I`m looking forward to our next game night, hopefully we`ll play on the German card to see if the Orange Railway can get some love this time. During setup, each city has a passenger waiting to be delivered elsewhere on the map. (Interestingly, none of these passengers care where they`re going, they just seem to want out of town.) The final action of the round is to take a passenger to a new city. The active player receives one point for each city they visit, regardless of the train they take to get there. But all shareholders also receive one point per share when a passenger takes one of their routes between cities. What I like about the Ticket to Ride formula is that it offers the perfect balance between simplicity and strategy. There are simpler games, but after a quick introduction, the game is simple enough to be easy enough to play. The game is more complicated than a typical mainstream game and has a recommended age of 10+, but it`s still pretty easy to play. The game can be taught in 10-15 minutes and after a few rounds, players should have a good understanding of what they are trying to do. A sign of a good game, in my opinion, is that it was no harder to play than necessary. Ticket to Ride is the perfect example. As someone who hasn`t played many of these games, I don`t have much to compare to Ride the Rails, and honestly, I`m okay with that at the moment, as far as gameplay goes, Ride the Rails is a fantastic game.
All my games were four players, which after playing seems to be the optimal number of players, although I`m looking forward to trying at least once at 5, maybe we`ll do it for the map of Germany that I really want to see in action. Ride the Rails is a game where you invest in railroad companies while you and your rival railroad tycoons build tracks all over America – or even in France or Germany if you bought the extra map pack. The goal is to get passengers on the map to as many cities as possible with the routes you`ve all taken and hopefully make more profit for yourself than your competitors. The railway baron with the most money for passenger transport at the end of the game is the winner. Choo choo, Mr. Falcon! The station is filled with excited people ready to get on the tracks. Mason is on his way to Chicago, Ashley to Denver and Hunter to San Francisco. The train arrives and passengers begin to drag the sleeping cars with the red caps, while the porters with red caps skillfully load their luggage into the baggage cars. Avid travelers flock to the gates and look forward to their adventure cruising America in style! In Ride the Rails, you invest in railroads, build railroads across America, and take passengers to as many cities as possible. Each turn, a new railway company is introduced into the game, and each railway company has its own special placement rules! Take passengers to as many cities as possible to earn the most points. Be careful when travelling, as the shareholders of the railways you use will also earn points! Ride the Rails is a game with simple rules with different strategies and tactics for 3-5 players aged 12 and over, played in about an hour.
One of my favorite things about Capstone Games` Iron Rail series is that the rules of these two games are contained on a single rulesheet. Well, I definitely have to use my old readers to be able to read the rules, but a rulesheet for games like this is really nice. The depth of the games is mainly in the gameplay, not in the reading of the rules. If you`ve never really been interested in Ticket to Ride or aren`t particularly interested in a slightly more advanced version of the game, I don`t think Ticket to Ride Rails & Sails will be for you. However, fans of the series should love the game, especially if you`re fascinated by a game with a little more strategy. I highly recommend all Ticket to Ride fans to at least consider taking Ticket to Ride Rails & Sails. A bidless dice rail game that meets all the criteria that make this style of play a game I visit again and again. Even with the base game map, you`ll learn something new about interactions in Ride the Rails with each game. Ticket to Ride Rails & Sails has many mechanics in common with the original game, so I`ve tightened those rules tighter than usual. I also combined the rules for the world and Great Lakes maps and noted the rules that only apply to one of the maps. Ships are by far the biggest addition to the game.
In many ways, ship routes behave similarly to railroad tracks, but the fact that there are two different modes of transportation significantly alters the gameplay. You`ll need to hold cards for both modes of transportation, which means you`ll need to draw more cards. Your card hand will also get a little bigger. In addition to using the right colors to claim a route, you also need to place them in the right mode of transportation. With two modes of transport, you regularly have more opportunities to connect between cities. I`m excited about the next game in the Iron Rail series. I have no idea what it is, but I`ll probably pre-order it as soon as I see it on the Capstone Games website. Speaking of which, there is a smaller United States. Publisher who has made a bigger name for himself than Capstone in the last three years? From a company that exclusively launched heavy-duty games that no other American publisher wanted to reach, to a publisher whose production over the past three years is probably comparable to any other in the world.
From working with Frosted Games on their own Simply Complex line to the Iron Rails line, I think we`re looking for a publisher that wants to be the go-to publisher for designers of all levels of games in the future. Kudos to Clay and the people who helped him along the way. Full disclosure, I love dice treasure hunts. And this is due to some characteristics that they all have in common: at the beginning of the game you have a map of witches in front of you, and on some of these witches there are cities. Each of these cities is given a passenger. The game setup is the same whether you use the United States basemap or the additional Germany/France map. There are six different railway companies in six different colours. Separate them by colors, then randomly determine a player order and you`re ready to trace a trail and move passengers. To start a reverse turn, each player takes a share. To do this, simply choose one of the available railways and take a locomotive and place it in front of you on your game board.
As you can see in the photo above, only two railways are available on the first tour – blue and red. In the second round, orange becomes available, and so on.
