Ever since the publication of Dominion in 2008, the underlying card-drafting mechanic has undergone numerous tweaks, reimaginings, and upgrades from both designer Donald X. Vaccarino and his adherents. Alderac Entertainment Group’s take on it is a Japanese import called Trains in which players build stations and lay tracks across Japan to create the best rail line. The card-drafting mechanism is the engine under the hood that determines what the builders can put into play; but the expression of their efforts is the hexagonal board and the tracks they create. Lay Rails cards let a player put his colored cube in a hex space, but conditions like the terrain, presence of other cubes and stations, and remoteness of the city require additional cards to cover costs. Everyone starts with an identical personal deck but these diverge as participants go different (ahem) routes to achieve their goals, buying new cards to improve operations. Building incurs Waste, almost wholly useless by-product cards occupying space in one’s hand better given to more directly effective cards. When the supply of certain components runs out – the game takes about an hour – the highest score wins.
While many games have attempted to co-opt the system for their use, few have truly improved upon or even changed the basic system (including AEG’s other hit, Thunderstone). Trains makes full use of the added map; it’s not some gimmicky afterthought, it’s an integral part of the product that works with the card-drafting game to serve up something new. Competition starts slowly but the race to get stations built or secure access to a city before an opponent makes you pay dearly for the privilege ramps up quickly. With an exciting air about it, Trains is a fun and even addicting pastime that takes one game to get the hang of and the hunger for.
The object of the game is to have the most points at the end of the game.
Two to four players take on the role of train moguls in Japan, building rail systems across the country. Using familiar card-drafting and deck-management mechanics, everyone starts with a small, identical deck they manipulate and improve throughout the game. With their starting hand they can lay down rails and build stations in cities, and the other cards in their hand act as money to cover costs like building over rivers and through mountains; sharing space with competitors’ railways; and extending one’s reach into remote city locations. Each important build comes with another cost, though: Waste. There’s always a mess left over during a construction project, and if you don’t take time to deal with it, the problem – in the form of these pointless cards – comes back to bite you by crowding better cards out of your hand.
Each turn a five-card hand determines what a player can accomplish. If he doesn’t want to build something he can take the “cash value” of his cards to purchase another card for his deck, and some hands may allow him to do both. There is a Supply from which to purchase them, each with its own special qualities. Some cards manage Waste better while Tourist Train ferries visitors about and boosts Victory Points. Some improve the finances, letting one “trade up” for better trains or equipment. Ultimately buying big-ticket items like Apartments or Skyscrapers score big points.
A player builds track by placing wooden cubes of his color. The map is a hexagonal display showing nearby (and some not-so-close) cities and the terrain separating them. Open spaces are free for laying rails, but when up against mountains or rivers the costs go up. Prices also inflate where opponents have already started construction. Rail lines aren’t “drawn” in the geometric sense, one just expands cubes into adjacent spaces. Cities with stations are more valuable so building them is a good way to not only increase a company’s worth but to jack up the expense for opponents who come later.
When the Supply of someone’s colored cubes, the train stations, or four decks are exhausted the game is over. Players get points for stations, extending themselves into hard-to-reach cities, and erecting important buildings, and whoever has the most points wins.
Trains is lovely to look at. The colors are bright and the illustrations so clear they call up images of a real city, one players are happy to help build. Stations are long, sleek wooden tubes, though the cubes for the trains could have been just a bit bigger. One city holds three stations and four player markers so smaller cubes allow everything to fit, but it’s an irritant pinching those little pieces to pick them up. The rulebook is also in blazing, glorious color and offers a simple set of instructions (cost and point-value cheat sheets for everyone would go a long way). The board has two sides, Tokyo and Osaka, in case players feel they’ve got one of the maps figured out, though coloring the mountains an odd green instead of white or gray seems counterintuitive (most cities are printed red or brown, so why apply gray to the small towns?). It all comes packed into Alderac’s standard card-game plastic insert, along with dividers to facilitate organization.
Other deck-building games have brought boards into the equation and put them to good use – if you’re going to have all these cards lying around, what better way to organize them? – but Trains may be the first to make the board an indispensible part of the action . . . to say nothing of it raising the game to the next level. Play is rapid and one’s pulse follows suit. It moves swiftly enough to pull players along in anticipation of their next turn and the downtime between turns is minimal.
It’s odd buildings are so important to the final scoring: train moguls have to worry about erecting apartments? Maybe the designer had trouble coming up with crowning achievements for the rail industry that kept up the metaphor, or trains work differently in Japan. Maybe it’s corporate housing. Many hand improvements depend on specific other cards, and if two complementary sets aren’t selected together for a game it’s awfully tough to customize one’s deck (the aforementioned Thunderstone Advance, by contrast, is typically keenly aware of incompatible decks and warns players accordingly). The mechanics always permit ditching Waste but not those low-income starter cards. One gets a lot of dross, and securing a hand sufficient to purchase high-value cards with any consistency isn’t likely. Notwithstanding, Trains is beautiful from the twin artistic standpoints of illustration and game design, and is something a group is going to revisit often for its successful appeal to both the card- and board-gaming interests.
