Game of Trains

Product Information

Even though there are several potential actions available in the deck, they are all simple to understand. After finding that games were successful in explaining the emotional impact of the Atlantic slave trade to her daughter, [4] Romero went on to design Train as a way to explain the Holocaust in a way that was accessible to a child. Game of Trains is such a lovely, light game that I’ve found works great with people that aren’t too familiar with board games and I would say it’d also be great to play with families and kids too, as it’s not overly mean. Then each player replaces one card in their line with one of their just-drawn cards and places the replaced card face-up next to the train car deck. There are 114 small wooden bits: 21 cubes in each of four player colors and 30 Station markers in a neutral white.

The rest of the cards are placed in a draw pile with some placed face-up to be used for their special abilities. I also own Smash Up and AEG has included the same slick-style cards here which aren’t really my preference.I’m not exaggerating though, the box for this game is very small - It definitely won’t take up a lot of precious shelf real estate in your collection. It can feel limiting in the fact that if you don’t want to use an available ability, your only other option is a random card drawn from the deck that must be placed somewhere in your line. On a turn, the player can do one of two things: draw a card from the draw pile and replace one of the cards in their train line with the newly drawn card, or take a face-up card from the middle of the table and use it as a special power. Having two maps to choose from adds some variability to the game, but they’re not different enough to change the way you’ll play.

At the end of the game, it is revealed that the final station is a Nazi concentration camp, and that the players had been participating in the Holocaust. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The piles of cards to be purchased include advanced Trains, additional Lay Rails (and better versions), additional Station Expansions, and Action cards, as well as Buildings which are worth straight VP at the end of the game.So players can make choices based not only on their own train, but also based on how they want to impact their opponents. Maybe if you can convince the workers to move the cars where they should or, barring that, just find new freight, you’ll be able to make it to your destination on time. In typical deck-builder fashion you begin with a hand of five cards, expend those cards, draw a fresh five and play continues clockwise around the table.

This is a game you can self-teach and get right on the first play… and do so in a reasonable amount of time. Because the abilities on the cards they discard will then be available for the other players to use on their turns. Players have to examine their cards carefully and hedge their bets about what options might be available to them in the future and what cards they might draw. This may be because we’re comfortable with the rules of the game and playing mostly at two players, which speeds up any game, but it’s worth noting that 30 minutes seems like a stretch to me. Cards that are replaced from a player's train line are put in the middle to be used as special powers, and the cards that are used as special powers are discarded.Each of these cards features some lovely artwork at the bottom, a special ability icon at the top and is numbered between 1-84. Beaucoup de clins d’œil à la SF et au cinéma dans les illustrations, vraiment très belles avec un coté steampunk. My 8 year old also played but did need a little help, I think with a bit more practice she would be fine, but the train theme had less of an appeal to her. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. This makes such a deliciously thematic environmental connection, because you’re going to generate a lot of waste making railroads.

Regardless of what you draw, you have to replace a card in your line, even if the card you drew is worse. There are also some awesome pop culture nods thrown in on some of the cards that I didn’t even notice the first time we played. Picking up 5 cards from their deck, a player can gander at their resources and grow their empire across Tokyo (or Osaka…if the bird’s eye view of Tokyo gets someone so angry they flip the board over to the game’s alternate map). The expense of building is determined by the location: empty fields can be built on for free, while building on a mountain that already contains another player’s rails could cost enough to prohibit you from purchasing a new card on that turn (and force you to take an additional Waste). Will you focus on establishing mining operations in an attempt to gain a monopoly on coal, silver and gold?Destructoid praised the game's nuance and mechanics, noting that it makes effective use of the board game format: "The Auschwitz revelation is but one aspect of an entire experience designed to make players question the way they follow rules, and how they’ll behave once they understand what’s going on, and how complicit they’re willing to be.