Friday Filler: Village Rails

Osprey Games is primarily known for its wargames rules, such as Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City, but it also publishes board and card games and roleplaying games too. The latter includes Gran Meccanismo: Clockpunk Roleplaying in da Vinci’s Florence, Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying, and Heirs to Heresy: The fall of the Knights Templar, whilst the former includes titles such as Undaunted Normandy, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and Village Rails: A Game of Locomotives and Local Motives. The latter is rail-themed board game designed for two to four players aged up fourteen and over, and designed to be played in less than an hour. It has a delightfully cosy feel to it, being set in the English countryside during the Age of Steam during the thirties, forties, and fifties. Play is simple with each player only having to make a few choices and the game ends once everyone has taken twelve turns after which each player’s tableau or rail network is scored and the player with the highest score wins.

Village Rails: A Game of Locomotives and Local Motives consists of eighty Railway Cards, thirty-eight Terminus Cards, four Reference Cards and four Scoring Dials, Border Pieces, and almost fifty coins. The Border Pieces and coins are done in thick cardboard, as are the Scoring Dials, which do require some assembly. The Border Pieces are marked with the start of seven railway lines and are used to create an ‘L-shape’ into which the Railway Cards are placed as a three-by-five twelve-card grid. The Railway Cards are double-sided. On one side is Track, which depicts two single tracks running across terrain such as fields, pasture, forest, lakes, and villages. The Track side are also marked various symbols, including Barns, Farms, Halts, and Sidings. When they appear on a completed line, these will all score a player points, except for Sidings which are scored at the end of the game. On the other side of the Railway Cards are Trips, which score a player if their conditions are met. For example, ‘2 per type of feature on the line.’, ‘No Bulls on the line: 4 points’, and ‘Only straight tracks on the line: 6 points’. Terminus Cards earn a player money when played, the amount depending on the indicated features on the cards, for example, the number of tractors on the line, number of different terrain features on the line, and so on. The greater the number of features on the line, the more money a Terminus Card will earn.

At the start of the game, each player receives an ‘L-shape’ border and £5 in coins. Once the Railway Cards are shuffled, cards are drawn to form two markets—the Track Market and the Trip Market. These are two lines of cards from which a player can select a single Track card and a single Trip card respectively on his turn. The first card in each market is always free to take, but the cards further along the line and closer to the deck must be purchased, with cards closer to the deck being more expensive. This money is placed on the cards further away from the deck and if a player subsequently selects one of the cards with money on it, he receives both card and money. Each player receives three Terminus Cards which he keeps secret until played. On a turn, a player can conduct two actions. The first is to build tracks, which the player must do, the second is to plan a trip, which is optional, but can be done before or after building tracks. Planning a trip always costs money and the Trip card selected is placed next to the player’s L-shape border at the start of a line. Each line can have two Trip cards like this. When selected a Track card is placed into a player’s tableau, either next to a border or another Track card. If as a result of a Track card being placed, a railway line runs from the player’s ‘L-shape’ border to the edge of his tableau, it is considered completed and can be scored. Points are scored for the features on the line, for the bonus provided by the adjacent Trip card, and money if a Terminus card has been played. The Reference Cards help scoring easy for each player.

In Village Rails, each player is working to complete his own tableau and the game does not involve any direct interaction with each other. The interaction comes indirectly through the game’s two markets—the Track Market and the Trip Market. Here each player will be watching them for the best cards to become available, hopefully free in the case of the Track Market and cheap in the case of the Trip Market, and before another player takes them. Another reason to take a card is that it has money on it. Money will enable a player to purchase a better Track or Trip card than before another player can, or simply just buy a Trip card, and the right Trip card will score more points. What this means is that the players have to spend their money with care and take the opportunity of their Terminus cards to earn more. A player will always have three Terminus cards, so fortunately, there is always the opportunity for him to earn money when completing a line.

Placement of the Track cards also takes care and players tend to place their first Track cards at the outer corners of their L-shape and work inwards to fill in all twelve spaces in their tableaus. This is because those placed at the corners can often be completed first, scoring a player some points and potentially earning him money. It also initially gives a wider choice as to what cards a player can draw and play, but as more and more Track cards are placed, the choices begin to tighten as a player tries to balance trying to find the right Track card to add to a tableau and purchase the Trip card which will score him the most points. Throughout, a player will always be considering how he can maximise the number of points he can score and how much money he can earn. Play continues until every player has placed his twelfth Track card and the final scoring is done for the Sidings.

Physically, Village Railways is delightfully and sturdily presented. The first thing that you notice upon lifting up the rules booklet from the box is one single piece of design to the components—and not to the components of the game, but the packaging of the components that the players pull out to assemble the Scoring Dials and the Border Tiles. There is a notch in the corner where a finger can be inserted and the thick sheets of card pulled out. This only has to be done the once, but it just makes things that little bit easier. Otherwise, all of the game’s components are sturdy, appropriately cosy in theme, and easy to use, although the symbols on the Track Cards are not always easy to spot, especially on the Track Cards with a darker theme, such as the forests. The rule book itself is clearly presented and includes a good example of a single turn, and the artwork has a lovely period feel, especially the locomotive illustrations on the Trip cards.

If there is an issue with Village Railways, it is that it pitches itself as a railway game set in the English countryside where the locals are happy to allow tracks to be built by the players or railway companies, but make specific demands of them. Which sounds like the players are laying tracks, but where they go will often be dictated by intervening or vociferous busybodies or persons of note, but it is not that. It is instead, more of a puzzle game in which each player attempts to fill a grid with tracks and maximise their points. Essentially, Village Rails combines drafting from a marketplace, tile placement, and route planning and building with the almost puzzle-like element of placing Track cards and connecting railway lines in a way which every player hopes will optimise his railway network and his score. Not as light a game as it first seems, Village Rails: A Game of Locomotives and Local Motivess is simple to learn and quick to play, but it is more challenging and thoughtful than the average filler game.

