Finally, here are the stats for June '23.

​The first plays for June were nearly triple for May (Which granted was only 3.) and the total different games were up by 3 from 32.

First plays: 8 and 3 of those were on the same day - which is identical to all the first plays last month!
Games played: 35

Thursday 29th - Aldershot
Deep Sea Adventure 
Isle of Skye

Tuesday 27th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Machi Koro 2
Stockpile - First Play!

Sunday 25th Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers 
Can't Stop
Roll'n Bump 
Cloud City 
Railroad Ink 
Stella - Dixit Universe 
Azul

Thursday 22nd - Aldershot
Durian
Star Trek Chrono-Trek

Tuesday 20th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Dice City - First Play!

Sunday 18th Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers 
Love Letter
Just One 
Space Base 
Via Magica 
Carcassonne 
Legends of Hellas 

Thursday 15th - Aldershot
Formula Dé Mini - First Play!
Durian
Trains 

Sunday 11th Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers 
Can't Stop
Gizmos 
Just One 
Roll'n Bump 
Tranquillity The Ascent 
Line It - First Play!

Saturday evening 10th Board Game Arena
Bandido

Saturday day 10th The Sovereigns
Cascadia 
Fluxx
Love Letter 

Thursday 8th June - Aldershot
Village Rails - First Play!
Star Trek Chrono-Trek - First Play!
Mint Delivery - First Play!
Scout 
Durian

Tuesday 6th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Scout
Dice Hospital 

Sunday 4th Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers
Can't Stop 
Love Letter 
Sushi Go! 
Parks 
Just One 
Next Station: Tokyo - First Play!

27th June 2023

It's a Tuesday evening which means its time for some gaming goodness with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns.

Indulge in some power dressing with a shoulder-padded jacket while you invest in frozen concentrated orange juice and don't for get to, buy, sell, sell! 

Earn more than all your opponents in Stockpile, a game about manipulating the stock market.

Player board: Stylised after a notepad of sorts. Each player gets one of these in their player colour. These board are large enough for spaces to hold 2 stacks of cards which are marked as 'stock' and 'split stock'.
They are used to store stock cards that players acquire, stock cards stored here are always stored face-down.

Stock ticker tokens: These ring-shaped tokens are used to track the values of each company's stock.

Stockpile's components are all good quality, the tokens, boards, cards and meeples are what you'd expect from a modern game. They seem suitably sturdy.
Using small, laminated cards for cash is a little unusual but it works.

There's some nice use of colour on the main board which consists of some art that depicts it as a a office desk.
For the most part though, artwork in Stockpile consists of logos, either for the 6 different businesses or the game itself. It's fairly straightforward art but it's also colourful, uncluttered and gives the game a vibrant appearance.

A fairly low amount of Iconography is used in Stockpile. There some icons to represent the different companies and indicate changes in stock value but that's about it. It's all self-explanatory and doesn't present a barrier to players.

How's it play?
Setup

• Game board: Put the game board into the central area and place out the money to create a 'bank'.
  Stock prices: Place the stock ticker token for each companies on their starting spots.
  Turn marker: Place the turn marker on its starting spot on the round tracker, player count will determine which spot it goes on to.
• Cards: First sort the cards into their 3 types (Market cards, company cards & forecast cards.) then give each player 1 stock card from each of the 6 companies. Players should place this card on their player board on the stock portfolio side.
  Finally, shuffle each type of card into it's own face-down deck to create 3 decks
• Players: Give each player the player board and meeple in their colour.
  ​Money: Deal starting funds to each player.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

​On to play
In Stockpile, players will first be creating pile of stocks (Stockpiles if you will!), then they will be bidding on those piles. Furthermore, they will be doing this with limited knowledge of what will be happening to the stock prices and what lies in the piles of stock.
Stockpile is played over a number of phases each round.

• Information phase: Deal 1 company card and 1 forecast card to each player, which they should keep hidden. This means each player knows what will happen to the stock price of exactly 1 company during this round.
  Next deal 1 of each type face-up on their respective spaces on the game board, this represents open knowledge that particular company.
  Finally, with the remaining cards, create a face-down stack of each, these will be revealed later.
• Supply phase: During this phase, the stockpiles will be created, one each below a bidding tracks.
  Player count: The number of bidding tracks used is equal to the player count and thus the stockpiles created will be equal to the number of bidding tracks used.
  First card: Draw 1 card form the market deck for each bidding track being used in the game and place it face-up below its pertinent bidding track.
  This creates the start of each stockpile.
  Deal cards: Now deal 2 cards from the market deck to each player. These should be kept separate from any cards they already have on their player board. They should also be kept hidden from other players.
  Play cards: Now, going in turn order, each player should play both of the cards they were just dealt.
  They can be played in any order to separate stockpiles, or the same one.
  However, one card must be played face-up and the other must be played face-down. This means that stockpiles will end up having some sort of mix of face-up and face-down cards.
• Demand phase: During this phase is where most of the game's activity takes place, players will bid for the available stockpiles which were created in the previous phase using the bidding track.
  The following rules apply to bidding.
  Turn order: Bidding goes in turn order with the active player bidding before play progresses to the player on their left.
  Cash only: During bidding, player cannot bid more than the money they currently possess.
  Bids: The active player may place their bidding meeple on any empty space on any bidding track. A player can even choose to immediately bid on the maximum 25 spot if they wish to.
  any bidding track that has a meeple on the 25 space is considered locked and cannot be subject to any further bidding.
  Other bids: However, if another player has already placed a bid on a bidding track, any bid that follows must be a higher value, it cannot match or undercut the current bid.
  ​Outbidded player: When a player is outbidded, their meeple is returned to them, giving them the opportunity to bid again on their next turn.
  There can only ever be 1 meeple on each bidding track.
  Passing: If a player's meeple is still on a bidding track when it comes to their turn, then they skip bidding for this turn. They are not 'out' though and it's entirely possible that the meeple will be returned in a subsequent round.
  End of bidding: When each bidding track has 1 meeple on it, bidding has ended.
  Pay your dues: Players now pay their winning bid to the banks and collect their cards, this includes any face-down cards.
  Trading free cards, regardless of whether they were face-down or not, will have an effect after being collected which will require the collecting player to pay extra money to the bank.
• Action phase: As well as collecting stock cards and being stung my trading fee cards, players may also collect action cards. All action cards collected must be resolved and this is done in turn order.
  Action cards may either push up the value of a company's stock or push it down, the collecting player chooses which company or companies are affected. Once all actions have been resolved, the phase is over.
• Selling phase: During this phase, players may choose to sell shares they control from their player board to the bank. This can be either from the stock portfolio or split-stock portfolio, although stock in the split stock portfolio counts as 2 stocks, so can be sold for double the normal value. The money gained from selling is equal to the stock value of the company whose shares are being sold.
• Movement phase: After the opportunity to sell stocks in the previous phase, it's time to see how their prices will fluctuate.
  First, in turn order, players reveal their company and forecast cards, then the stock's value for that company is altered accordingly - more on this below.
  Next, the stock value for the company with open knowledge is resolved and finally, the face-down company and forecast cards are revealed one-at-a-time and resolved.
  Forecast cards: These do 1 of 3 things to stock value, they push it up or down by the displayed value or they pay out dividends which earns players with that stock money but does not alter its value.
  There are also 2 further effects that may be triggered by changes to stock values.
  Split stock: If a stock's value is moved above 10, the stock is then split.
  This means the value is reset to 5 and any stock players had in their stock portfolio is moved into their split stock portfolio. Thus the value is halved but the stock is doubled, leaving room for growth later.
  Bankruptcy: If a stock's value goes below 1, then that company has gone bankrupt!
  The value is reset to 5 and all players must discard all stock they had in that company from both of their portfolios, ouch!
• Next round: Move the round tracker to the next spot on its track. The player to the left of the current first player becomes the first player in the following round.
  A new round begins with the next information phase.

