NEWS: Railroad Tiles

Some things in this life go together really, really well. It can be hard to explain the why of it, but it can also be undeniable. Strawberries and tennis at a certain location (topical, eh?). Cats and almost anything (honestly, try it: give a cat a pizza, or a banana, or aim a laser pointer at a wall, or dress it up like a ninja, or give it a toilet roll tube to fit its head in, or I’m losing the plot here). Cheese and my mouth. Or – and here’s a classic – railways and board games.

Who here doesn’t enjoy something about trains (apart from the ticket prices, obviously). Perhaps it’s the journey, wherein you get to soak up the lush countryside rolling past your vast window. Perhaps it’s the trains themselves, the sound of the wheels chugging along the track as you sink into your seat and leave your troubles behind. Or the stations that can evoke certain wizardy stories.Or the layout of the tracks that, from a bird’s eye view, could look like a game. Well…

Railroad Tiles, a sequel to the roll-and-write series Railroad Ink, is a quick-playing tile placement game in which you pick tiles and place routes to build an interconnected community.

The game is played over eight rounds. You start each round by drafting your tiles from the sets available in the common pool, then you place your routes in front of you, trying to make as many connections as possible; be careful not to lock yourself in with choices that are too constraining. Each round, you can also place cars, trains, or travelers to populate the tiny little landscape you're creating...as long as you have free space on your tiles. The available actions change from round to round, so you need to prepare in advance!

The more pieces of the same kind each new placement connects to, the more points you earn. You can also score bonus points at game's end for placing tiles in a large rectangle without gaps and for creating sets of three adjacent city tiles.

Railroad Ink is fast becoming a legend amongst travel games, so it should be fun to see how it ‘transports’ (sorry) itself thematically from its roll-and-write origins into a new format from publishers Horrible Guild. It should be in safe hands as original designers Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva return, along with artist Marta Tranquilli with her light watercolour-esque touch. Where once this was a roll-and-write with markers and boards, this new iteration has a Carcassone flavour with plenty of tile flipping fun. It has to be said that the components are delightful. A bright and breezy art style adorns the tiles, depicting cute villages I’d love to visit in real life and roads and railways that you’ll want to trace to their destinations. The little wooden cars, trains and travellers that make up your playing pieces are super appealing.