By Ferry and by Bullet

Since 2007, the 2004 Spiel des Jahres award-winning board game Ticket to Ride from Days of Wonder, has been supported with new maps, beginning with Ticket to Ride: Switzerland. That new map would be collected in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 2 – India & Switzerland, the second entry in the Map Collection series begun in Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 1 – Team Asia & Legendary Asia. Both of these have proved to be worthy additions to the Ticket to Ride line, whereas Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa and Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 4 – Nederland have proved to add more challenging game play, but at a cost in terms of engaging game play. Further given that they included just the one map in the third and fourth volumes rather than the two in each of the first two, neither felt as if they provided as much value either. Fortunately, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania came with two maps and explored elements more commonly found in traditional train games—stocks and shares in railroad companies and the advance of railway technology. This was followed by Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6: France + Old West, which provided two maps exploring a common theme—telegraphing each player’s intended placement of their trains, then by Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland, which focused on borders and connecting them.

The next entry in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection is Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7: Japan + Italy. This introduces another pair of maps, two sets of different mechanics, two different ways to score points, and of course, two gorgeous maps. Both can be distinguished by their long sweeping routes and consequently they are played out on what is a very large board for Ticket to Ride. On the Japan map, the players will take advantage of the bullet train network, which everyone can use once built to connect their routes, whilst also building into, out of, and across subnetworks of routes that represent the city of Tokyo’s subway system and the island of Kyushu. On the Italy map, the players will not only connect cities up and down the peninsula, but also regions, whilst also making use of the new Ferry cards to travel by sea to Sicily and Sardinia, and up and down the coast. Like other entries in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection series, it only requires a set of Train cards, train pieces, and scoring markers from a base Ticket to Ride set to play.

The first of the new maps in Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7: Japan + Italy is Japan. Its board is beautifully illustrated and introduces a new type of route—the ‘Bullet Train’. These represent Japan’s high-speed train network which run the length of the country. They are grey routes, but unlike on other maps for Ticket to Ride, when they are claimed using standard Train cards, they do not use a player’s train pieces. Instead, they use the Bullet Train pieces, of which there are sixteen. When a player builds the ‘Bullet Train’ route, he places a single Bullet Train piece on the route, and once the route is built, not only can that player use the route, but so can everyone else! This introduces an element of forced co-operation into Ticket to Ride, each player knowing that he will have to build ‘Bullet Train’ routes to connect his destinations and complete Destination Tickets at the same time as knowing he will probably share them.

A player is subtly encouraged to build ‘Bullet Train’ routes throughout the game. First, the more ‘Bullet Train’ routes a player builds, the more points he will score at the end of the game as a bonus. Second, he will receive a hefty penalty to his score at the end of the game if he does not build any ‘Bullet Train’ routes at all. Third, each player begins play with only twenty train pieces, which limits the number of coloured, non-‘Bullet Train’ routes he can claim. In effect, the ‘Bullet Train’ routes create a core network of routes that run the length of Japan, off of which the players will build.

The other feature of the Japan map is a pair of zoomed in submaps, one for Kyushu Island and one for Tokyo subway. These have Destination Tickets for destinations within their submaps, but there are also Destination Tickets which connect a destination on the submaps to a destination elsewhere in Japan. To complete one of these Destination Tickets, a player will have to build or use the various routes and ‘Bullet Train’ routes from the destination in Japan to the city of Tokyo or Kyushu Island on the main map and then into the submap itself.

The network of routes on the Japan map feels highly organised and ordered, and that is reflected in another, not so obvious feature, of this expansion. This is extra Destination Ticket-drawing, the aim being to draw Destination Tickets that a player has already completed as part of play, or nearly completed, as part of play. The shared network feature of the ‘Bullet Train’ routes encourages this, but the result is fairly underplayed in comparison to the Switzerland map of Ticket to Ride: Switzerland.

The Japan map for Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7: Japan + Italy is engaging and fun. The Bullet Trains are a great feature that both encourage a different play style and enforce the Japanese feel of the map as well as pushing the players to work together—just a little bit.  

The Italy map takes in all of the Italian peninsula, as well as the islands of Sardinia and Sicily. It also connects to the neighbouring countries of Monaco, France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia. The various cities across Italy are divided up amongst its various regions and a player will score more points for connecting more regions. The busy feel of the Italian north with this its many, compact two-train routes gives way to long sweeping routes that lead south, which are often paralleled by the long ferry routes which run from the mainland to the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, and across the Adriatic to Slovenia and Croatia. Several of these Ferry Routes are as many as seven spaces long, which even given the fact that each player begins with forty-five train pieces, means that a player will quickly be using up his train pieces.

The Ferry Routes on the Italy map do not work like the traditional Ferry Routes of Ticket to Ride. Since Ticket to Ride: Europe, a Ferry Route has required a single Locomotive or wild card as well as the indicated Train cards of the same colour to complete. On the Italy map, Ferry Routes make use of Ferry Cards. Both the Ferry Routes and the Ferry Cards are marked with ‘Wave Symbols’. The Ferry Cards have two Wave Symbols on them and instead of drawing Train Cards as normal or Destination Tickets, a player can instead draw a single Ferry Card, up to a maximum of two. The Ferry Routes have one, two, three, or four Wave Symbols on them. To claim a Ferry Route, a player must play Ferry Cards with same number of Wave Symbols on them combined, plus a number of Train cards of the same colour equal to the other spaces on the route. A Locomotive card can substitute instead of a single Wave Symbol. For example, if the player wants to claim the four-space Ferry Route between Roma and Olbia, he needs to play two cards of one colour and one Ferry Card as this will have the same number of Wave Symbols as marked on the Ferry Route. The maximum number of Ferry Cards a player can have is two. Where taking Train cards of a particular colour can indicate the routes that a player might be wanting to claim, here taking a Ferry Card definitely signals the intent to claim a Ferry Route. 

Although they feature in the Italy map, the Destination Tickets which connect to Italy neighbouring countries do not play as big a role as they do for Ticket to Ride: Switzerland or Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland. Where they differ is that some connect from one of Italy’s regions to a country rather than from a city. The regions also figure in the scoring at the end of the game as players score more for connecting more regions together with their train networks.