Endgame
The game ends when the round tracker reaches the end of its track!
​There are now a couple of final phases that must be resolved.

• Majority: For each of the 6 companies, all players count up the shares they have in that company - split stock counts as double. Whoever has the majority in that company earns extra money. Ties earn a lesser amount.
• Sell, sell, SELL!: All players now sell all their shares back to the bank at the final value shown on the game board.

Players will now only be left with money which should now be counted up.

Values are tallied, highest amount wins.

Overall
Stockpile's theme fits its game fantastically, luckily, it's a theme that seems to translate well to gameplay - I guess that says something about real-life stock trading!
Players will find themselves trying to buy low and sell high - and trying to out do each other with a little bit of 'insider knowledge'.

Mechanically, Stockpile is relatively straightforward and uncomplicated. It does that neat trick of blending simple mechanics with quite deep gameplay, this is due to some extent on how players are actually playing each other and not the game!
There are two key ways players interact with each other.
​
Firstly and most obviously is the auctioning element which always brings a lot of factors to think about: How should I bid for something? Can I run up someone else's bid? Etc
The clever twist here is adding the rules for creating the stockpiles especially since half the cards are always played face-down. It can be used to give someone a nasty surprise or hide something you don't want opponents to have. Conversely, cards can be played face-up dissuade opponents from bidding for a specific stockpile or perhaps lure them into buying pile. This is all of course contextual and requires a player trying to keep an eye what stocks their opponents have been buying.

There's definitely a higher level of play that comes from trying to gauge an opponent's motives. Watching which companies shares they are playing cards into into which stack or bidding for. Or, especially during the selling phase, seeing someone ahead in the turn order dump their stock in a particular company might mean they know something that's going down and maybe you want to try and stymie them or perhaps get in on the action.

There's not much more to add really; Stockpile is an easy to learn game that provides meaningful decisions and lots of player interaction, all of which I found a lot of fun.
If auctioning mechanics are not your thing, Stockpile one to avoid but otherwise, it's definitely one to try.

20th June 2023


It's a Tuesday evening and we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns for some gaming goodness.

Game of the night was Dice City: Create a city in this engine-building dice game! I don't about you but dice rolling is the best way to build any municipality!

Like most modern games, the component quality in Dice City is good and there's nothing bad here. While the cards are average, the boards and tokens feel sturdy, the tokens in particular are pleasantly chunky and tactile.
I would've preferred wooden dice to the plastic ones provided but they are good quality, having well rounded corners and deep pips.

There's a definitely a bit of a fantasy theme to the slightly cartoony and cheerful art style found in Dice City. It's colourful and eye-catching with a good variety to the art too, illustrations on both the large player boards and cards doing a good job of depicting their subject material with detail but without cluttering up the components. Even the art used on the resource tokens looks easy to see and detailed.
All the this lends the game a vibrant and bright presence on the table.

All the iconography in Dice City is easy to understand and is logical. Players should not have any trouble understanding anything here.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: To create the central drafting area, sort all the cards as follows.
  Base cards: First, sort all the lumber mill, mine, quarry and regular army cards into each of their 4 types and place the 4 decks face-up in a row.
  ​Location cards: Shuffle all the location cards into a face-down deck and deal 8 face-up alongside the base cards.
  Bandit cards: Sort the bandit cards into their 3 types and put a stack of each with cards in each stack as per player count.
  Trade ship cards: Sort the trade ships into their 3 types, then put out a stack of each type with cards in each stack as per player count.
• First player: Determine a starting player.
• Roll the dice: Every player should roll all 5 of their dice and place them on their player board accordingly.
  E.g., rolling a 5 on the yellow die means placing it on the 5 column in the yellow row and so on.

On to play
In Dice City each player will spend their turn resolving the 5 dice that have been placed on to their board. Essentially giving them 5 actions; this will give them options to gain resources and then buy cards or trade ships and launch attacks as per the dice results etc.
Dice City uses a typical player order with the active player fully resolving all their dice before play proceeds to the player on their left.
The active player's turn has several phases and goes as follows.

• Dice phase: The active player resolves the dice on their player board one at a time in the order they chose. A die is resolved by removing it from the board, then the active player can perform one of the following actions to resolve that die.
  Use space: Probably the most common action in the game. Once a die is removed from a space, the action on that space may be used. This can provide them gain or trade resources or allow them to generate army strength or gain VPs etc.
  Move die: this allows the active player to move a die elsewhere on their board.
  Reactivate space: Certain events can deactivate a space on a player board (More on this below.) and the active player can use the die removal to reactivate a deactivated space.
  Discard cards: Once per turn the active player may discard any 4 of the 8 location cards and draw new ones to replace them.
  Pass: Also once per turn the active player may pass an action to gain a pass token. Why is that useful? Glad you asked.
  • Additional actions: During the dice phase, pass tokens can be spent to gain extra actions. 2 pass tokens must be spent to gain an extra action, although this can be done multiple times in a single turn. The actions are as follows.
    Gain resource: The active player can gain the resource of their choice.
    Increase army strength: The active player may increase their army strength by +1.
    Force re-rolls: This bonus action forces all other players to reroll one of their dice!
• Attack phase: The active player may have generated army strength during the previous phase and it can now be used during this phase to 'attack'.
  To make an attack, the active player must have an army strength equal or higher than their target's defence value (In which case they can attack!). Furthermore, if the active player's army strength is high enough, it can be split among multiple target to attack them all.
  Army strength does not carry over from round to round and any unspent strength is lost at the end of the active player's turn.
  It should be noted that if a card doesn't have any defence value, it cannot be attacked.
  There are 3 types of attack that can be made.
  Bandit cards: Successfully attacking a bandit card allows the active player to claim it, adding its VPs to the player's total at the game end.
  Resources: The active player may target another player's resources (Which that player must have kept between their turns.), a successful attack will allow the active player to steal 1 or more of them depending on the army strength allocated to those attacks.
  Location: The active player may attack a location belonging to another player. A successful attack on a location will 'deactivate' it, consequently a deactivation token is placed on that location which now cannot be used until the token is removed.
• Building and trading phase: Now the active player can spend resources they have acquired. Unlike army strength, 1 of each of the 3 types of resource can be kept between turns.
  Build locations: The active player may build as many new locations as they can afford. However, when a new location is built, it will cover the current location which will be discarded.
  Trade ship card: Alternatively, resources can be spent to acquire a trade ship card.
• End of turn: Once the building and trading phase has finished, the active player's turn is over.
  Army strength: This reverts to 0.
  Resources: the active player can keep 1 of each resource.
  Pass tokens: Any number of pass tokens may be kept between turns.
  Roll dice: The active player rolls their 5 dice and places them as required on their player board in preparation for their next turn.
  Next player: Play now progresses to the player on the active player's left.

