Raccoon Tycoon - First Play!

5th July 2022

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

​The world of Victorian anthropomorphic railroad magnates is a cutthroat one in this game of acquiring train lines and towns. Buy low and sell high to become the... Raccoon Tycoon!

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What's in a game?

• Game board: The game board background depicts a idyllic rural landscape with the beginnings of a burgeoning industrial age.
  The board is broadly speaking divided into 2 halves. The top half has 6 tracks for the game's 6 commodities while the bottom half features spaces and tracks for railroad cards, town cards and building tiles.
• Cards: Raccoon Tycoon has several types of cards:
  Price & Production cards: Each of this type card has 2 halves. The top half with a blue background is for price and pushes up the value of the variously depicted commodities while the bottom half with a red background displays various commodities that the player can produce/acquire.
  ​Railroad cards: These cards feature anthropomorphic artwork, cats, dogs, bears, foxed and of course raccoons.
  In the bottom-right corner is the card's initial price (Railroad cards are acquired via auctioning) while the centre-bottom shows a series of numbers. These are VPs related to set collecting, thus the more copies a player has of a certain set of railroad cards, the more VPs that set is worth.
  Town cards: These cards have smaller illustration that usually depicts some part of the countryside.
  At the bottom of each town card are 2 purchasing costs, 1 is a cost for a specific commodity while the other is for any commodities. The cost for buying a town card with any commodities is always greater that using the required specific commodity.
• Building tiles. These chunky square tiles depict various different types of businesses and industries. They come in 2 types (Basic and Advanced.) are double-sided and one side is the initial version of a building while the other shows the upgraded, improved version.
  In the bottom-right corner on both sides is the cost, initially to buy the tile, then to flip the tile to the upgraded side. Each tile has a special ability of some sort and the upgraded version is always a improved version of the initial building. Bonuses might include gaining extra commodities or selling more of them, discounts to certain costs etc.
  Additionally, some tiles are marked with a 'B' or a 'P' and basically only one of each can be used in a turn.
• Commodity tokens: Raccoon Tycoons uses 6 types of commodity and each has it's own token and colour.
  Coal: These black tokens are shaped in a minecart filled with coal.
  Iron: These are grey anvil shaped tokens.
  Luxury goods: These tokens are green bottles, filled with wine I guess? Wine is certainly a luxury good!
  Manufactured goods: Red cubes are used to represent manufactured goods.
  Wheat: Yellow tokens shaped as bundles of wheat.
  Wood: Brown tokens depicting piles of logs.
• Money: Paper money! Whooo! I like it!
• First player meeple: I don't usually bother to mention any first player tokens when blogging (Because they're just first player tokens.) but this one is a unnecessarily big token. Basically a gimmick and something I wholeheartedly approve of!

Raccoon Tycoon has excellent production values.
Wooden tokens are used for commodities and first player token which is a good move, they always have a quality to them and also look cool.
The cards (And paper money) have a sturdy feel to them while the tiles are satisfyingly thick.

The game's art direction is also equally high.
Anthropomorphic art is used throughout the game and I've found that it's a divisive style which most people do or don't like. Regardless of your view on this, it's undeniable that the quality of the art is high.
The standouts are the railroad cards which use a oil painting style to display whimsical characterful animals in Victorian clothes.
Curiously, the building tiles use a completely different style, instead displaying line illustrated buildings and subjects with mostly flat and barely shaded colours. It's a striking contrast that should theoretically ​be jarring but actually fits quite well.

Icons used to represent commodities on cards are easily understood. Most other game information is relayed via text which is usually very clear.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Board: The number of cards and tiles used on the board is dependant on player count.​
  • Railroad cards: Shuffle these into a face-down deck on its allotted space on the board and deal 2 face-up cards on to their spots.
  • Town cards: These cards are arranged into a face-down deck by VP value with the lowest value at the top and highest at the bottom. Thus the lower value cards appear earlier in the game.
    Place the deck on it's spot and deal 1 card face-up.
  • Building tiles: Shuffle the basic tiles and put out the allotted amount into the relevant track and discard any remaining basic tiles. Next; shuffle the advanced tiles into a stack.
  • Commodities: Put out the commodity tokens and use 1 each on their pertinent tracker to display their starting value.
• Price & production cards: Shuffle the cards into a face-down deck and deal 3 face-down to each player.
• Cash: Give each player $10 starting funds.
• First player: Determine the starting player. Following on from this each player claims starting commodities in turn order. The first player takes any 1 commodity of their choice, 2nd player taking any 2, etc, all the way up to the 5th player taking 5 in a 5-player game.