The Italy map in Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7: Japan + Italy is playable, entertaining, and challenging in its own right, but it is not feel as exciting as the Japan map. It is stately and much closer to the original Ticket to Ride than the Japan map, which has an energy and excitement of building new routes and in the main competing, but also working together just a tiny little bit in the construction of the ‘Bullet Train’ routes.

Physically, Ticket to Ride Map Collection is Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7: Japan + Italy is as well produced as you would expect for a Ticket to Ride expansion. Everything is high quality and the rules are easy to understand. If there is an issue, it is that the otherwise beautiful maps, are big, and consequently, unwieldy to unfold for play and fold up to put away.

What Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7: Japan + Italy shows is that you can mix and match the old with the new in Ticket to Ride. The Japan map is modern, sweeping, with a sense of speed and energy, offering a different style of play. The Italy map provides a variation upon the standard game, but still feels very traditional. Together, Ticket to Ride Map Collection is Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7: Japan + Italy offers something old and new, and is a solid addition to the Ticket to Ride family.

Bordering Ticket to Ride

Since 2007, the 2004 Spiel des Jahres award-winning board game Ticket to Ride from Days of Wonder, has been supported with new maps, beginning with Ticket to Ride: Switzerland. That new map would be collected in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 2 – India & Switzerland, the second entry in the Map Collection series begun in Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 1 – Team Asia & Legendary Asia. Both of these have proved to be worthy additions to the Ticket to Ride line, whereas Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa and Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 4 – Nederland have proved to add more challenging game play, but at a cost in terms of engaging game play. Further given that they included just the one map in the third and fourth volumes rather than the two in each of the first two, neither felt as if they provided as much value either. Fortunately, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania came with two maps and explored elements more commonly found in traditional train games—stocks and shares in railroad companies and the advance of railway technology. The next map collection in the series, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6: France + Old West provided two maps exploring a common theme—telegraphing each player’s intended placement of their trains—but the next entry in the line is very different again.

The next entry in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection is not Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7—whatever that might be,* but is in fact, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland. And it only contains the one map, that is, of course, Poland. Originally released as Wsiąść Do Pociągu: Polska and only available to buy in Poland, it is now available with the rules in both Polish and English, and available to buy outside of Poland. Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is designed for two to four players, is played on a square rather than a rectangular board—so two thirds the size of a standard Ticket to Ride board, and thematically shifts into the nineteen fifties and the reconstruction of the Polish railway network following World War II. Like other entries in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection series, it only requires a set of Train cards, train pieces, and scoring markers from a base Ticket to Ride set to play.

* Actually that title is Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 7: Japan + Italy

Poland’s board is depicted in dark green surrounded by the earthy tones of her neighbours, who play a major role in how points are scored in Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland. The seven are Biatoruś (Belarus), Czechy (the Czech Republic), Litwa (Lithuania), Niemcy (Germany), Rosja (Russia), Stowacja (Slovakia), and Ukraina (Ukraine). They are also represented by corresponding sets of Country Cards for a total of twenty Country Cards. Each set is also given a set of descending values, so the Czechy set is valued ten, seven, four, and two, and the Rosja set is valued seven, four, and two. Most Country card sets contain three cards, only the Czechy set has four and the Litwa card just has the one. The thirty-five Destination Cards show connections between Poland’s various cities and each comes with a little map showing the positions of the two cities a player needs to connect to complete. In the case of Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland, this is almost a necessity as not everyone is familiar with Poland’s cities and where they are.

At the beginning of the game, each player receives just thirty-five Trains, and the standard four Destination Cards and four Train Cards. Play is almost exactly like standard Ticket to Ride. On his turn, a player can either draw Train Cards, draw new Destination Cards, or claim a route between two cities. Where Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is different is how the countries and Country Cards work. From the moment they were introduced in Ticket to Ride: Switzerland, players could score points by completing Destination Cards which connected a city to a country or a country to a country, and they have appeared in several expansions since. In Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland, there are no such Destination Cards.

In Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland, a player does not score points when he connects a country to a country. Instead, when he does so, he takes the top card from the Country Set for each country he connects to. He cannot repeat this, but if he then connects this connection to another country, then he takes the top card from the Country Set for each country he connects to—even if he has already taken cards from the now connected Country Sets. Plus, the earlier a player makes a connection between two countries, the higher the value of the Country Cards left in the set. This sets up a race between the players to be the first to connect countries because they mean more points.

Although they are not the only means of scoring points in Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland, they are an important means. This is because the map has no routes six spaces long, just the one route five spaces long, and just a few routes four spaces long, the rest being short, either three, two, or one spaces long. Which means although they are relatively easy to claim and thus build a series of connections between cities to complete a Destination Card, they do not score a lot of points. Further, none of the Destination Cards score a player more than thirteen points and most score much, much less. Most of the shorter routes are also in the centre of the map, so there will be a scrap in game of Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland to build routes across the centre of the country—especially in a four-player game. Whatever the number of players, this map involves a lot of blocking and that means Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is less suited for play by the casual gamer.

So the players will need to find another source of points if they want to do well in the game and win. One is to draw more Destination Tickets and there is some value in that given the possibility of a player having already connected or partially connected the route on a newly drawn Destination Card. The other is connecting countries and thus not only scoring by claiming the routes to those countries, but also by drawing Country Cards from the seven sets. Which is fine, except that everyone is after them, and so there is a race to claim these before anyone else! Unlike the other routes, the actual connection to countries cannot be blocked, so if there are three routes connecting to a country, then all three can be used.

Physically, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is as well produced as you would expect for a Ticket to Ride expansion. Everything is high quality and the rules are easy to understand and come in two versions—English and Polish. This does mean that Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is not as easily accessible by speakers of other languages as Ticket to Ride typically is. Perhaps another issue with Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is that the map is a bit too dark and oppressive, but that is an issue with the aesthetics and should not affect play.

What Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland shows is that you do not have to alter very much in a Ticket to Ride game to change the feel of the game. This expansion is tighter and more competitive with players having to balance the need to complete Destination Cards with connecting countries in order to score points and win. This makes Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland an expansion for Ticket to Ride devotees rather than casual or family players of any of the core sets. For the Ticket to Ride devotee, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6½: Poland is a tighter, more cutthroat expansion which forces players to race for more than Destination Cards.