Endgame
​Play continues until one of the following criteria is met.

• All bandit cards have been acquired.
• At least 2 stacks of trade ship cards have been acquired.
• The location deck is empty.
• Optionally: If at least 2 rows of a player's player board has been covered with location cards and none of them contain a deactivation token, then that player may choose to trigger the game end.

Regardless of how game end is triggered, play progresses until all players have had equal turns.
Player now calculate their VPs which can come from the following sources.

• VP tokens.
• Location cards.
• Bandit cards.
• Trade ship cards.

​
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​Dice City is not the first game to use dice-activations in a engine-building game with a city creation theme and while how the dice work on the board is an unusual mechanic, players will be familiar with a lot of the other concepts presented here.

They will need to adapt to both what their dice results give them to work with and what is available to draft from the location cards. Luckily players have some agency with the results in the form of dice-manipulation which can help but generally, they'll looking for ways to increase the efficiency of their player board and unlike a lot of game of this type, Dice City begins will a fully fleshed out beginner engine. Every die roll will always produce a result of some sort, so players will looking to increase the effectiveness of their results.
Ultimately, players will be looking to do things quicker than their opponents.

Something that Dice City does well is provide 2 clear avenues to accruing VPs - resources that can be used to improve a player's city or to buy trade ship cards, while army strength can be employed to defeat bandit cards or hinder other players' cities.
This adds an element of direct interaction - unusual for a game in this style with the ability to steal opponents' resources and deactivate their locations - especially locations with dice on them!
There's also a higher level of play where players can look at what's effective on an opponents board and target those spaces, even if they don't currently contain a die.
Additionally, a further element of player interaction are pass tokens which can be spent to make opponents re-roll dice.

Mechanically, Dice City is pretty straightforward with reasonably light rules that also generally provides players with meaningful decisions to make, both resources and army strength can have multiple uses and will give players options to think about.

I found Dice City to be an OK game and I hate saying a game is OK because it's a bit of a cop-out when trying to discuss games but that's exactly what Dice City is - OK.
Other than the possible direct interaction between players it doesn't do anything particularly different or special or new.
However, having said all of that, it also doesn't do anything badly and is a game that plays well enough to be engaging that I can't fault. Ultimately, while I found the game's presentation to be good, Dice City doesn't really standout for me.

If player interaction is something your big on or find important, Dice City has it and is a worth a look if you want a dice-driven city building game.
Conversely, some people don't like the confrontational element the direct interaction adds to the game. So 

I will happily play Dice City if someone else chooses it but it wouldn't be my first choice.

15th June 2023

Thursday night gaming in Aldershot continues with Formula Dé Mini.
Race around famous F1 tracks in this cut-down version of a classic racing game.

As the name might suggest, Formula Dé Mini is a smaller iteration of classic racing game Formula Dé which is itself re-iterated by Formula D.

I'm not going to do the usual blog for Formula Dé Mini because of it's similarities to Formula D. Instead I'll just list how it differs.

• Track: The tracks in Formula Dé Mini are smaller, not only in physical size but also in scope. The Formula Dé Mini tracks only have 1-stop corners and the track is only 2 lanes wide.

Component quality in Formula Dé Mini is comparable to the original Formula Dé. The boards are well made as are the tiles, cars, tokens and dice.
Using plastic gold discs for life points seems a little strange to me but they're as good as anything else for tokens.

The board features the same fantastic and detailed art that was found on the boards from Formula Dé .

​There's a little bit of iconography on the board but that's about it. Since Formula Dé ​Mini lacks the 6 types of resource from Formula Dé , all the icons and symbols related to those are gone, making this game easier to understand.

How's it play?
Formula Dé Mini retains most of the mechanics from the other games, playing almost identically: Read the Formula D blog for an overview of how it all works.
 
Formula Dé Mini broadly only differs in 2 ways, although many of the optional rules have been removed.

Firstly; the 6th gear is missing which makes sense considering the Formula Dé ​Mini tracks are somewhat smaller and it isn't really needed. It also removes one of the riskier  (And longest to count!) gear dice from the game, making the game slightly less complex.

Secondly, all of the types of resources (Gearbox, brakes, fuel etc.) have been removed and replaced with a single universal resource - the aforementioned life points.
Each car in Formula Dé Mini is given 16 life points at the game start.
Overshoot a corner? Spend life points instead of tyres.
Need to skip a gear? Spend life points.
Collide with another car or take engine damage? Spend life points and so on. you get the idea.
The game becomes notably easier and quicker to manage with a single resource.

Removed rules include those for weather conditions tyres as well for custom cars.

Finally, it's definitely worth mentioning that Formula Dé Mini is completely compatible with both other previous iterations of the game. That means all of the previously published tracks can be used with the Formula Dé Mini dashboards and components. Additionally, if you have the original Formula Dé core game, then the 6th gear dice can optionally also be used in Formula Dé ​Mini with those tracks.
​Excellent!

Overall
It seems obvious that the goal of Formula Dé Mini was to create an iteration of the original that was both easier to learn and faster to play and I think it succeeds at both.

Formula Dé Mini is somewhat easier to learn and play and is also a lot more forgiving in that regard.
The occasional mistake like having a car overshooting a corner by a lot of spaces might well cripple or eliminate that car in the full versions of the game but here, it would instead just cost more life points - although if a car loses all it's life points, it will still be eliminated.
The removal of the multi-stop corners from tracks that come with the game removes one of the more finicky aspects of the rules. This means the remaining rules are reasonably straightforward to learn and several of them are situational and might not even occur during the game.

Is Formula Dé Mini quicker to play? Yes, especially when using the supplied smaller tracks but even when using the 'full-sized' tracks play will a little faster. Reducing the resource management from 6 to 1 resource makes decisions quicker.
Even so, players will be faced with similar decisions to the full games. I'm impressed with how Formula Dé Mini manages to retain the 'feel' of the full sized games.
It's always fundamentally been a game about how much players are willing to push their cars through the corners and how much risk they're willing to take to do so, this hasn't changed. Sure, Formula Dé Mini may take the edge of that risk but it's still always there.

