‘Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City & Families and Outcasts Expansion’ Review
I am a huge fan of Cyberpunk 2077 (the video game) having come to it on console long after any of the controversy around its release had died down. Thanks to my love of the IP, I have been looking forward to getting a copy of Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City, even though the original Kickstarter was one of CMON’s least successful in recent years.
Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City is all about area movement and control. Each player controls one of four gangs in the base game (or six if you include the Families and Outcasts expansion) and will use their units to claim both regions on the board and the business within them to gain points – which the game refers to as street cred.
The board itself is perhaps a bit overly large, with six regions on each side of the map, and the difference on one side vs the other being that the 1-3 player side has fewer business spaces in each of the districts. With the Families and Outcasts expansion, an additional Badlands section is added to the bottom and right hand side of the board, adding a new district that generates no resources, but does have several business spaces (more on that later).
Each gang consists of nine models, with three from each of the three different kinds of character in the game. These are known as solos (who do the fighting), Techies (who bring a drone with them and enable deals to be made with other denizens of Night City), and Netrunners – who simply enter the web and reap the benefits.
Players activate these units by moving chits on their own player board, with the option to make either one or two activations per turn – or alternatively, to reset all the chits that have already been used and take an income turn. There’s a chit for each of the three character types, one for upgrading your combat card, one wild (which can repeat any of the others) and one that allows the player to build a new hideout in any district.
Because of this mechanism, Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City is pretty simple to play. If you choose your Solo action, you’ll simply move one or more of your Solo units (including any of the named Edgerunners of that class who you might have hired) and then undertake combat in any zone where there is a rival presence. If you choose the Techie chit, you’ll activate and move your Techies (again including those you’ve hired) and then conduct a transaction (either hiring an Edgerunner or taking an Opportunity).
When combat is initiated, you’d be forgiven for assuming that having more units in a district would help you, but that’s not actually the case. Instead, all players involved in the combat simply play one of their combat cards (of which there will always be four) and whoever has the most guns showing will win – with every other player losing one unit from the district. There are ways in which the gun score can be modified, and some gangs gain specific benefits or changes to the rules in combat.
When an upgrade combat card action is taken, the result is equally straightforward – the player just pays two contraband, draws two cards from the upgrade deck and then keeps one – discarding one existing card (to ensure that their total remains at four.) Whilst two contraband is not insignificant, this cost is well worth paying, with upgraded cards usually featuring not only more power, but also more rulebending rules that can even make losing fights quite favorable.
When an income turn is taken, the player simply looks at all districts in which they have units and then draws an amount of income (mostly eurodollars and contraband, but also street cred at times). What they get will depend on where they have units and whether they simply have presence or dominance – the latter of which requires more units than all other gangs combined.
Players will take turns like this until the objectives on the story have played out. There are three stories in the main game box (which arguably isn’t enough) and one more in the Families and Outcasts expansion. Whilst each of these adds its own unique scoring opportunities, tokens, objectives and minor rules, the game often plays out in a similar way – players will work towards a landmark (such as a set number of street cred, or until all van tokens have been claimed) and then another card is drawn. When the final card is drawn, an endgame will be revealed and the players work towards it.
In addition to fighting and claiming districts, players can also win street cred (and sometimes advance the story) by claiming Opportunities. These are simply mission cards that can be fulfilled if set criteria are met. All are publicly available (except one, if it becomes subject to the Valentino’s gangs special ability to claim it) and can be claimed by anyone as soon as they meet the criteria. Some reward players with cred, others resources or upgrade cards – and all feel a little bit thematic if you’ve played the video game.
On that note, Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City just about manages to create a Cyberpunk feeling, albeit often because it so liberally throws elements of the video game into the arena. All of the fonts and visual aspects are straight out of CD Project Red’s game, whilst characters like Jackie Welles and Johnny Silverhand appear as hireable Edgerunners.
Sadly, the core area control (or perhaps area contention) mechanism isn’t quite as strong as it is in some of CMON’s other games – with the likes of Blood Range and Ankh being obvious examples, but perhaps The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire being a more suitable comparison. The design experience of Eric Lang shows through in almost all CMON games of this kind, and the fact that his influence (but not his hand) is present in Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City says a lot.
That said, not every game can be perfect and to be clear – Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City is still a solid, enjoyable game that is simple to pick up and play, moves at pace and supports up to five people without feeling bloated. It looks and feels like an extension of the Cyberpunk universe and uses the IP well, offering a love letter to fans of the video game above all else.
***½. 3.5/5
A copy of Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City was provided for review by Asmodee UK.