Telegraphing Ticket to Ride

Since 2007, the 2004 Spiel des Jahres award-winning board game Ticket to Ride from Days of Wonder, has been supported with new maps, beginning with Ticket to Ride: Switzerland. That new map would be collected in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 2 – India & Switzerland, the second entry in the Map Collection series begun in Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 1 – Team Asia & Legendary Asia. Both of these have proved to be worthy additions to the Ticket to Ride line, whereas Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa and Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 4 – Nederland have proved to add more challenging game play, but at a cost in terms of engaging game play. Further given that they included just the one map in the third and fourth volumes rather than the two in each of the first two, neither felt as if they provided as much value either. Fortunately, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania came with two maps and explored elements more commonly found in traditional train games—stocks and shares in railroad companies and the advance of railway technology. The next map collection in the series, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6: France + Old West, explore a common theme, but each offers very different game play.

As is standard with the Map Collection series, both maps in Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6: France + Old West will require the use of the train pieces and train cards from a Ticket to Ride core set. Designed for between two and five players, it includes fifty-eight Destination Tickets cards, two Bonus cards, and sixty-four Track Pieces. The map board is played vertically rather than horizontally and depicts the rail routes across France. The very first thing that strikes you about the France map is that nearly all of the routes are blank—not grey, but blank. Single routes are coloured as standard, nearly all of them running west from Paris to Nantes on the Alantic coast and from Paris north to Le Havre on the English Channel. Besides the city to city routes, the map has links to four countries—Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain, and grey ferry routes to the island of Corsica. The routes on the Destination Tickets include the standard city-to-city routes as well as city-to-country and country-to-country routes. The bonus cards are the Globetrotter card for the most Destination Tickets completed and the Longest Route card for the longest continuous route. The Track Pieces come in the standard colours of the Train Tickets from a Ticket to Ride core set and are either two, three, four, or five sections long.

At the start of the game, each player receives eight Train Cards and five Destination Tickets—of which a player must keep three. He also receives forty Train pieces rather than the standard forty-five. On his turn, a player can do one of three things as per Ticket to Ride. Either draw two Train Cards, play Train pieces and claim a route, or draw new Destination Tickets. What prevents a player from claiming most of the routes is that they are blank, so before a player can claim a route, he must lay the track first. After a player draws two Train cards, he also takes one of the Track Pieces and places it on one of the blank routes. That route can now be claimed by anyone, including the player who placed it. When the route is claimed, the player places the requisite Train pieces, claims the points, and removes the Track Piece which goes back into the regular supply from where it can taken on any of the players’ subsequent turns.

There are also routes which cross over other routes. When a Track Piece is laid over one of these, it renders all of the other blank routes it is played inaccessible and means that nobody can claim them. It is possible that when a player does this, he will block shorter routes to cities that another player might want to get to, forcing him to take a longer series of connections that he had originally intended. And in a game where a player has forty Train pieces rather than the standard forty-five, this may well mean that a player will finding himself running out of Trains if this happens too many times.

So, in order to connect the cities or countries on the map, a player has to build the routes first. Fundamentally, what this means is that when a player lays a Track Piece, he is signalling to the other players where he intends to build. Sometimes the other players can use this against him, for example, by claiming the route before him or by placing a Track Piece of a colour on a connecting route which they think he does not have Train Cards for. A player could also place a Track Piece elsewhere on the map completely away from where he actually needs to build as a means of misdirection. As the game progresses, there will be more and more Train Pieces on the board, which will often limit what and where a player can place a Track Piece. In these later stages of the game, the placement of Track Pieces is not always relevant and does feel like an unnecessary step, slowing the flow of the game down.

At its heart, the France map for Ticket to Ride adds another set of choices for the players to make, not just what routes they claim, but what routes to lay first. So, it is more complex whilst at the same time the colour of the routes change from game to game. Overall, the France map is more complex to play and so not quite as light as other Ticket to Ride maps, and longer to play because more decisions need to be made. So the France map is definitely one for Ticket to Ride devotees rather than a family audience.

Designed for between two and five players, it includes fifty-eight Destination Tickets cards, two Bonus cards, and sixty-four Track Pieces. The map board is played vertically rather than horizontally and depicts the rail routes across France. The very first thing that strikes you about the France map is that nearly all of the routes are blank—not grey, but blank. Single routes are coloured as standard, nearly all of them running west from Paris to Nantes on the Alantic coast and from Paris north to Le Havre on the English Channel. Besides the city to city routes, the map has links to four countries—Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain, and grey ferry routes to the island of Corsica. The routes on the Destination Tickets include the standard city-to-city routes as well as city-to-country and country-to-country routes. The bonus cards are the Globetrotter card for the most Destination Tickets completed and the Longest Route card for the longest continuous route. The Track Pieces come in the standard colours of the Train Tickets from a Ticket to Ride core set and are either two, three, four, or five sections long.

At the start of the game, each player receives eight Train Cards and five Destination Tickets—of which a player must keep three. He also receives forty Train pieces rather than the standard forty-five. On his turn, a player can do one of three things as per Ticket to Ride. Either draw two Train Cards, play Train pieces and claim a route, or draw new Destination Tickets. What prevents a player from claiming most of the routes is that they are blank, so before a player can claim a route, he must lay the track first. After a player draws two Train cards, he also takes one of the Track Pieces and places it on one of the blank routes. That route can now be claimed by anyone, including the player who placed it. When the route is claimed, the player places the requisite Train pieces, claims the points, and removes the Track Piece which goes back into the regular supply from where it can taken on any of the players’ subsequent turns.

There are also routes which cross over other routes. When a Track Piece is laid over one of these, it renders all of the other blank routes it is played inaccessible and means that nobody can claim them. It is possible that when a player does this, he will block shorter routes to cities that another player might want to get to, forcing him to take a longer series of connections that he had originally intended. And in a game where a player has forty Train pieces rather than the standard forty-five, this may well mean that a player will finding himself running out of Trains if this happens too many times.