So how does Formula Dé Mini stack compared to the full versions of the game? The answer is; pretty good actually.
When I heard there was a version of Formula Dé ​that removed all the resources, I was pretty sceptical and sort of assumed that it would overly simplify or 'infantilise' the game but that wasn't the case. What you have is genuinely a quicker easier version of the game to play.

On a intellectual level I feel Formula Dé/Formula D is the better, more satisfying game to play.
On visceral level though, I found Formula Dé Mini very enjoyable to play. Some of the more challenging elements are gone but it means you can now blast round the tracks safe in the knowledge that you have some more wiggle room to mitigate those bad dice rolls!
It's an arcade racing game compared to a sim!

If you're looking for a quicker version of the game to play - or a way to introduce Formula D to players, this will definitely do the job.

While Formula De Mini remains long out of print, the still available Formula D utilises these simplified rules in its beginner game.
Alternatively, if you've got the original Formula Dé ​, you can simply acquire a bunch of tokens and play it that way.

I generally wouldn't choose Formula Dé Mini over the other versions but it's still a great game.

11th June 2023

​Sunday evening is here again and that means some gaming goodness on Board Game Arena.
Line up those numerical cards in this abstract, lightweight and compact set-collecting card game!

Caveat: We've only ever played this game digitally.

​What's in a game?

• Cards: Line-it uses 2 types of cards.
  • Number cards: There are card numbered 1-100 in Line-it. Additionally they are further subdivided into to 4 colours/suits.
  • Bet cards: These grey, essentially monotone cards are labelled from +3 to +5. They are used as part of the game's push-you-luck betting mechanic.

How's it play?
Setup

• Jackpot tokens: Place the jackpot tokens in a row adjacent to the central playing area.
• ​Deck: Shuffle all the cards into face-down deck.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Line-it, players will be drafting cards then using them to create a row of cards (The titular line if you will) and this row must either ascend of descend numerically from left-to-right.
Once a line reaches a 'suitable' size, players can then choose score that line by 'completing' and adding it to their personal 'scoring stack' which represents their victory points (VPs).

A round in Line-it is played using a traditional turn order with the first player acting before play progresses to the player on their left and so on.

• Round start: Draw cards from the deck to form The market. The size of the market is equal to the number of players + 2.
• First Player: A round starts with the first player as the active player.
• Draft card: The active player must draft a card from the market, they can then perform 1 of 2 actions with it.
  • Add to line: This card can be added to the active player's line with the following requirements.
    1st card: Any card can be played as the 1st card in a line.
    Left-to-right: Every card that is played after the first must be placed to the right of the rightmost card, thus the line always goes from left-to-right.
    2nd card: The 2nd card added the line will determine whether the line ascends or descends numerically in value. If the 2nd card has a higher value than the 1st, the line with ascend, conversely, if is lower, the line will descend.
    3rd card onwards: All cards played to the line after the 2nd must continue the 'trend' of the line. Thus must be higher in value in a ascending line or lower in a descending line.
    Jackpot: If a player adds a 3rd card of a certain colour to their line, they immediately draft all cards of that colour that have been stacked adjacent to its corresponding jackpot token. More on how jackpots are created below.
    Bet cards: These do not count as number cards and are not affected by the placement rules above. Bet cards represent a push-your-luck element as players are essentially betting on how many cards they think they can play into their line after the bet card. Thus, the higher the bet card value, the more cards must be played to win the bet but also, the more VPs it's worth. Bet cards come into play when completing and scoring a line.
    Only 1 bet card can ever be placed in a line.
  • Add to hand: Alternatively, the drafted card can be added to the active player's hand.
    Players have a maximum hand size of 2.
  • Cannot play: If for any reason the active player cannot perform either of the 2 actions above, they must immediately 'complete' their line and score it. More on scoring below.
• Additional actions: As well as the actions, above, the active player has 2 further actions available to them which can be resolved at any time during their turn.
  • Play from hand: The active player may add a single card from their hand to their line, this must follow the usual placement rules.
  • Complete line: The active player may (Or may be forced to!) score a line by 'completing' it. This has 2 steps.
    • Bet card: If the active player has a bet card in their line, they must first check if they've won their 'bet'.
      Winning a bet: Every bet card has a value from +3 to +5. If the active player has played at least as many cards after the bet as it's value, they have won the bet! They take the bet token with corresponding value and add it to their scoring stack.
      Losing a bet: If the active has not played the required number of cards, they have lost the bet! They take the bet token with the corresponding value, flips it to the negative side and adds it to their scoring stack.
    • Score the line: The active player discards 3 cards from their line and adds the remaining cards to their scoring stack.
      This means if a line has 3 or less cards, it will score 0 when completed!
• End of turn: Once the active player has completed their action(s), play progresses to the player on their left.
• End of round: Once all players have taken their turns - the round is obviously over and the 2 following steps occur.
  Jackpots: The 2 remaining cards which were not drafted are placed adjacent to their pertinent jackpot tokens and will become available in later rounds for players to gain.
  New first player: The player to the left of the current first player becomes the first player for the next.
  Play will now progress with new cards being drawn to create a new market.

Endgame
The endgame is triggered when there are not enough cards to create a full market at the start of a round. Then the following occurs.
Firstly, any remaining cards from the deck are placed on to their corresponding jackpot tokens.
Then in turn order, each player gets the opportunity to play 1 card from their hand to their line (Increasing their score and potentially gaining a jackpot.).
Finally, all players must complete their current line.

Now players calculate their finishing scores. Each card in a scoring stack is worth 1 VP while bet tokens are worth their displayed values.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Line-it is an abstract drafting game that doesn't attempt to awkwardly shoehorn a tenuous theme on to itself and while I know plenty of players for whom theme is important, I myself have never found the lack of it an obstacle to enjoying a game.
In this regard, some people may be put off by Line-it's lack of theme but YMMV.

Rules-wise, Line-it is a straightforward, easily understood rules-light but luck-heavy game. Players have to draft a card and then choose whether to play it to their line or 'bank' it to play later.
Players will initially look to draft a very low or high card to start a line, giving them the most leeway to create longer lines and players will want to create long lines.
The game's action economy dictates that (Ignoring jackpots.) completing a line after 6 drafts will score 3VPs - which is 0.5VPs per action but completing a line with just 4 cards would score 1VPs and that works out to be only 0.25 per action.
Worse of all, having to complete a line of 3 or less cards would give 0VPs for per action. Something players will definitely want to avoid.

Because of the inherent luck present in Line-it, at times players will have to deal with much less than optimal choices while drafting cards - doubly so when a player is going later in the round and their choices lessen even more.

Of course jackpots throw something different into the mix, sometimes justifying completing a line 'early' to gain those bonus cards. E.G., discarding a line of 3 yellows to gain a yellow jackpot card would earn 1VP which works to be .33VP per action. Having said that, getting 3 cards of the same colour will not be particularly quick, especially if other players can get there quicker.

Bet cards also provide a extra element to think about. Although their usefulness will vary: They can be a good source of VPs in the early game or early in a player's line but conversely be very negative in the late game or of if added later in a players line.
Players will need to think carefully when considering the risk of adding a bet card to their line.

