Much more gratifying than tag your surroundings is to play games. And in a game I also accept graffiti tagging as a competitive sport. Indeed, in Tag City it's the players' aim to tag your city fastest. For this, each player takes a city board and an erasable marker. The board shows a city, divided into a 8x12 pattern with five different coloured districts.

A head quarter board with spaces for the Tetris graffiti shapes is placed in the middle of the table. Every round of the game a dice roll determines which of these shapes are available. You simply place the dice next to the shapes according to their values. A space may also contain several dice, so a shape can be used more than once in a round.

One by one the players choose one of the dice and draw the associated graffiti shape on free spaces of their city board. By this the city gradually is filled with graffiti. Now, let's see how the scoring works in the game. As said it's the players' aim to completely fill the city. Consequently a player scores when something is filled. And this can be a column, a row or a whole district. But only the fastest players will really profit from it. The first player who reaches a goal always gets a higher amount of victory points as the players who trail behind. As a result, the first player who reaches a goal, let's say the second row of the city, simple circles the high value associated with the goal (row, column or district). For all other players who reach the same goal reamains only the smaller value circle from that moment. Once all higher values are circled, the game ends.

Tag City is one of the three erasable pen games I played at SPIEL 2018. I like all of these game, because they are very easy to explain and are all great fun. Tag City in particular is pleasing, because of the Tetris shapes and the theme. I know, people my age are always fond of games with tetris elements. But I really think that the tetris shapes fit to the Graffiti theme in Tag City. It's nice if you get a shape that perfectly fits in the last corner of a district. And it is annoying when you must take a shape that leaves you with a single free space in an otherwise completed row. But for that spaces you can still use drones to cheat. Although this will result in negative values, it may still be better than leaving the space unfilled....