So, in order to connect the cities or countries on the map, a player has to build the routes first. Fundamentally, what this means is that when a player lays a Track Piece, he is signalling to the other players where he intends to build. Sometimes the other players can use this against him, for example, by claiming the route before him or by placing a Track Piece of a colour on a connecting route which they think he does not have Train Cards for. A player could also place a Track Piece elsewhere on the map completely away from where he actually needs to build as a means of misdirection. As the game progresses, there will be more and more Train Pieces on the board, which will often limit what and where a player can place a Track Piece. In these later stages of the game, the placement of Track Pieces is not always relevant and does feel like an unnecessary step, slowing the flow of the game down.

At its heart, the France map for Ticket to Ride adds another set of choices for the players to make, not just what routes they claim, but what routes to lay first. So, it is more complex whilst at the same time the colour of the routes change from game to game. Overall, the France map is more complex to play and so not quite as light as other Ticket to Ride maps, and longer to play because more decisions need to be made. So the France map is definitely one for Ticket to Ride devotees rather than a family audience.

If the France map from Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6: France + Old West is different to Ticket to Ride, the Old West map is really different. First, it is designed for two to six players, something that rarely features in a Ticket to Ride game. To support this, an extra set of Train Pieces—in white—is included in Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6: France + Old West, along with a white scoring marker. It also comes with fifty Destination Tickets, two Bonus cards—Globetrotter and Alvin, eighteen City Markers, and the Alvin the Alien Marker. The map is again played vertically and looks like a standard Ticket to Ride map, that is, a mix of coloured and grey routes (rather the blank ones of France map). It depicts the western half of the United States of America, from Roswell and Wolf Point in the east to Seattle and San Diego in the west on the Pacific coast. A single ferry route runs from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

At the start of the game, each player receives five Destination Cards and must keep three. He also receives three City Markers to match the colour of his Train pieces. As part of the set-up, each player places one of his City Markers in the city of his choice. This is important because when a player begins claiming routes and placing Train pieces, he must start from the city where his City Marker is placed. And then when he next claims a route and places Train pieces, it has to be connected to a route he has already claimed. He cannot claim a route that is not connected to a route he has already claimed. So just like the France map, players on the Old West map are telegraphing where they are building to, if not more so!

When a player claims a route, he can also place one of his City Markers in the city he is building to if the city does not have one already. This costs two extra cards of the same colour as the route just claimed. Or a player can use Locomotive (or wild) Train cards.

The placement of City Markers not only affects what routes a player can claim, it can also affect what points he will score for claiming a route. If the route claimed is connected to a city with a City Marker, the points go to the player who owns the City Marker—even if that is another player! If the route connects two cities which both have City Markers, then the two who own the City Markers score the points score the points. If it happens that the player owns both City Markers at either end of the route being claimed, then he scores twice—one for each for City Marker—even if the route is being claimed by another player!

What is interesting here is that play on the Old West map—like the France map—involves the players signalling to each other where they planning to build next. On the France it is with the Track Pieces and not always quite as obvious, but on the Old West map is more obvious because each player must claim routes which connect to his existing network. The addition of the City Markers brings an element of area control to the game because players will want to avoid connecting to cities which have other players’ City Markers in them as it costs them points to connect to them. Conversely players who have City Markers will want other players to connect to these cities for exactly the same reason. Of course, the likelihood is that the players will have to connect to cities with other players’ City Markers in them in order to complete their Destination Tickets. This is especially so with more players as they compete for the same routes.

The Old West map includes a variant. This involves Alvin the Alien, a character from the Ticket to Ride: Alvin and Dexter expansion released in 2011. Fortunately, that expansion is not required to play this variant as a cardboard counter is provided to represent Alvin the Alien. In this variant, the Alvin the Alien counter is placed—naturally, or unnaturally, enough—in the city of Roswell. The first player to claim a route which connects to Roswell also captures Alvin. This scores him an extra ten points and he has to move the Alvin the Alien counter to a city which he controls, including his starting city. If another player then connects to the new city where Alvin the Alien is now located, then he scores ten points and has to move Alvin the Alien to a city that he controls, and so on, and so on. This can occur multiple times, but the player who has control of Alvin the Alien at the end of the game scores another ten points.

The effect of this variant is to counter the inclination for players to not want to connect to cities already connected to by other players, especially if that city contains a City Marker. This is because connecting to a city with Alvin the Alien in it will score the player points and score him more if one of his cities contains Alvin the Alien at the end of the game.

Thematically, the Alvin the Alien variant does not really suit the Old West map. Of course with the inclusion of Roswell on the map it does, but this is a map of the Old West and not the modern west of the post-Roswell alien saucer crash.

Physically, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6: France + Old West is for the most part, the same high-quality product we have come to expect for the Ticket to Ride line. Both maps are large, mounted, and clear and easy to use, both sets of cards are easy to read and orientate to the board, and the rulebooks again, clear and easy to read and understand. The new plastic Train pieces are serviceable, but the cardboard Track Pieces do feel somewhat cheap in comparison. They are not done on thin cardstock, but not thick cardstock either. They are also a little fiddly in play. Thematically both maps and cards match their settings, so there is a richness of colour and style to the France map and cards, whilst those for the Old West are dusty and dry. Certainly the Old West map feels as if you are playing the expanded half of the North America map from the original Ticket to Ride (which leaves one to wonder if there might be the equivalent of an Old East map covering the eastern half of the United States, and if there were, could the Old West and Old East maps be joined and played together?).

So both maps in Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6: France + Old West are about telegraphing to your fellow players where you intend to claim routes next. Each map presents a different solution though and thus different challenges for the players. Of the two, Old West is the easier, even more direct when it comes to claiming routes and so will be easier to play by the more casual audience, whereas France includes a greater complexity which forces every player think about the routes they need to claim, not once, but twice—once to build and once to claim. Overall, the combination of new mechanics and challenges serve to make Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 6: France + Old West a solid expansion which will definitely appeal to the Ticket to Ride devotee.

Harrisburg or London? London.