The other element for players to consider is placing a card into their hand. Being able to bank a card can be vital to success. There's a bit of higher level of play in Line-it that can come from storing and playing a card of a certain colour or value can prove advantageous at the right time and sometimes.
Additionally, a player being able to put a card into their hand simply to just to avoid playing it can also be useful.
Wisely, the game limits player hands to 2, otherwise it would be too useful an action.

So while Line-it does give players meaningful decisions to make, the can also be very luck dependant and sometimes players will be faced with nothing but less than optimal choices, particularly when they go later in the turn order and their options dwindle.
The scoring also felt somewhat frustrating, having to discard 3 cards before scoring feels wrong. I know why that mechanic exists - it prevents players scoring short lines of 2 cards or so which is not something you want in a game about creating numerically linear lines of card. Even so, it felt counterintuitive and even unfair!

Another element I found counterintuitive was when I would habitually think, 'I'm going first next round, so I'll draft one of those cards not taken this round' only to see them discarded into their jackpot stacks.
I know this is my fault but again, it felt frustrating and only served to highlight the game's randomness.

I'm probably overthinking it though. Line-it is an accessible game that will probably play quite well with non-gamers. It's also a quick filler game that could be used to begin or end a long gaming session and not something to pour huge amounts of though into.
​If you like a lot of luck in your filler games, Line-it could be for you.
For me though, it didn't have quite enough to engage me. I applaud a game for it's simplicity and accessibility but having said that, I did find Line-it just a bit too simple and random for my liking. 

Component quality is good throughout and there's nothing bad to write about.
The cards are of the standard expected from a modern game and understandably smaller than usual which keeps the game's footprint from getting too large. The frames and coins are all made of sturdy card and also to the standard that is expected from a modern game.
While made mostly of card, the score trackers are both a nice and useful addition, doing away with the need to use tokens to track what is a relatively high scoring game.

The art direction in Village Rails is also for the most part good. It has a watercolour aesthetic that depicts the steam trains of old and bird's eye views of the games 5 different landscapes of yesteryear with nice little touches such as horses in pastures and buildings or patches of garden in villages.
Unfortunately, the art does fall down a bit when depicting the differences between the lake and forest terrain types which should be obviously different but somehow, with a murky mixture of blue-green palettes can be conflated with each other. This brings me to the game's other problem with presentation; iconography.

Village Rails has icons for the 5 different types of 'feature' which can be found on the train lines. It also has icons for the game's 5 different types of landscape but these symbols are tiny and can tricky to spot! Worse still, they can be lost against the noise of a landscape with a dark background. This is compounded by the fact that the cards are small.
It's not a gamebreaker but it is a oversight that can add some unnecessary fiddliness to proceedings.

Otherwise the iconography is pretty straightforward, easily understood and shouldn't prove too complicated.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: Sort the cards into their 2 types.
  • Railway cards: Ensure that the railway cards all on the same side and shuffle them into a deck with the trip side face-up. 
    Track market: Deal 7 cards from the deck, flipping them so the track side is face-up and  in a row heading away from the railway deck
    Trip market: Then deal 4 cards with the trip side face-up, also placed in a row heading away from the railway deck and adjacent to the track market row
  • Terminus cards: Shuffle the terminus cards into a face-down deck. Deal 3 to each player.
• Money: Give each player their starting money.
• Frames: Give each player the pieces of a frame which they should piece together.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Village Rails, players will be drafting track cards to create train lines within their frame in a 3x4 grid to score VPs, they can also draft trip cards to make those train lines earn even more VPs. Finally, they will be using terminus cards to earn money.
Village rails plays over exactly 12 rounds and uses a typical turn order with the active player taking their actions before play progresses to the player on their left.

In their turn, the active play performs the following actions.

• Drafting: When drafting, the following 2 draft-actions may be performed in any order the active player chooses.
  • Draft track card: The active player must draft a track card. They can take any of the 7 available cards but only the one furthest away from the railway deck is free. If the active player wants to take a card further along the 'line', they must place £1 on each track card they skip.
    When gaining a track card, the player also gains any coins on it.
    Place track card: The track card must be placed be inside the players frame, either adjacent to the inside edge of the frame or orthogonally adjacent to another track card.
    Additionally, track cards can only be placed in the landscape orientation, although they can be rotated 180'. Because of how the tracks are laid out, they will invariably lead the train lines downwards and/or rightwards, eventually going outside of the 3x4 grid. When this happens, that track line is 'completed'. Depending on card placement, up to 2 lines can be completed at a time.
    Completing train lines: If a player completes 2 lines at the same time, they can choose the order in which they are resolved.
    Resolving a line involves calculating the VPs it scores: There are numerous ways this can happen dependant on the features on the line.
    VPs might come from a number of the same landscape type, or a variety of different terrains that the line passes though.
    VPs may come from symbols on the line.
    Some features straight up score VPs.
    VPs are then added to the players score tracker.
    Only 'sidings' are not immediately scored.
    Completed trip cards: If a completed train line also has any attached trip cards (See below.), then they are scored according to their objectives and added to the score tracker.
    Once scored, completed trips cards are discarded to the bottom of the railway deck and a terminus card is played - see below for more info on terminus cards.
    Replace card: Once a card has been taken, the space left is filled by sliding cards away from the deck to fill it, then a new card is drawn and placed closest to the deck.
  • Draft trip card: The active player may choose to draft 1 of the 4 available trip cards. Unlike track cards, this is never free! First they must pay £3 to the bank, then they can take a trip card.
    The trip card furthest away from the deck has no additional cost but if the active player wants a trip card closer to the deck, as with the track market, they must place £1 on each trip card they skip.
    And as with track cards, the player gains any coins on a trip card they acquire.
    Place trip card: Trip cards are placed outside the frame and adjacent to one of the 7 starting train lines - provided it has not already been completed. A trip card cannot be placed on a completed line nor would it earn any VPs for it, so it's a good idea to place trip cards before track cards.
    Up to 2 trip cards can be placed at the start of a train line.
    ​Replace card: Once a card has been taken, the space left is filled by sliding cards away from the deck to fill it, then a new card is drawn and placed closest to the deck.
• ​Terminus cards: Once any train lines have been completed and any associated trips cards have been resolved, the player must place a terminus card outside the frame where the completed train line started (Essentially replacing any trip cards that might have been there.).
  Depending on the objectives on the terminus card, it can score the player £3-£10.
  When a terminus card is placed, the active player immediately draws a new one to replace it. Players should always have 3 terminus cards to choose from.
• Next player: The player to the left of the active player now becomes the active player.

​Endgame
Once all players have taken exactly 12 turns, the game is over.
Each players now calculates VPs earned from sidings and adds it to their score tracker.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Thematically, Village Rails, especially with its artwork, harks back to an age of steam before the existence of personal transport when trains represented an opportunity to go on holiday to the coast or sightsee through the countryside. 

