Review
Raising Chicago
Raising Chicago is a Spiellworx gem that slipped beneath the radar: a pure, luckless auction game whose modified Walrasian market is as disciplined as it is explosive.
- Published
- 2025
- Designer
- Matt Wolfe
- Publisher
- Spielworxx, Capstone Games, Hobby Japan
- Players
- 2–4
- Playing time
- 120 min
Raising Chicago deserved rather more attention than it received. It is that rare, wholly economic design which needs neither dice nor lucky draws to create tension; a market, a few decisions, and opponents who understand that anything becomes less affordable the moment you want it too.
At its centre are auctions run through a modified Walrasian system. You bid, work out what the others are pursuing, and try to leave them with choices that are expensive or awkward. The interesting decision is whether to pay for the thing you need, or pay simply to ensure that somebody else cannot have it.
The interesting decision is whether to pay for the thing you need, or pay simply to ensure that somebody else cannot have it.
TheTrainSpotter
Then the buildings go into Chicago, as part of the effort to address its sewage crisis. The auction-and-building sequence is rules-light, yet its consequences are not: every bid redraws the terrain for everyone else, rather like Urban Sprawl wearing the overalls of a tulip bubble.
It is not rules-heavy, but it earns its two hours and asks enough of the brain to justify them. For anyone who enjoys hard auctions with almost no luck involved, it is quietly excellent — and it goes straight onto my game-of-the-year list.
For anyone who enjoys hard auctions with almost no luck involved, it is quietly excellent — and it goes straight onto my game-of-the-year list.
TheTrainSpotter
Source: BoardGameGeek
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