Since 2007, the 2004 Spiel des Jahres award-winning board game Ticket to Ride from Days of Wonder, has been supported with new maps, begining with Ticket to Ride: Switzerland. That new map would be collected in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 2 – India & Switzerland, the second entry in the Map Collection series begun in Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 1 – Team Asia & Legendary Asia. Both of these have proved to be worthy additions to the Ticket to Ride line, whereas the more recent Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa and Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 4 – Nederland have proved to add more challenging game play, but at a cost in terms of engaging game play. Further given that they included just the one map in the third and fourth volumes rather than the two in each of the first two, neither felt as if they provided as much value either. Fortunately this is not an issue with the latest release in the line, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania, which as its title suggests includes two maps. Which just leaves the question of how well both maps play…

To begin with, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania includes the one map that I have wanted since the game’s publication in 2004—a map of the United Kingdom. After all, the United Kingdom was the birthplace of the railways, so a specific map the British Isles always seemed like a good idea. The second map is Pennsylvania, thus providing the first ‘small’ location for Ticket to Ride, that is a US state rather than a country or continent as with other maps for the game. Yet these are not just extra maps, for both come with new rules that echo those of more complex railway games such as 1829 and Railways of the World. The Pennsylvania map adds Stock Shares that will grant you extra points, whilst the United Kingdom map includes technologies and improvements that a player will need to purchase if he wants to progress beyond England. 

As with previous entries in the Map Collection series, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania requires the trains and scoring markers from one of the base sets, either Ticket to Ride or Ticket to Ride Europe. It will also need a full set of Train cards from one of the base games, though only for the Pennsylvania map, though it can get away without them. Inside the box, in addition to the double-sided map, can be found the rulebooks and the Tickets for each map. For the Pennsylvania map there is also a set of Stock Share cards, whilst for the United Kingdom map, there is a set of Technology cards and and a new set of Train cards. It feels quite a lot for an entry in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection series and it is pleasing to note that everything fits neatly in the box—an issue in some entries in the Map Collection series.

The Pennsylvania map not only depicts the state of Pennsylvania, it also covers much of the state of New York and also Canada in the form of Ontario. It is a two to five player map that plays much like standard Ticket to Ride, but with three notable additions. The first is that it includes ferry routes, first seen in Ticket to Ride: Europe. There are two ferry routes, both of which connect Pennsylvania to Ontario, but which are not connected to each other. The second is a new Ticket type, one that connects a city to a country, or in this case, another city to Ontario. Tickets that connect a city to a country or a country to a country are not new to Ticket to Ride, having first appeared in Ticket to Ride: Switzerland, but here you have Tickets that in effect connect to a location—that is, Ontario—twice. Of course, technically they do not connect twice because Ontario is in effect two locations, but with Tickets such as ‘Ontario – Syracuse’ and ‘Ontario – Pittsburgh’, it feels as if they do.

The third addition is in the form Stock Share cards. There are sixty of these, for companies such as the ‘Baltimore & Ohio Railroad’, the ‘Pennsylvania Railroad’, and the ‘New York Central System’. These vary in number according to the railroad company, so for example, the ‘Pennsylvania Railroad’ has fifteen, whereas the ‘New York Central System’ has five. Each set of Stock Share cards is numbered sequentially, from one through to the maximum number. Prominent on the Stock Share cards are the company logos and these also appear alongside many of the routes on the map. When a player claims a route that has one of the logos next to it, he can claim a corresponding Stock Share card. At the end of the game, in addition to checking and scoring for complete and incomplete Ticket cards, each player counts up the number of Stock Share cards he has. The player with the most Stock Shares in each Railroad receives the most points (as shown on that Railroad’s cards) followed by the player with the second most Shares, and so on. The outcome of ties are determined by whomever has the lowest number Stock Share card, this indicating that a player invested in that company first.

At their most basic, the Stock Share rules add an alternative means of scoring to Ticket to Ride, but what they also do is add an investment element. Share Stocks are worth investing in because they are can score a player a lot of points, as much as twenty or thirty points in some cases. This gives a player another choice to make—how much effort should he put into investing in Stock Shares, even if sometimes, that means claiming a route simply for the Share Stock alone.

Where the Pennsylvania map provides a few changes, the United Kingdom provides a lot, starting with the fact that it is two to four players rather than the standard two to five. The second big change in the United Kingdom map is that it is in portrait format rather than the usual landscape format. It depicts the British Isles—England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland—and the tip of northern France. In fact, it depicts the tip of Northern France twice so that the country can be connected via two different destinations. This also means that the map includes the new city to country Tickets types and what are in effect, the new country to country Tickets, much as the Pennsylvania map does. The individual countries are different colours for several reasons—ease of identification, the limitations of technology, and so on. The third change is that like the Pennsylvania map, the United Kingdom map includes ferry routes, but because the British Isles are islands, they include more of them. Notably, there is one ferry route that is an incredible ten Trains long! This runs from Southampton off the board in the direction of New York and the USA—and is worth a total of forty points!

In addition to the map, the United Kingdom comes with its own set of Train cards that include more Locomotive or ‘wild’ cards than the standard deck. This is because of the way in which the fourth and biggest change works—Technology. What Technology does in the game is give the players permission to claim certain types of routes or grant them extra points as it maps out the historical and technological progress of the railways in the United Kingdom. Initially, the players can claim routes in England, just one or two trains long. To claim routes three trains long, a player needs to purchase a ‘Mechanical Stoker’; to claim routes four or more trains long, a player needs to purchase a ‘Superheated Steam Boiler’; and to claim ferry routes, a player much purchase ‘Propellers’, though this Technology is not necessary should a player want to claim the long route between Southampton and New York. There are also concessions to Wales, Scotland, and Ireland/France which are needed to claim routes within those countries and to claim routes between them and England. Other Technologies grant extra points, for example, ‘Boiler Lagging’ gives a player an extra point for each route claimed, whilst ‘Double Heading’ gives a player two extra points for each Ticket claimed. There is also the ‘Right of Way’ Technology, which enables a player to build alongside an already claimed route, but this must be purchased, used, and returned to table on the same turn to be available on the next turn.

