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sean johnson
United States
avon
Indiana
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In August of 2010, we participated in the Cici Charity auction. There were two games that did not have any bids on them at the time, and so I bid on them. I did not really know anything about those two games, but getting the games was not really the point. I did end up winning those two games, and eventually they will get their own blog post. However, tt turns out that Thoughthammer.com did a drawing from auction participants and we won a $30 gift card. Gen Con had just happened, and most of the games we really wanted we had purchased. Part of my personality is that I can not sit on things like gift cards. When I get them, I feel the need to use them. We decided to use the thoughthammer gift card to a game that we were curious about. My wife chose this one. We were both interested in playing more pick up and deliver games. We thought that this card game could be a good introduction to train games beyond Ticket to Ride. I looked up when the last time we played this game was, and before this most recent play it was February 2nd, 2011. Close to a year ago. So have we not played this game for almost a year. Is that because we have too many games or do we just not like this one?
Game Overview
In this game players connect cities together and deliver goods. On a player's turn they can either build a route to a new city, play a locomotive card, deliver goods, discard then draw a card, or pass. After doing one of these actions, the players will then draw 1 or 2 cards. There are three cards visible a player can choose from, or they can draw unseen from the top of the deck. The cities, tracks, and locomotives are all cards. The city cards all have four connections in various colors. The cities are valued 2-5. To play a city on their turn a player need the city card in hand, and then cards of the same color of the connection that they want to use that meet or exceed the value of the city. In addition to that, they have to also either be able to connect to a central hub or to a city on the board already using the same color connection they am playing. Points are scored for the value of the track cards that are used. Locomotive cards are important because the amount of locomotive cards a player has in front of them controls how many links they can use to deliver goods from one city to another. When a city card is played, it gets a certain number of random goods. Each city also has a goods color. So for example a city might have a red outline, which means red good cubes can be delivered there. When a player delivers goods the first link they use must be one they control (control is established by who played the link and is marked with a train marker of the player's color). Points are scored by how many links are used, and if a link belonging to another player they will also get 1 point for each link of their's used. At the end of the game there are bonus points given for sets of goods delivered. Players will also get points for cities they control. Control is established by the value of their links connected to the city. Whoever gets the most points after all of that wins.
The Game We Played
Due to the somewhat abstract nature of this game it makes it kind of hard to write about an individual play. For example, the cities are all generic so there is no point of reference. This game does tend to spread out in some unusual ways, and it kind of worked out that most of the connections we made were on one set of the table. At one point I had a six point lead, but my wife made a couple of big connections and she took the lead. On her last turn of the game she was able to make a connection that gave her control of a five point city. Before final scoring, she was six points up on me. I had delivered more cubes than she did and I gained two points there. We then divided up control of the cities. It turned out that we both had 33 points worth of cities, so I lost by four points. The final score was 119 to 115.
Our Thoughts
My Rating: 3.5 (it's ok)
My Thoughts: I like the delivery aspect and managing the balance between focusing on making new routes and delivering goods. However, the abstract nature of this game is a bit of a let down. The goods cubes do not really represent anything other than different colors, and the cities are all just nameless cities. I know the conversion of a train game to a card game required abstraction but I feel like a lot of theme got lost in translation.
Her Rating: 3 (it's ok)
Her Thoughts: The game is to messy. The cards in play do not stay organized well and everything gets to cluttered. It becomes to hard to tell who is winning which city, and I do not like that.
Verdict
Combined Rating: 6.5
So the reason why this game sat unplayed for almost a year is because we kept passing it up for games we like more. Playing the card game has led me to really want to try Railways of the World. I think that if the card game is a close approximation of the board game I might like it a decent amount. However, for this game I do not see a time we will want to play this over Ticket to Ride, so I think we will look to trade it.
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