Village Rails - First Play

8th June 2023

Gaming night in Aldershot continues with Village Rails in what is described as 'A game of locomotives and local motives'. Although most of those motives appear to be planning holiday trips through the English countryside and probably to the south coast in this follow-up to the game Village Green.

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What's in the game?

• Frames: Each player will have a frame which consists of 4 strips of cardboard that are placed together to form a sort of upside down 'L' shape. This will constitute the 'boundary' of each player's playing area and will determine where each player's train lines start. There are 7 train lines that start on the frame.
  Along all the frames are various symbols which come into play during the game.
  The 'inside' of a frame will have space to place 12 cards in a 3x4 grid while the 'outside' has 7 spaces to place trip and terminus cards.
  

A broken frame!

The frame produces a space to create a 3x4 grid of cards.

• Cards: The cards in Village Rails are smaller than the usually sized paying cards and the game makes use of 2 types of cards.
  • Railway cards: These cards are double-sided.
    ​Track side: The track side will display an illustration of some idyllic English landscape along with a pair of train lines. These tracks will typically be a crossing or a pair of bends. There are 5 types of landscape and a small icon  in the corner of each card will indicate it's type.
    Additionally, each track may also display one of various different icons (Called features.) which are used for scoring.
    Trip side: The flip side of a railway card will display a trip. This will have a illustration of a steam locomotive and the text for a scoring objective - along with its victory point (VP) value.

Track side and trip side.

• Terminus cards: Despite the ominous name, these cards will earn players money when they complete a train line.
  Each terminus card will have its own objective for earning money but will always earn a minimum of £3.

Terminus cards.

• Tokens: The games only tokens are card disc-shaped tokens used for money.

Money!

• Scoring trackers: The game comes with some relatively swish sturdy card dials to track VPs which is useful since scores will frequently go over 100.

The score tracker goes to 199!

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.

There are barely visible forest icons in the top right and bottom left of this card.

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

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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.