Mechanically, Village Rails is on recognisable ground. 
It's drafting and placement rules, will be familiar to many players, as will the coin-and-conveyor belt mechanic for replacing cards.
The set-collecting, point soring mechanics will also be familiar. Sometimes players will want a set of the same landscape, or alternatively they'll want a variety of different ones on their line and so forth.

Where Village Rails does differentiate itself is in the use of trip cards to add an extra layer of scoring opportunities to the proceedings. Players will now be looking to combo trip cards off the routes they are creating. E.g., a player may be creating a route with only a type of terrain and would look for a trip card that complements that objective.
The game has a fairly wide variety of trips cards, including trip cards that score off of other trip cards.
Interestingly, there are some trip cards that work well on short train lines. It's possible to create a train line with only 1 card that immediately goes out of the playing area and a trip card that requires only 1 type of terrain would score easily off of that line.

Additionally, in the early game, Village Rails also has quite a harsh cash economy. Money is very useful for getting cards that a player needs but is in quite short supply at the start and players can soon run out of cash - and there's only 2 ways to get more - playing terminus cards after completing lines or drafting cards with coins on them.
This presents an interesting dynamic to players: I imagine most players will instinctively want to create the longest most elaborate trains lines to increase their scoring opportunities. Sometimes though, it can be good to complete a line quickly to get an injection of funds which can prove beneficial in the late game. This adds a nice little balancing act to the game, creating short and long term needs.

All of this provides players with more meaningful decisions to make and this is especially true since not only do players only have 12 turns until their playing area is filled. There will only ever be 7 train lines available to be completed, Players will need to optimise the placing of track cards

I don't usually refer to other games when blogging about the current game but it's worth mentioning that Village Rails is a re-iteration of its predecessor Village Green's 3x4 card grid mechanic which Village Rails definitely improves upon.
Where in Village Green a mistake meant leaving a gap in the grid, in Village Rails it means playing a card that scores less optimally. Mechanically the result may be identical but it makes Village Rails feels a little more forgiving, less frustrating and ultimately makes for a better game.

I found Village Rails to be an enjoyable game of its type that squeezes quite a lot into a small package, providing players with interesting options and meaningful decisions to make, albeit with a slightly flawed presentation.
​If you like route-building games with some drafting elements and it's train travel theme, then its one to try.
Finally; I would definitely recommend Village Rails over Village Green, there's nothing  wrong with Village Green but this is the superior game.

​

The cards in Star Trek Chrono-Trek are the standard quality you would expect from a modern game and unless treated badly stand the test of time.

The game wisely makes used of illustrations for artwork instead of stock photos - which generally look cheap in my opinion.
The artwork is colourful, definitely on the cartoony side and looks a bit quirky but the Star Trek personalities look more or less recognisable.  I quite like the style even though it seems a bit unusual for a Star Trek game.
Furthermore, this style also lends Star Trek Chrono-Trek a slightly humorous vibe and while it's not a comedy game per se, the game will involve 'jostling' between players with actions and reversals of those actions!
I also like the general aesthetic used on the cards which look reminiscent of the bridge console layouts from The Next Generation (Yes I'm geeking!). 

Most information conveyed on the cards is done through text, so iconography isn't an issue. There is some referencing done through letters/numbers but again, it's not really an issue.

How's it play?
Setup

• Timeline cards: The 36 timeline cards are placed with their starting sides in a 9x4 grid. Each card has a tag showing where it should go.
• Characters: Shuffle the deck of character cards and deal 1 face-down to each players who should keep their cards secret.
  All character cards each have objectives that must be met in order to win the game. Additionally, all cards also have 1-4 'pips' (Yes, like on an officer's collar - sorry, more geeking.) that denote how hard it is to complete that character's objectives. Generally, character cards with harder difficulties have more objectives.
  ​This allows players to selectively alter the difficulty of the game or have mixed difficulties for different players.
• Main deck: Finally, shuffle the main deck into a face-down deck and deal 3 to each player.
  Adjust hand: Now players must adjust the size their starting hand according to the difficulty of their character card - it must match the pips. So a player with a 1 pip card must discard down to 1 and so on, meaning a player with a 4 pip character would get to draw an extra starting card.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Star Trek Chrono-trek, each player will be trying to complete their own unique set of 3 objectives, this will involve manipulating the timeline cards and acquiring artifacts.
The game utilises a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their turn before play progresses to the player on their left.
During their turn, the active player has 1 action and can either draw an extra card or play 1 card from their hand as described below.

• Draw card: At the start of the active player's turn, they must draw a card, then choose 1 of the following 2 actions.
• Draw extra card: The active player may spend their action to draw an extra card.
  OR
• Play card: The active player may spend their action to play one of the 7 types of action card.
  • Actions: When playing one of these, simple perform the action described on the card and then discard it.
  • Artifacts: When played, these are placed face-up in the players personal playing area. As well as completing objectives, artifacts are needed to complete assignments. speaking of which....
  • Assignments: These cards can only be played when the controlling player has the 2 required artifacts in their possession. In this case the assignment is played and completed - and its reward is earned.
    Alternatively, if the active player wishes, they may instead discard the assignment card as their action and then draw 2 more cards.
  • Events: When the active player draws an event card from the deck, they must immediately resolves its action. After this, they draw another to replace it.
    Note: If an event card is acquired during setup, it's discarded and replaced.
  • Fractures: Fracture cards alter the timeline by being played on top of cards in the timeline (Provided the fracture card's conditions are met.). After resolving a fracture card, the active player also draws an additional card.
  • Inverters: These are cards that flip cards in the timeline. Flipping a card in the timeline will generally cause a ripple effect that will also affect other cards further down the timeline.
  • Power actions: Power! These are similar to action cards.... but more powerful!
    Although, this does mean that they have requirements to be met before they can be played.

Overall
Star Trek Chrono-Trek fits its theme very well.  Star Trek shows have always been full of time-travel shenanigans from single episodes to season-long story lines and a lot of that is reflected in the game.
There's also a fair amount of other references and nods that fans of the shows will appreciate.

​Star Trek Chrono-Trek presents players with asymmetrical goals which they should keep hidden, meaning players will have slightly different motives for their actions.
Thus players will be looking for opportunities to both change the timeline to what they need and to acquire their required artifact.
This will require them gaining cards to achieve this. Additionally, players will need to adapt to what cards they do have in their hand and circumstances as they arise. E.g., if an opponent has acquired the artifact the player needs, then they'll have to try and find a way to steal it off them or find a way to undo changes others have made to the timeline. There's a fair amount of player interaction going on in that regard and players will need to keep an eye on what their opponents are doing or changing and potentially respond accordingly.
Players should definitely expect some 'to-and-fro' from the game

Whilst the rules are not what I would consider complex, they are a touch fiddly with what amounts to 7 different types of action, some of which are cards/actions requiring players to discard cards to draw cards or resolve events, etc. It's not complex but it's not quite intuitive either.
None of this is a gamebreaker though and otherwise consider this to be a light-ish game which, while is reasonably accessible for non-gamers, I do feel that some of the mechanics/concepts presented here might be a little obscure for them.
Fans of the shows though, will be immediately familiar with the time-travel theme presented here and should appreciate the Star Trek references, making it a more enjoyable experience for them.