Each Technology needs to be purchased, the cost being paid for with Locomotive cards. The price ranges from one to four Locomotive cards, a player being able to purchase a Technology before he takes his turn. This is in addition to the standard use of Locomotive cards, including the claiming of Ferry routes, emphasising the importance of the Locomotive cards more than any other map. To offset this importance, each player begins the game with a Locomotive card in addition to the standard selection of Train cards. Also there are five extra Locomotive cards in the Train card deck that comes with this map Collection set (these can be removed and the deck used with the Pennsylvania map) and when three Locomotive cards are on display, they remain there rather than going into the discard deck and new cards being drawn. Also, if a player lacks Locomotive cards, he can substitute four ordinary Train cards instead.

A player’s choice of Technology will be dictated by his Tickets, for example, a player with the ‘Cardiff – Reading’ needs the ‘Wales Concession’ Technology, whereas if he had the ‘Londonderry – Birmingham’ Ticket he would require the ‘Ireland/France Concession’ to claim routes in Ireland and the ‘Propellers’ Technology to cross the Irish Sea. The ‘Mechanical Stoker’ Technology will probably also be useful as it allows a player to claim three Train routes.

Lastly, in addition to the standard eleven Technology cards, the United Kingdom also includes five Advanced Technology cards. Their inclusion is optional and there is not enough of each for every player in a full game, but they make for a much more competitive game. Two are bets, for example, the ‘Equalising Beam’ gives a player fifteen points if he has the longest route, but penalises him fifteen points if he does not. Of the five one is arguably too powerful. This is ‘Water Tenders’, which lets a player draw three cards blind rather than the two as standard. This is a big advantage and perhaps the group want to think about including it. I would suggest making it more powerful, for example drawing four cards instead of three from the top of the Train deck, but have it as a one use card that must be returned to the table so that it is available to the other players.

Physically, Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania is all but up to the usual standards of the Ticket to Ride line. The Pennsylvania map is perhaps a little bland and it it lacks the scoring list typically placed on Ticket to Ride maps. The United Kingdom does include the scoring map and is a more colourful affair. A nice touch is that the towns and cities of each country is marked by the flag for that country, so the ‘Y Ddraig Goch’ of Wales, ‘The Saltire’ of Scotland, and so on.

Where Ticket to Ride has the feel of the late Victorian age—the ‘Gay Nineties’ or ‘Naughty Nineties’—Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania has the feel of an earlier age, the early to mid Victorian age. While the Pennsylvania map adds a pleasing addition to the scoring methods in Ticket to Ride, the United Kingdom map gives the game a sense of narrative progression as advances are made in technology. In terms of game play, the Tickets a player has will determine what Technology he has to purchase, rather than Technology determining game play. Whilst Technology makes the game play more complex, it is a more straightforward complexity when compared to the conceptual complexity of the Mandalas of the India map of Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 2 – India & Switzerland. It also makes the game feel much like a more traditional train-themed game, but again without the arch-complexity of those games. Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania is a great addition to the Ticket to Ride Map Collection series and the Ticket to Ride family because finally—finally—Ticket to Ride not only gets a British map, it also gets to feel and play just a little like a train game.

The Dominion of Trains

Let go on record and simply state that I do not like Dominion. This does not mean that it is a bad game. The 2009 Spiel des Jahres winner from Rio Grande Games is an innovative design, being one the the first deck-building card games, but I find it too mechanical and lacking in theme. So I do not own a copy and rarely play it although I know that it is a popular game. I do though, own and like Trains, a deck-building board game from Hisashi Hayashi, the designer of Sail to India and String Railway, and arguably that is very much like Dominion, both in terms of its design and the fact that each has won an Origins award—Dominion for Best Traditional Card Game in 2008 and Trains for Best Board game in 2013. Fortunately, Trains has a number of features that make it more interesting than Dominion.

Trains is not just a deck-building card game. It is a deck-building board game. The difference being that the players are building their decks to take actions on a board all of which consist of creating their railway networks—laying track and building stations. For in fact, Trains is also an area control game. Designed for two to four players, aged twelve and up, Trains sees the players compete to build the most valuable railway networks in the area surrounding the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Osaka. What this means is that there is direct competition between the players rather than just a race to acquire the most Victory Points.

In terms of set-up, each player receives an identical ten-card deck consisting of three types of card—Normal Trains, which generate money for a player; Lay Rails, used to expand a player’s network and to connect to features on the board that will score him Victory Points; and Station Expansion, which let a player build the Stations in the towns and cities to score Victory Points. On his turn, a player uses a hand of five cards drawn from the deck to carry out actions—generate income, purchase new cards, and use the actions on the cards to do various things, but primarily building his network on the board. Where possible, a player’s cards are used to generate both income and actions and a player is free to make as many purchases as he can afford and take as many actions as he can. Once done, a player’s hand of cards goes into the discard pile. Lastly he then draws a new hand of five cards and thinks about what he will do on his next turn. The latter action—thinking about what he will do on his next turn—is explicitly stated in the rules. As part of the game, it is a welcome addition counter to players prone to ‘analysis paralysis’.

Another aspect of the set-up is that the range of cards available to purchase varies from one game to the next. Every game has the eight default cards available to purchase—Express Train, Limited Express Train, Lay Rails, Station Expansion, Apartment, Tower, Skyscraper, and Waste cards, but the remaining eight are randomly determined from the thirty available. This not only makes play different each time, it also allows the game to be tinkered in terms of options. Want an easier game? Then for example, make sure that the Landfill card is available so that players can use it to get rid of Waste.

The cards are categorised into five colours. Purple cards allow a Station Expansion, whilst green cards are construction cards that either Lay Rails or nullify the extra cost of construction, such as Collaboration, which cuts the cost of building track where another player already has track. It also prevents a player gaining Waste from any construction that turn. Blue cards are train cards. The standard Train cards simply generate a player income, but others grant an action or bonus. For example, a Tourist Train grants a Victory Point every time it is played, whilst an Early Train lets a player put purchased cards on the top of his deck. Yellow cards, like the Tower and the Skyscraper grant Victory Point at game’s end, but do clog up a deck. Red cards are action cards that grant various benefits. For example, the Ironworks generates income for each track laying green card played that turn, whilst Station Crew gives a player the choice drawing another card, gaining income, or returning Waste to the Waste stack.

