caller time here   i've never tried this before i've never tried  playing this game with poke chips instead of   instead of paper money i've actually never  tried shoving poker chips down my top either   i've wrote in the script it turns out actually  it's very easy and they've got a kind of pleasing   cold feel against my belly it's not bad but  more importantly perhaps i've never played this   game physically more than once once and a half  maybe a while ago and i mean i've been playing i've been playing it a lot on board game arena  like a lot but board game arena it's fantastic   but it does all the maths for you i've been  playing it a lot on board game arena which is   fabulous and it does all of the maths *for you like an irresponsible cool uncle who   who's helped you cheat at your homework so  you can just go bowling but it means that   it's impossible for this not to color the  context of how we're able to approach stuff   and how we review stuff and i just want to make  sure that you know that at this point it's been   literally a year of me being inside i haven't  been able to play board games physically with   the rest of the team or even see them  physically for one whole calendar year   i mean how am i doing with all of this well  actually while it's not ideal for reviews i   have developed some systems that allow me to  get the feel of playing board games with other   people physically without having people here  you know isn't that right mr thomas broomster and so now to help me explain the horror of  multi-company corporation controlling and   share prices and all of that pickle is none  other than the fabulous mr quintin strings   hey-o matt how you doing oh i'm very well thank you  so much for asking actually um look so let's just   say you've started a company right and you're  rocketing up the share price quite dramatically   but i bought a bunch of shares in your company  when they were really cheap and i now own 50%  of the company whilst you own 40% of the company  but don't panic don't panic i run the company with   the appeal that is just above yours which means i  can ensure that at the end of that company's turn   i'm going to leave you the resources that you need  to effectively run that company and make money   make us both money at the end of the year quintin: great cooperation is magical matt: it is although maybe let's   just say that i i get bored of your company and i  dump all the stocks and the share price plummets   and i start up my own company producing exactly  the same type of goods at much reduced prices and   just just completely push you out of business  or maybe that's what you think i'm going to do   and so knowing that you very rapidly dump your  30% share in the company passing over the entire   company to me which because you've just frightened  the shareholders means the stock drops down by   three spaces leaving me with full control of your  company for the rest of the game although arguably   it's not really worth having why would you do that  why would you why would you do such a cruel and   callous and mean thing to me we had a why would  you do that what's wrong with you quintin: matt i have absolutely no control over this conversation matt: well yeah arguably yes that is true and for that reason  for the remainder of this review you won't be  talking instead you will simply be wildly emoting i know right yeah it's unbelievable isn't  it how dare i anyway these resources that   we're buying to run our factories come  out of a bag and filter into the economy   in a way that leaves the distribution slightly  different each time you play the game and just   like many experienced in the year of 2020  may leave you fruitlessly longing for pork quintin: matt this is a family show matt: don't worry though if this  market system doesn't look fiddly i've got some   great news it is if a space is completely empty  after a company's taken their turn then everything   will shift along by one space introducing fresh  goods and making other bits cheaper but if the   last player was being a complete piece of work  as i so often am twiddles fake mustache then they   might just buy up all of the cubes but one in  each space leaving no new stuff no new discounts   and a platter of goods that's as meager and  stale as a long since abandoned hamster's picnic   because yes i can see exactly what resources  you need to run your factory and i can see   which resources you currently have and if i  have the capacity to stifle you and i don't   have any shares in your company then why wouldn't  i i mean admittedly yes within the context a shoe   company buying up hundreds of pigs to stop a soap  company from being able to produce anything does   sound like a plot line from wallace and gromit  but because cash in your company's coffers means   absolutely nothing at the end of the  game it's worthless why not spend it   recklessly on pointless cruelty i mean there is  no tomorrow so i'm gonna put an end to your future   it's fun isn't it board games also i'd be remiss  not to mention the fact that when i played it with quinns he was quite reasonably annoyed that  buying up all of the stock in the market actually refreshes availability for the following company  quintin: it makes no sense matt: listen this isn't your review although also yes you are completely correct it  doesn't really work thematically but mechanically   it is chef kiss kiss a chef and you may be able to  detect at this stage that i love this game i love   this game i'd never be able to recommend it to a  broad audience it is it's complicated enough to   even knock the crown of queen fiddle slightly  out of place and my word last week was beige   week on the website of shut up and sit down and  this is just a glaze of caramels and browns but   no both of these criticisms i hear and i refute  them firstly this is a game of pop and color it   just reserves that color for the places where  it needs it allowing you to survey the entire   world with your capitalist spider eyes admittedly  it is really annoying that the black cubes for   coal and the very very dark cubes for wood are so  similar but other than that it's a lovely textural   plane that allows you to just get the information  thoomp and enjoy it also the art direction in this   i kind of like it yes the portraiture