Next Station: Tokyo - First Play!

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!

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What's in a game?

• Tokyo ​Map: The game comes with a pad of sheets, each of which depicts a identical network of subway stations represented by 1 of 4 different symbols and interconnected by dotted lines. There will also be 4 coloured stations (Blue, brown, purple & red. =) on the sheet, these correspond to the game's 4 different coloured pencils - more on this later!
  ​There are also solid coloured lines. The yellow coloured lines are used to delineate different 'areas' or districts on  the map. The are 13 districts on the map and 4 of those are smaller secondary districts found in each corner of the map. This is important for scoring.
  ​The solid green line represents a central orbital transit line.
  The bottom third of each sheet is given over to score tracking

Notice that there appears to be a Godzilla-like figure in the top-right corner of the sheet.

• Cards: Tokyo Nest Station uses a variety of cards.
  • Station cards: There are 11 of these and they are broken down into 2 types delineated by colour. Each cards will display either a symbol that matches 1 of the 4 types of station symbol on the map sheet or symbols for either Joker/Double Rail or Railroad Switch. More on these 2 types of card later.
    Street cards: As the name suggests, these 6 pink cards depict scenes on street level and I guess they represent tourist destinations.
    Subway cards: The remaining 5 green/yellow cards show various subway stations.

All 11 station cards.

• Special station cards: That's right these are special. What's so special about them? Well they are optional cards that can add extra complexity to the game.
  There's 2 types (Blue and orange.) and 1 of each is randomly drawn each round and combined to provide an extra scoring opportunity for that round.
• Common objectives: These are also optional cards. At the start of the game, 2 will be randomly drawn to provide an extra scoring objective to all players.
• Pencils: The game comes with 4 differently coloured pencils that match the the 4 coloured symbols on the map sheet. 

Blue man pencil?

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.

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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.

First (blue) network completed.

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.