Most deck-building games have an aspect of their design that clogs up each player's’ deck. Usually, this consists of two types of cards. The first type consist of cards that are less effective as the game progresses, typically being replaced by better and more effective cards. The second type consists of Victory Point cards, purchased towards winning the game, but doing nothing else. Trains has both of these, but takes the concept further with Waste. Every time a player lays track, builds a station, or constructs a building, he earns a Waste card—and a Waste card does nothing except clog up a player’s deck and when drawn, his hand. 

What does Waste mean? Its effect forces a player to balance his hand and deck. It also curbs a player from expanding too quickly. Yet Waste cards do not wholly impede a player—one or two Waste cards in his hand from one turn to the next will not prevent his making purchases, laying track, expanding stations, and taking actions, but any more Waste cards  than that and a player may find himself unable to act. Fortunately, a player can forgo his turn in order to divest his hand of all Waste and there are certain cards that will let him get rid of Waste, such as Landfill.

The obvious aim of the cards is to lay track, but this is primarily a means to an end rather than a means to scoring Victory Points. The main means of scoring Victory Points is by laying track into a city and then building stations. Cities can have between one and three stations, the extra stations after the first being more expensive to build, but scoring a player more  Victory Points. The second means of scoring Victory Points is to lay track to a Remote Location on the edge of the map—typically this involves building through expensive terrain like mountains. The third method is by buying Yellow cards, though this is also expensive.

Once a player has built into an area, it does not mean that another player cannot build  into the same space. It does make it more expensive though, and whilst this serves as a barrier, a player can lay track into an area held by another player to cancel out any potential Victory Points he might gain by building a station there or by laying track into a Remote Location.

Play continues until a player places his last rail cube as track or places the last station, or four piles of the cards available to purchase have been exhausted. Once one of these conditions has been met the game ends and the player with the most Victory Points wins.

Trains is a nicely presented. Both the rules booklet and the cards are easy to read, the double-sided board is clear and functional. The cards themselves are nicely illustrated and do feel good in the hand.

The question is, is Trains really like Dominion? The answer to that would be both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. There are many cards that look and feel familiar—such that one gamer I know refuses to play it because it is too alike—but the gameplay is different. It is more streamlined, there is less emphasis on setting up your deck as an ‘engine’ that runs perfectly, and a player needs to balance both his deck and his hand as the game progresses. Trains is easier to learn, both because it is more streamlined and because the theme is more accessible. That theme is nicely implemented both through the cards and the maps, though the latter do offer little in the way of variation between the pair of them. The range of cards available and their random determination each game means that every game is different—and that adds to the replayability.

Trains is not quite an introductory deck-building game—Star Realms might be better at that—but it is not a difficult game to learn by any means. It is a medium-light Euro game, just a step or three on from Ticket to Ride in terms of complexity. Overall, Trains is a very accessible, likeable deck-building that makes much of its theme.

Load the train—faster! faster!

If you thought that at twenty minutes long that Yardmaster was too long a game, then there is a solution. Funded through Kickstarter and also published by Crash Games, Yardmaster Express is a micro game that can be played in ten minutes however many players you have. Designed for between two and five players, aged thirteen plus, in Yardmaster Express, the players attempt to build the most valuable train in a limited number of turns.

The game consists of one Start Player token, five Engine cards, thirty-two Railcar cards, and four Caboose cards. At the start of the game, each player receives an Engine card to which he will attach his Railcar cards and one player is given the Start Player token. This player draws a hand of Railcar cards equal to the number of players. He then takes his turn.

On his turn, a player draws one Railcar card and adds it to his hand. He then plays one card from his hand. Each Railcar card is two-and-a-half inches square and divided vertically in half. Each half of the Railcar card has a colour and a number on it as well as a Railcar. Both the colour and the  number on each side can be the same or they can be completely different. What matters is that when added to a player’s train, the colour or the number of the new Railcar must match the colour or the number of the last Railcar in the train. So for example, the last Railcar in Dave’s is a Green 2. Thus he can play either another Green card or any card with a value of 2. If a player lacks a card that he can add to his train, then he flip a card and play it as a Wild Card, in which it acts as any colour or number.

At the end of his turn, a player collects up his hand and passes it to the player on his left, who then takes his turn. 

Once a set number of round have passed—seven for two players, six for three players, and so on, then the game ends. The players add up the value of the numbers on the Railcars in his train—that is, both numbers on each Railcar cards—to get a total. The player with the longest run of one colour of Railcars receives a bonus equal to their number. The player with the highest total is the winner.

Now what is clear here is there is only the one hand of Railcar cards. It is this that is passed from one player to next, each time the holding player drawing and playing a Railcar card. The draw, play, and pass mechanic feels not dissimilar to that of 7 Wonders, though of course, there is only the one hand of cards whereas everyone has a hand of cards in 7 Wonders. The same two core choices are offered here as in 7 Wonders—does a player add a Railcar to his train because he needs it, or because it will prevent another player from adding a Railcar that he needs? This choice may not always be there, but it needs to be kept in mind when it is. The game though, is primary luck based, players relying on drawing the Railcar cards that they want to play rather than on cards that they want to prevent another player using..

Yardmaster Express is nicely presented. The cards are of a high quality and a nice touch is the basic rules are printed on the Engine cards for easy reference. The rules are easy to read and learn. The packaging is nicely sturdy. The addition of the wooden Start Player token is nice too as is a mini-expansion and some variant rules.

Given the lack choices and actions—just draw a card, play a card, pass the cards on—Yardmaster Express is suited to a younger audience, rather than the suggested minimum age of thirteen which feels rather high. It also plays better with three or four players as with five players, the number of turns feels far too short. Yet despite its simplicity, Yardmaster Express is reasonable filler, one that fits easily into a bag and carried around.