I also found it to be somewhat frustrating at times when I could see an artifact I needed either for an objective or assignment card in the hands of another player without a way of getting it (No wonder players are given the option to discard assignments for more cards.) and was left with having to draw another card as my action.

Otherwise Star Trek Chrono-Trek is an enjoyable, light experience that provides a fair amount of player interaction with a dollop of humour thrown in as well some random gameplay, although I suspect that is as intended!

8th June 2023

​We're in Aldershot on a Thursday night for some gaming goodness and today's first play is Mint Delivery.
It turns out that somewhere out there mints are big business. There's even somewhere called Mintopia City and it's the centre of mint production!
​Players take on the role of delivery drivers fulfilling orders to the surrounding minty named towns.

How's it play?
Setup

• Map: Take the 9 map cards and placed in their allotted places in a 3x3 grid. This layout is always the same in all games.
• Players: Give each player the truck card and truck meeple in their chosen colour. All players should place their truck on the Mintopia space on the central map card.
  Order cards: Shuffle the order cards into a face-down deck, then deal 3 face-down to each player.
  Then all players can decide to keep any number of those cards, provided their total combined VP value does exceed 6 VPs. For the time being, players should keep their chosen cards hidden.
  All discarded order cards are returned to their deck.
• Orders: Now shuffle the remaining order cards into a new face-down deck.
  ​Next; deal 7 order cards adjacent to each of the 4 towns.
  Then, from each of the 4 decks, reveal 2 cards.
  Players should now reveal the order cards they chose to keep. For the rest of the game, players should keep unfulfilled orders always face-up.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Mint Delivery, players will be looking to acquire order cards and then fulfil those orders by taking the required mints to the required location. Completed orders earn players their respective VP values.
Mint Delivery follows a traditional turn structure with the active player taking their turn and then play progressing to the player on their left.

• ​Active player: In their turn, the active player may perform up to 2 actions. This can be the same action twice or 2 different actions in any order they see fit.
  In addition, players may also take a free action.
  The actions are:
  • Fulfil order (Free Action.): If the player has met the order conditions of one of their order cards and is at the correct location. Then, as a free action, they can spend the required mints to fulfil that order! The completed order cards is then flipped face-down.
  • Load/unload mints: If the active player's truck is at the right location, they may load 2/4 mints on to their truck (Up to the truck's 4 mint limit.). They may also unload mints.
  • Move: For 1 action, the active player may move their truck to an adjacent space.
  • Take order: If the active player's truck is at 1 of the 4 towns and they have less than 3 unfulfilled order cards,  they can spend an action to acquire one of the town's 2 face-up order cards. This is done by performing the following steps.
    Add mint: A mint must be added to the order card not being taken.
    Take order card: The player takes the order card they chose - if this has a 1 or more mints on it, then they also acquire the mints, provided it does not go over their truck's storage limit.
    Replace order card: A new order card must be from that town's order deck and placed face-up in the relevant space to replace the one just taken.
  • Upgrade mint: If the active player's truck is at the relevant location, they can upgrade a mint as determined by that location.
    2 white mints can be discarded to gain a green one and 3 whites turned into a red.
• End of turn: Once the active player has completed their actions, play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Play progresses until the endgame is triggered by 1 of the following criteria is met:
​
If 2 towns have no face-up order cards remaining
Or.
All 4 towns have no cards left in their face-down decks (Regardless of whatever face-up cards remain).

Play then continues until all players have had equal turns. Players then calculate the VPs they've earned on their completed order cards.

Points are tallied, highest score wins - and is pronounced 'Employee Of The Month​!

Overall
Thematically, Mint Delivery is a collect-and-deliver game and the mint theme is arguably bit extraneous but on the other hand, it's a good a theme as any. The fact that the tokens being delivered look a bit like mints and the game comes wrapped up in a mint tin I think is fairly pleasing.

Mechanically, Mint Delivery is actually quite straightforward, perhaps a little too straightforward. The game's map layout never changes, the 4 towns will always be in the corners, Mintopia in the centre and the factories in the 4 cardinal points. It would have been nice to have some kind of layout randomiser but I imagine space inside that tin is at a premium!
Where the game does offer variety is in how order cards appear and since this is a game about fulfilling orders, that's pretty important.
Mint Delivery is essentially a race to deliver orders and players will need to mix planning the most optimal moves using the cards they currently possess with adapting to changing circumstances as they arise to exploit opportunities as they appear.
There's also randomisation in the form of road conditions which can change things up.
Finally, ability cards offer the opportunity for some asymmetrical play that potentially opens up more choices to players and meaningful choices are always a good thing.

There's not too much more to say really. Mint Delivery is a stripped down, bare bones collect-and-deliver game, if that's what you're looking for and you want it in clever little package, it's worth a try.
It's perhaps a little too long to be a simple filler game and not quite long or deep enough to be the main game of a gaming session but nontheless, I found Mint Delivery to be a fun, light  experience with a fairly quick play time and imagine it will play well with non-gamers.

4th June 2023

It's a Sunday and we're on Board Game Arena​ for some gaming goodness.

Being a tourist is great. You get to wander through a city's public transit network and travel the streets, see the sites, take the train and on this particular instance, do it in Tokyo.
All thanks to the transit planners and designers!

There's not much to say about the component quality for Next Station: Tokyo.
The pad of maps is exactly what you'd expect, a thick pad of probably about 100 leaves. Each individual leaf is quite thin and flimsy but since they're only ever used once before discarded, it's not an issue. Although, having said that, it would have been nice to have had laminated map sheets and dry-erase markers instead.
Speaking of laminated, the cards are plastic coated and feel nice and sturdy.
Finally, the pencils that come with the game are well, they're normal pencils only in 4 somewhat garish colours. They'll need sharpening once in a while but that's about it.

Next Station: Tokyo uses a sort of abstract stickman, heavy black-line art style to represent people and locations and along with the solid bright colour scheme employed, it gives the game a distinct and eye-catching presentation.
It's also a style that sort of matches the look of modern subway maps and thus fits game's subway theme.
Arguably, it's a cartoonish art direction which I guess won't appeal to everyone but I found it to be a clean and uncluttered style, furthermore I'm generally always a fan of using bright colours so it's a thumbs up from me.

There's just over a handful of icons here but they're easily understood as most of them are only referencing themselves. The last remaining icons will quickly be learned by players. I don't imagine this being a problem for anyone.

How's it play?
Setup

• Maps: Give a map sheet to each player.
• Pencils: Games of Next Station Tokyo always use all 4 pencils.
  Thus give each player a pencil - colour doesn't matter and if there are less than 4 players, put out the remaining pencils between the actual players as if there were 4 players.
• Station cards: Shuffle all the statin cards into a face-down deck.
• Controller: Determine a starting player for the controller role.

