Railroad Tiles
- Board's Eye View
- 17 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Railroad Ink was designed by Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva. It's a roll&write network-building game that first appeared in 2018 and was obviously a big hit for publishers Horrible Guild because it has since spawned numerous expansions. Railroad Tiles, also by Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva, shares its network-building theme with the roll&write original but there's no dice rolling and no writing in this game. Instead, the 1-4 players are drafting tiles and immediately placing them out to create their own network tableau.
In each of the game's eight rounds, there will be a market display of tiles beneath a 'station' board. The tiles are drawn randomly and arranged in columns, and the columns variously contain two, three or four tiles. Players choose a column by placing out their marker, with the column you choose also determining turn order in the next round. This aspect is superficially similar to Kingdomino (Blue Orange) but in that game and its sequels players had sight of the tiles that would be available in the next round. That's not the case in Railroad Tiles but, even tho' you don't know in advance what tiles will be available next turn in each column, it's still advantageous to have an early pick rather than just having choice from among other players' leftovers.
When you draft tiles you must place them in your tableau straightaway. Tiles must always be adjacent to at least one tile in your tableau and the edges of tiles need to line up: so an edge with track can only be adjacent to another tile with track to its edge, and similarly with roads: title of the game notwithstanding, you're building roads as well as a railway lines. Perhaps Horrible Guild should've titled this game Rail/Road Tiles :-)
Each round will reveal a marker showing a train, car or passenger. These allow you to take one of those pieces and lay it in a corresponding position in your tableau. These will score an incremental number of points the more you have within the same connected network. In addition, you'll score inter alia for your largest rectangle of tiles and for having three connected city tiles. Watch out tho' - you're allowed free a maximum of five unconnected roads or rails at the edges of your tableau: exceed that number and you'll rack up penalty points.
Players are each building their own tableaus so its essentially multi-player solitaire: the only interaction is competition for turn order and the choice of tiles to draft. You might think it's always going to be best to take the most tiles (the column with four tiles) but that isn't necessarily so. Aside from the fact that that column will put you in last place in turn order next round, other columns that give you fewer tiles may be a better fit in your tableau or may be better because they include places where you'll be able to position the train/car/passenger that will be available this round. In addition, every round has one column left unclaimed that carries over to the next round and that column is made more attractive by adding a star token that gives you a free choice of train, car or passenger to add to your tableau.
Railroad Tiles is a light family-friendly drafting game. Tho' deciding on the optimal tile placement can be a puzzler, the game plays quickly: most of our plays at Board's Eye View have come in at under 30 minutes. This makes for an engaging 'gateway game' for introducing non-gamers to drafting and tile-placement mechanics. And if you get hooked, there are as many as eight mini-expansions that introduce other elements to be included in your network. We haven't had a chance to sample these but we have experimented with a house ruled variant of our own, allowing players to retain up to three tiles in reserve for placement on a future turn but with the requirement that they must all be placed by the end of the game. We found this added another layer of tactics to the game - so you might want to give it a try when you play Railroad Tiles.