is a bit  wonky but the graphic design is sharp and the   kind of chiseled scratchy illustrations really  work they feel of the era without coming across as   fawning or twee and now more importantly yes this  game is tricky i could not get away with saying   ah it's not that complicated i'd be forced  quite rightfully to hand in my badge and my gun   but what i will say is that the work you put  into this game in terms of learning to play it is   rewarded in droves there are so many opportunities  for manipulation here so many different ways to   control the flow of the game and because the  action spaces are chosen by players games do   vary quite a lot if the things you need aren't  appearing as the game goes on you need to rapidly   adapt maybe forget about this company and start  another one and if this style of games seems mean   it isn't it's just cold admittedly when you first  start playing it there's the temptation to be mean   to just buy some stocks in someone's company and  then just crash the stock price by selling them   all at a time when it's not convenient for them  most of the time though that's not really a good   idea you sell stocks in companies that you don't  think are going to do very well in the future and   you buy stocks in companies that you think are  when you're in the first part with the partners   you can't trade goods between your companies  but there's no reason why you can't   at not a great cost spend two for one at haymarket  square to effectively within your turn just siphon   goods back and forth between the two companies  perhaps you'll disappoint the shareholders that   have just invested in your company by having a  huge quantity of goods being produced and then   just selling a couple just enough to stop  investors from being really annoyed but not   really paying out any dividends either collecting  and hoarding resources to control the market later   and to maximize your profits and to boost up  your shares the systems of this game are so   intoxicatingly malleable even if it does  look and sound like it's a game for people   who get excited about managing spreadsheets  although actually i've become that person   somehow over the past year i really quite like  messing around in google sheets and doing stuff   i dunn- send help you know playing this game and looking  at the big brands that are still around today   and the names that are still around and celebrated  today it seems bizarre to me really that the world   we live in today was so defined by a handful of  people from 150 years ago whether you call them   the titans of industry or prefer to think of  them as robber barons this period changed the nature of industry the nature of employment  the nature of how we have conversations about both and this poem printed within the  box paints a picture of a time of explosive opportunity a city rebuilt in the aftermath of a  great fire a powerful railroad hub serving freight across the country a snapshot of hustle  of grime of naive optimism and momentum a time in which the raw exciting promise of  capitalism had yet to collide with the damp wall of reality you know we talked about this period  of history quite a lot recently in the shut up and sit down podcast philanthropy robber barons and  the tendency for board games to paint history in   an unwisely flattering tone and thankfully i don't  think that city of the big shoulders does that   playing as investors you get the thrill of boom  and bust that was a part of this story but looking   through the faces on this game's paper money you  find scientists inventors poets great speakers   pioneers of civil rights people pushing for the  social changes needed alongside this dramatic   change in the nature of industry and the reason i  talk about all of this is because this poem from   which the game takes its name is evidently a love  letter to the city of chicago and it feels very   much like this board game is the same thing a work  of passion about the historical significance of a   city and one that mechanically focuses wholly  on capitalist cunning and brutal economics   but doesn't try to celebrate that entirely within  a vacuum it's impassioned without being zealous   and that not only leaves me really respecting it  as a piece of thematic work it leaves me getting   swept along with that excitement and finding  myself excited about a place and a topic that i   otherwise just wouldn't have been bothered about i  mean i've actually been to chicago but it was fine   i wish i'd played this game before i went because  i would have i would have enjoyed the place   more i thought chicago was just famous for  like baseball and the television show cheers   so this for me is the gold standard of not only  toothy economic games that don't swallow up an   entire day but also just on the side of historic  games that actually left me genuinely curious   where so often historic games simply try and  make us feel cozy and comforted with familiar   retellings of stories we already know if all  of this sounds mighty exciting but you are   reasonably intimidated by the quantity of pieces  and numbers spread across this table then hey   a place you could start for a little look to  get a feel for what it might be like to have   shares in other people's companies and messing  around with that is the delightful irish gauge   it's a very very quick and rapid and relatively  uncomplicated game of trains and stocks and shares   and the people who love them it's gorgeous  it's quite cheap it's in a very small box   it's an easy recommendation so it might not  be for everyone but it's certainly for me   and as a man who gets excited about fiddling  around in spreadsheets there's nothing i   enjoy more than an evening of pushing little  pink cubes around and pretending they're pigs   followed up with lots of reading up on wikipedia  so for you and your friends your pals cheers you wanna go to the website it's all about  board games - stay still - you wanna like and subscribe to get your video fill - you need to stay still - wouldn't it be nice to find a website   i wish that i could use licensed music or  a hug today then don't - you gotta stay still and you're always glad you came family show this is a nightmare alright this is worse than the real one you're just saying that but it means a lot