On to play
During Next Station: Tokyo, each player will be building 4 subway networks in the 4 colours corresponding to the pencils and the game is played 4 rounds. Players will be trying to make their networks as expansive and interconnected as possible.
This is done by flipping station cards and resolving result which will allow players to connect stations to each other by drawing lines between them.

Technically, the controller is responsible for flipping cards, players then resolve all their actions simultaneously.
Each round plays as follows.

• Flip card: The top card from the station card deck should revealed, it will show either a symbol that matches 1 of the 5 symbols on the map sheets or 1 of the 2 special actions symbols.
• Construct network: Players must now construct their subway network as per the revealed symbol and the following construct rules apply.
  • Expand network: A player may choose to expand their network. This is done by drawing a line from either end of their current network to a station with a symbol that matches a symbol on the revealed station card.
    Thus if a triangle symbol is revealed, a player may connect either end of their current network to a station with a matching symbol.
  • Restrictions: There are of course some restrictions when expanding a line.
    Start network: Each player must start their network from the coloured spot that matches their current pencil.
    Ends only: As stated above, a line can only expand from its ends not from the middle.
    Direction: Connections must be orthogonal or diagonal.
    1 line only: Only 1 line can be drawn between to stations.
    No crossovers: A line cannot cross over another previously drawn line or indeed the green line. Nor can it 'pass through' another station on its way to the 'chosen' target station.
    This means the only way to get past a already drawn line is to go a station, then with another action exit out of that station past the drawn line.
    No double-backs: A particular network cannot connect to a station it has already connected to.
  • Exceptions: There are of course some exceptions to the above restrictions.
    • Joker/Double Rail: If a card with these symbols is drawn, the following 2 exceptions apply. Either or both can be applied.
      Joker: The player may expand their network to a station with any symbol of the player's choice.
      Double Rail: The player may draw a connection alongside a line they have already drawn between 2 stations or even alongside the green line.
    • Railroad switch: If a card with this symbol is drawn, then first, another station card must be drawn and then the 2 are 'combined'.
      This allows the player to draw a connection to the revealed symbol from any station on their network, thus creating a branch and also a new 'end' that can be used.
• Next station card: Once all players have expanded their networks, a new station card is flipped and resolved.
• End of round: Once the 5th subway card is flipped, the end of round is triggered. The current card is resolved by all players, then a new begins.
  • ​Scoring: Each of the 4 networks on a player's map sheet are scored at the end of the round they were created. End of round scoring works in 2 ways.
    Length of line: A point is scored for each of the 13 districts the line goes through.
    Busiest district: The single district in the network scores 1 point per connection in that district.
    End of round score: The 2 numbers above are then multiplied together to get the end of round victory points (VPs).
• Next round: The following steps occur when a new round begins.
  New controller: The player to the left of the current controller becomes the new controller.
  Reshuffle station deck: Take all 11 station cards and shuffle them into a new face-down deck in preparation for the subsequent round.
  Pass pencil: All players pass their current pencil to the player on their left and receive a different coloured pencil which they will use to create a new different network on their map sheet.
  You will note that in a game with less than 4 players, a pencil will be passed to a 'empty' spot.
  New round: A new round commences with a station card being revealed from the reshuffled deck.

 
Endgame
Once the 4th round is concluded and all players will have created 4 networks on their map sheets, the game goes to scoring.
Next Station Tokyo provides players with various avenues to scoring points. which will be totalled to provide their final scores.

• End of round: Total up all VPs which were scored at the end of the 4 rounds.
• Tourist destinations: Certain districts that have been visited during the game will score VPs. Most of these districts score 5 VPs but the 4 smaller, outermost (and harder to reach) districts score 10 VPs each.
• Unconnected green loop stations: Each station on the green loop that is not connected a next will lose the player VPs.
• Interchanges: VPs are scored for stations which are interchanges, that is; stations which are connected to more than 1 of the networks. Including the green line, there can be up to 5 connections in an interchange.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
In a game of creating transit networks to draw in tourists, using a join-the-dots mechanic to well.... join-the-stations feels pretty appropriate thematically.

Gameplay wise, I feel Next Station Tokyo definitely sits at the lighter end of complexity. It's construction rules are perhaps a touch too fiddly to be intuitive but still, are easily learned. Having said that, I'm not sure how quickly 'non-gamers' would grasp the mechanics.
However, like all well produced game, the complexity comes from the decisions presented to players.

In that regard, if you're a fan of the roll/flip/randomiser-and-write genre, you'll be on familiar ground here.
Players will find themselves planning their moves and actions but having to react to whatever the randomiser delivers to them and adapt and exploit to whatever options are presented to them. This forces players to make tricky decisions that can be risky or 'imperfect', which in my opinion, is always a good thing.

Curiously, it might seem that fact that only 11 cards are used in each round can easily be memorised and is exploitable - 2 of each symbol, 2 joker/double rail symbols and 1 railway switch but there's an there's an interesting rule at play. Which is that when the 5th subway card is revealed the round is over. As a result 5-10 cards will be revealed each round and this means at least 1 card wont be used and potentially more than half wont be used. I'm sure this is deliberate to keep proceedings unpredictable.

As I said above, players of this style of game will be on familiar ground here: Where Next Station: Tokyo differentiates itself from its contemporaries is that players are creating 4 separate networks, which they'll want to expand as much as possible but without hindering their other networks but also interchanging with them.
It definitely a novel challenge.

If I was being harsh though, I would say that this unique mechanic might not be enough to make the game stand out in the crowd. Players of similar games might not find enough to make it worth playing Next Station: Tokyo.

However: If I was being generous, I would say that this a enjoyable addition to the genre that provides an interesting challenge. If you're a big fan of that genre, this might be worth considering and if you've never played a x-and-write game, this is definitely one to consider.

Tuesday 30th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Bandido - First Play!
Cascadia
Fluxx 

Sunday 28th Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers
Roll'n Bump
Railroad Ink 
Wingspan 
Forbidden Island 

Thursday 25th Aldershot
Dice Hospital
Race for the Galaxy 

Tuesday 23rd at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Machi Koro 2
Llamaland 

Sunday 21st Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers 
Can't Stop
Gizmos
Just One  
Azul 
Hanabi 

Thursday 18th Aldershot
Heckmeck 
Port Royal
Chariot Race

Tuesday 16th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Horrified: American Monsters

Sunday 14th Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers 
Roll'n Bump
Just One 
Wingspan
Tranquillity: The Ascent 

Tuesday 9th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Tumble Town - First Play!

Sunday 7th evening Board Game Arena
Railroad Ink 
Gizmos
Spots 

Sunday 7th The Sovereigns
Jump Drive
Llama Land 

Thursday 4th Aldershot
Deep Sea Adventure 
Akropolis 
Point Salad 
Village Green 
Sushi Roll

Tuesday 2nd at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Scout
Jump Drive
Long Shot The Dice Game - First Play!