On to play
Players are trying to earn VPs in Raccoon Tycoon, this can be done by collecting sets of railroad cards, acquiring town cards to pair with railroad cards and gaining building tiles which are not only worth VPs but can provide avenues to scoring more VPs.
All of this requires money and commodities, players will need to manipulate the commodities market to maximise the profit gained from selling their own commodities while trying limit the profit of other players.

Racoon Tycoon follows a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their action before play moves on to the player on their left.

• Actions: During their turn, the active player may perform 1 of the 5 following actions.
  • Building tile: The active player may purchase one of the building tiles by paying its cost, which is then placed into their playing area.
    A new building tile is drawn to replace it.
    Note: This action is also used to upgrade a building tile by paying its upgrade cost on the other side and flipping the tile.
  • Price & Production card: The active player may play 1 of these cards from their hand.
    Production: This allows them to acquire exactly 3 commodities from the supply, the icons in the production half of the card indicate which commodities the player can choose from and how much of it they can take.
    Note: Players have a limit of 10 commodities that they can own.
    Price: The value of the indicated commodities rise on their relevant trackers by 1 step.
  • Railroad card auction: The active player may begin an auction on either of the 2 available railroad cards. Their opening bid must be at least equal to the value shown on the relevant card. Others players may then bid or pass on the auction. Once everyone bar 1 player has passed, they win the card. A new railroad is drawn to replace it on the track
    Note: If the active player did not win the card, they can perform another action, this may include another auction.
    Thus the active player's action is not squandered if they did not win the auction.
  • Sell a commodity: The active player may sell exactly 1 type of commodity, however, they can sell any amount of tokens of that type. They earn the listed value on that commodity's tracker per token sold.
    Price crash: Once the commodity has been sold, the value of that commodity drops a number of steps equal to the tokens sold!
  • Town: The active player may purchase a town card, each one has 2 listed costs and the player can choose which one to pay - either the specific commodity cost or a more costly mix of any commodities.
    A new town card is drawn to replace it.
• Next player: Once the current player has resolved their action, play moves to the person on their left.

Endgame
Play continues until one of the following 2 criteria is met.

• The last railroad card is auctioned.
• The last town card is bought.

If either instance, the current round is completed and the game goes to scoring.
VPs come from a variety of sources.

Sets of railroad cards.
Town cards paired with railroad cards.
Building tiles earn 1 VP each.
Bonuses from building cards may also provide additional VPS.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
Even without the anthropomorphic artwork, Raccoon Tycoon would be something or a quirky game.
It packs quite a lot of mechanical systems into a single game albeit to a fairly simple level.
A little bit of stock market manipulation, a touch of set collecting, a dash of auctioning and a sprinkling of engine building. It could be a recipe for disaster but in the case of Raccoon Tycoon; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
A large part of this I feel is due to the building tiles. Their unique bonuses both provide some asymmetrical gameplay elements and can also give players a bit of strategic direction.
Raccoon Tycoon is a bit of a balancing act between acquiring cash for railroad cards/building tiles and commodities for town cards. It's hard to work towards both at the same time. Adaptation is important here, as is planning ahead. Players could look to finding ways to raise commodity values to increase profit when selling them later

This brings me to commodity manipulation. There isn't too much interaction between players other than auctioning and commodity manipulation, 
Watching what opponents are doing can prove useful and is something of a higher level of play. I.e., if 2 players are accumulating the same commodity, there's a possibility that one of them will sell it, causing that market to crash. Beating a opponent to the punch so to speak, can cost them lots of cash!

Raccoon Tycoon is fairly rules light and I think seasoned gamers won't have any problems grasping all the systems at work here. For less experienced gamers, the curve will be steeper, I don't feel it's a gamebreaker but I imagine it could be off putting.

While there's enough gameplay to give players thoughtful and meaningful decisions to make and a fun experience, I also found the game to be a little unengaging and uncompelling, I never felt like I was building railroads or towns and despite the unique art style, it didn't feel like it stood out from the crowd.
here's nothing wrong with Raccoon Tycoon but it wouldn't be my first pick for a game, although I'd have no problem playing it if someone else wanted to.