New York, New York
New York, New York Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
48 tiles with the beautiful skyline of New York City (four colours, 12 tiles each).
Preparation
Each player chooses a colour. Always use all four coloured tiles even when playing with fewer than four players, treating the colour(s) no one selects as neutral. In a two-player game, treat two colours as neutral, and in a three-player game, there will be one neutral colour.
After shuffling the tiles well, deal six tiles to each player to hold in their hand, which will be called Hand Tiles. Stack the rest of the tiles face down in a pile on the table called the Tile Deck. Reveal six tiles from the Tile Deck and place them face up in a line next to the Tile Deck. These tiles will be called the Replenishment Pool.
Play
Randomly select a player to start, then proceed clockwise playing the following actions in order.
- Place a tile from hand to compose the New York City skyline.
- Pick a tile from the Replenishment Pool and take it into hand.
- Place the top tile from the Tile Deck into the Replenishment Pool.
The active player lays down a Hand Tile on the table and forms the New York City skyline. You can play the tiles in any order. However, it is recommended to provide a suitable gap between tiles, as the tiles should be in numerical order from 1 to 12 to complete the picture. For example, if you want to place the tile '5' after the tile '3', leave space for one tile to the right of the tile '3'. If you want to play a tile of the same number as one already played, place your tile top on the other coloured tile to cover it.
After playing a Hand Tile, select one of the six tiles in the Replenishment Pool to replenish your Hand Tiles. You can choose any colour of the[erase] tile; Your colour, one of another player's colour, or a neutral colour.
Note: the source rulebook prints "the[erase] tile" with a stray editing mark in this sentence; it is transcribed as printed.
Then turn over a top tile from the Tile Deck to refill the Replenishment Pool back to six tiles.
Towards the end of the game, the Tile Deck will begin to run out and it will not be possible to refill the Replenishment Pool to six tiles. After using up the Replenishment Pool, each player's Hand Tiles will become depleted. The game ends when all tiles are played on the skyline, or when all players have passed.
You may declare 'pass' on any turn, not playing a tile onto the skyline nor taking any other actions. Once you have passed, you are subsequently out of the game.
Scoring
Your score is the sum of the point value of your coloured tiles showing on the New York City skyline at the end of the game; Of the multiple stacked tiles, only the top tiles count for scoring.
You also score extra points for neighbouring tiles in the cityscape:
| Adjacent tiles | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Extra points | +3 | +6 | +10 | +15 | +25 |
You can score 3 points for two adjacent tiles, 6 points for three tiles, 10 points for four tiles, 15 points for five tiles, and 25 points for six tiles in a row. When calculating the bonus score, consider the tile '1' and the tile '12' are connected. The player with the highest score wins.
In this game, the player who plays the last tile has a significant advantage. Therefore, we recommend playing as many rounds as the number of players, with each player taking a turn to be the starting player.
Variant Game
To celebrate 30 years after the game's first publication, the author announced a new variant:
Each turn, all players place a Hand Tile face-down to the center of the table. The tiles are revealed at the same time. Any tiles showing the same number are returned to the box. (They won't be used or revealed again.) The other tiles are then placed in the middle of the table normally, in an ascending order. Every other rule is the same as the original game.