Lunar Rails Review:
Summary: Great strategic depth for a crayon game, but graphic design shortfalls stifle gameplay and like all crayon rails, it suffers from extensive downtime.

I recently played Lunar Rails with 3 other people at a regular gaming group. We have all played crayon rails before, and are in the middle of a month in which we play the same style of game once every week, so the whole group is familiar with Crayon Rails (though none of us had played Lunar Rails before).

For the mechanics of crayon games, I encourage you to look elsewhere. There are two interesting aspects of Lunar Rails that made it, in my opinion, the best of the crayon games that I have played. The first is the fact that the map is of the entire globe of the moon-thus map edges ‘connect’ to the other side, and full circles around the globe (rather than simple line segments from one edge of a map to another) are possible. The second is that much of the moon surface is mountainous, and thus makes it more expensive to build track. These two rules combine to create two unique impacts to play which improve the game tremendously; they allow for multiple strategies (even for the same draw of cards), and they encourage more rental of other players’ track.

1) In traditional crayon rails games (which I enjoy), once you get the basic idea, your cards, in broad terms, really define your one best strategy. Build an efficient rail network, and efficiently deliver the goods that are possible to you based on the card draw. The efficient rail network is pretty well defined: a main line (probably linking major cities), roughly down the center of the map, with branches off of it linking small cities (imagine the veins of a leaf, and you’ve got it). There may be variations: at times you may end up with a loop here or there, and occasionally terrain impacts, but in general, this is what a successful network looks like.

With the looping available on Lunar Rails, this is no longer the case. You actually have strategic options available; what route to take to a long-term delivery; there may be multiple efficient rail networks: several circles around the moon (imagine the seams on a basketball), something comparable to the leaf structure mentioned above, or even a real concentration on one side of the moon (with small branches around to the other side just to attach to the required major cities). My sense is that the networks in Lunar Rails, after several plays, could be dramatically different (something I don’t sense from traditional, flat-map based games).

2) In traditional crayon rails games, there is little player interaction (other than competition for chokepoints on the map), and little renting of other players’ track. Its generally too expensive, and since you have to connect to so many major cities to win, you’ve got to create the extensive (very similar) network anyway. Occassionally, to get a delivery to a small side-city, not too far off your line, you may rent another players’ track, but it just doesn’t happen that often.

But with the more expensive track (due to the more extensive mountains) on Lunar Rails, faster trains (a maximum speed of 16), as well as the looping possibilities, we found that renting of other players’ track was far more common in Lunar Rails. With a maximum speed of 16, you could take an opponents’ track 8 spaces long in one turn (8 to get to the town, and 8 to get back to your track in one turn to minimize rental costs), and pay 4$. Or, you could pay to build your own parallel track to that same town (at a cost of as much as 16$ if its all mountain). Compare that to a traditional game, which, with a top speed of 12, allows a 6 space rental at 4$ (maximum speed of 12, which allows a 6 space round trip), vs the build cost of perhaps 6$ (1$ per space if open ground).

Thus, when planning your routes, you not only are offered different network possibilities for your own network (due to looping and around the globe connections), it is actually economically viable to incorporate other players’ networks into your plans (do you connect to a destination city, or simply to a competitor’s track, close enough to the destination city, to plan on renting it?). The two rules changes above combine to make an extremely rich planning game.

We have in fact wondered if such ‘sharing’ of track could be encouraged through changing the price structure of actions in the crayon rails system, and figure that there must be a ‘sweet spot’ that encourages rentals but doesn’t discourage building (i.e. reduce the rental cost and increase the build cost, and you will encourage rental. But if you increase the build cost too much, you will hinder growth-everyone will simply be waiting for other players to build to rent the track, rather than build their own track to begin with).

Downsides:
Map: As with all crayon rails game, the map is bland. The moon map is even counterintuitive. The background colors of the map (which match a view of the moon) don’t actually match the build costs of the map, and in fact contradict what you would think: darker shades are generally (but not always) ‘clear’ terrain, and are thus cheaper to build than (most) lighter colored areas, which are ‘mountain’ or ‘alpine’ (think of how you generally scan a map: the ‘clear’ areas are open or fields, and are cheap; the ‘dark’ areas-usually brown- are generally mountains, and are expensive). Thus, it is difficult to estimate costs on the map. The place names, unless you are an amateur astronomer, are completely unfamiliar, and thus this game has even more ‘search the map for my city’ downtime than most crayon rails maps.

Cards: Like all crayon rails games, the cards have just enough information to make them a pain to use. An obvious improvement: next to each destination listed on the card, show a mini (really a mini-mini) map, with a dot on it representing the approximate area where the city is located. Next to each good listed on the card, do the same thing. Thus, the when you look at a card, you IMMEDIATELY see, say, “Tourists” (with a minimap showing a dot in the southwest corner of the map) delivered to “Ursa Major” (with a minimap showing a dot in the northwest corner of the map). If your existing network is in the southeast, you can immediately discount that and move on to the next destination. I would imagine this simple improvement would cut 25% off the game time (and that 25% is all downtime for everyone but the one poor sap looking up ‘Tourists’ in the player’s aid, then looking up the map, then looking up ‘Ursa Major’ in the player’s aid, then back to the map. Repeat 9 times for your 3 cards. If goods have more than one source city, repeat even more). Color coding commodities (on the map and on the cards) would probably cut another 10% off of playing time.

Luck: As with all crayon rails games, in spite of the fact that I like them, I am beginning to wonder if the luck of the draw is the deciding factor in victory (once some basic planning skill is acquired). In the games our group plays, in spite of the fact that we are generally equally skilled (give or take), at end game we commonly have the loser more than 100 million dollars behind the winner (and the loser is usually different from one game to the next). For a group of five, it is common for at least 2 players to be racing for victory (and the victor being only one or a few turns ahead of the 2nd place player: which is remarkable in a game that may go 40 or more turns). But it is also common to have a player or two to be tens of turns (or $100 million +) behind the winner.

Bottom Line: Lunar Rails is the best crayon rails I have played. The globe encourages different strategies, and it as well as the build costs in the game encourage renting of other players’ track: thus, the game has more strategic depth than most crayon rails games. Unfortunately, the unfamiliar geography, the counterintuitive map, and the graphic design of the map and cards (like all crayon games) actually hinder play.

Rating: 7/10.