On the Underground is a game in which players attempt to build the best subway in London. As players build the Underground, there is a passenger (further referred to as Wally) who travels to destination cards. Wally is possibly the laziest person in the entire known cosmos and will always go where the least walking (no subway lines) takes him. Featuring a beautiful map of London, this game adds colorful bits to make a nice piece of eye candy, but that is where the fun stops. My review is based on a OtU as a 2-player game. We were so unenthused that we didn't attempt to play it with more. However, a thorough understanding of the rules and mechanics leads me to believe my opinion wouldn't change very much


Rules

The rules of OtU are fairly simple and straight forward. Each turn, a player has 4 actions. For each action, a player may either lay a track of one of their colors, connected to an already placed section, or may skip that action to take a Branch token. Subway lines must always run end-to-end and cannot branch off unless a player pays 2 of the Branch tokens to do so.

Points are scored by connecting National terminals, going to a Terminus, or connecting randomly placed tourist attractions. Additionally, Wally will move at the end of each turn. Next to the game board, 4 cards are placed, each showing a location. Some are gold and some are white. Wally will always move to one gold and then one white if possible. If there are no white, he will only move to one gold. If there are no gold, he will only move to one white. As soon as a city is visited the card is removed and replaced. Players score 1 point for each of their lines that Wally uses. As stated earlier, Wally is one small evolutionary step above a sloth and will go wherever he can get with the least amount of walking. This encourages players to build sprawling lines, covering as much of the city as possible.

Points can also be scored by surrounding terminals but not connecting to them, vaguely reminiscent of Through the Desert.


Components

The components in this game are beautiful. The map is a rather large octo-fold map of the London Underground, slighlty manipulated to make a better board. The play surface really drives home the theme of this game. Its almost as if you're playing on one of those little pocket maps you get in the stations.

Each player will have from 2 to 4 different colored track piles. These tracks are laid on the board and come in a beautiful array of colors including pink, yellow and black. When laid out on the board, they really are quite nice to look at. The colors are different enough that most people should have no problem distinguishing them.

The various other markers in the game (Branch tokens, player color tokens, Wally) are all made of wood and in the case of Branch tokens and player color tokens have nice stickers affixed to them.

From a visual perspective, this game is gorgeous unfortunately, thats about all it has going for it.


Gameplay

As stated earlier a player has only a few choices each round: Extend your subway lines or skip actions to take Branch tokens. As all players can see the 4 current destination cards, it can be an obvious choice to spend your turn building towards the places Wally will travel this turn. Ideally, this will help you later in the game as your track should get bigger and cover more of the city. Since there are only basically two actions and many of them will be predetermined by the Destination cards, the game plays very fast. Where the game slows down however, is with Wally. Each turn, it must be calculated and agreed upon by both players as to where Wally will travel. This can really grind the game to a halt and seems to take away a large part of the competition. Its almost like you need to ask your opponent where they think Wally will go and what you should do to get him there.


Compare it to...

A lot of people say Through the Desert, but that's really only because of one scoring mechanism. Other than that, these two could not be further apart. Through the Desert creates agonizing decisions and features 0% luck. This game is the polar opposite. At best, I could say this game has some similarity to Aquadukt, but even that is a stretch. Again, Aquadukt has a 20-sided die yet feels much less random and luck driven than OtU.


Overall

I strongly disliked this game. There are several reasons for this:

1. Its too easy to score points. As Wally travels, its practically impossible to keep him off your opponents tracks. Most of the time, you score equally on the travel phase. At best you may score 1 or 2 points more than your opponent, but they will most likely score the points back next turn. Connecting into a Terminus is borderline unfair as it not only gives you 2 points but also a Branch token.

2. Random, random, random.... The way the destination deck unfolds makes long term planning impossible. While its true that almost every city on the map will come up during the game, there's no real way to know when. If you play each turn trying to get to the current destinations, you'll certainly lose. If you spend the whole game trying to build sprawling lines and ignoring the destinations, you'll probably luck into enough passenger points to stay even. If luck really plays into your side, you may end up with Wally practically stuck in a section of the board you control exclusively.

3. There is no consequence to your actions. Sometimes, no matter what you do on your turn, you will not be able to get Wally onto any of your tracks. Othertimes, he will only be on your tracks. The randomness of the destination deck and the asinine way in which Wally's travels are determined completely removes any hint of repurcussions to your decisions. Its almost like you should just take turns laying tracks and then once everyone is done, flip the destination tickets one at a time, scoring points until the deck is done. Thats basically how the game plays out anyway.

I am a big fan of games in which your action has weight and consequence. I even like dice games, which seems to contradict that last statement. However, dice games make no attempt to hide their random nature. Neither do cards games which I also enjoy. Even Carcassonne, my absolute favorite game of all time, has a luck factor. That luck factor however, can be minimized with skillfull play. On the Underground has all the randomness of dice or a deck of cards yet hides behind the facade of an elegant Euro game.

I honestly can't rate this game higher than a 3. I would rate it a 2, because I never want to play it again, but the bits and board are too pretty to completely disregard. Nice packaging and parts....terrible game. In fact, I would go so far as to say there really isn't much game in the box at all.