Channel: Shut Up & Sit Down

Views: 121,652

Keywords: Shut Up and Sit Down, SUSD, SU&SD, Board Game Review, Review, Board Games, Board Gaming, Boardgame, Board Game, Gaming, Tabletop, Fun Games, Strategy Games, matt lees, City of the Big Shoulders, Chicago, Chicago Games, 18XX, stocks, shares, dividends, heavy games, ava foxfort, quintin strings

Id: NPeKcxgDvw4

Length: 26min 58sec (1618 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/seethemoon]

So nice to see Matt and Quinns together in a video again!

[u/Gastroid]

The madman finally did it. Matt raved about it on the podcast, but knew talking about it was like listening to paint dry, yet still made the podcast and now the video enjoyable.

[u/RoflPost]

This is the best named game I've seen in a while. Games should have better names like this. I don't actually know anything about the game, but a lot of games get names so generic they almost seem like parody.

It really evokes a feeling and an idea. It tells me something about the game in an interesting way. I feel like a lot of games fail to do that.

EDIT: For anyone who doesn't know the name is taken from the poem "Chicago" by Carl Sandburg. It's kind of an American classic.

[u/guested]

By far my favorite game of 2019, and one of our groups most played. I've always loved the stock market and stock shenanigans that 18XX games offer, but I've never been huge on the route building aspect. This gives me the best of both worlds, 18XX meets Arkwright.

[u/Danwarr]

For the record, the sitcom Cheers takes place in Boston, not Chicago.

[u/Clownfeet]

Probably one of the most dissapointed i've been in a game in years.

It "had" everything, stock shenanigans, worker placement, resource management. It had so much potential, but i think ultimately it was overdeveloped and those beautiful rough edges that make heavy games great, were sanded down to leave a boring shell of what could have been.

I've played it 5 times and each time i went back to it i thought, maybe i was missing something? but in the end it's just not that great a game and there are just MUCH better alternatives to everything it tries to do.

It tries to be 18xx meets Arkwright but it's effectively a VERY watered down version of both, so why would i not just play those instead of this.

• It NEEDS cross company buying of resources/workers/capital assest tiles - probably it's biggest let down

• It has almost ZERO reason to sell a company or dump a company on anyone other than "because". Someone dumped a company on me and i just injected a small bit of cash, bought some resources and made money...literally nothing affected me. (and we have tried this multiple times)

• both of the above issues mean the stock market is basically stale and completely boring even when we TRIED so hard to mess around with each other in games.

• the resource market has been talked about wildly so i won't go into it, but it really is an absolute mess. adding that amount of randomness into a game almost made me sell it on the spot.

• the fact that you can have a turn where you literally cannot do a single thing with a company because of randomness in the market is unforgiveable. might as well have a deck of cards with a "miss a go" card in there. Yeah in some other games your turn is messed up and you have to think on the spot and change your path but in this you just literally say "pass....this company cannot do ANYTHING"...yeah that's fun

• the supply/demand and its randomness is almost an afterthought. Arkwright is one of the best supply/demands i've played and CotBS pales compared to that. it's barely even a thing in this.

i could go on and on but unfortunately the game needs a version 2 - an actual heavy, economic game where turns have impact, you can actually care about companies, you can move all assets between them and inject some necessary depth to the stock market and some actual RISK because at the moment you sit there, open some companies, make some goods, sell them....great.

not all negative though, the worker placement spots and tiles and so on is absolutely fantastic. LOVED that. Love the unique companies and the asset tiles, love the resource management and work force etc.

[u/[deleted]]

Anybody got any thoughts on the Irish Gauge game he recommended? It sounds like my sort of thing, and looks gorge, and I love stock games but don't really need another super heavy game like SOTBS that I'll rarely get to play.

[u/tneeno]

As a Chicago-born board gamer, I can only say: "Take my money now!!!" This looks so cool.

[u/UNO_LegacyTM]

I'm glad someone remembers Beetle Borgs.