ISSUE 459 -DECEMBER 2013 ISSN 0257-361X Volume 37 THE GAMES JOURNAL www.gamesjournal.at INTERNATIONAL EDITION: IN THIS ISSUE WE PRESENT 55 GAMES OUR REVIEW u TRAINS bine different categories for a new game, DOMINION MEETS RAILWAY GAME achieving quite different results from “not here - not there” to “ingenious”. So - what happens if you cross-breed a deck TRAINS building game with a railway game? The RAILS ARE ARRIVING result is called Trains and is a design of the Japanese game designer Hisashi Hayashi. The German language edition is published People love to categorize the world! So, ly most popular categories are deck build- by Pegasus Spiele. small wonder that board games, too, are ing games and railway games. put into category boxes. Two of the current- Now and then game designers try to com- The basic mechanism was taken from Do- Color codes, target groups, features, icons and GABIS are 2 ISSUE 459 / DECEMBER 2013 explained on page 5 and at the bottom of pages 32 and 33 www.gamesjournal.at TRAINS / 40 LINES FOR MEEPLES t OUR REVIEW minion (For an elaborate description of the Much more important in Trains are the Dominion mechanism please see other re- points that you can set up on the board. views.) Even the cards in Trains correspond Furthermore, the basic deck building mech- for the bigger part to their equivalents anism is, due to the heavily felt spamming in Dominion. There are Train cards corre- of your deck with cards that are completely sponding to the Money cards in Dominion, useless, considerably weakened. and therefore can be used to pay for other things and for which even the ratio of cost/ The variation in cards and thus the replay efficiency corresponds 1:1 to that of the value are, of course, considerably higher Dominion Core game. There are several in Dominion, with its by now innumerable randomizer cards with varying abilities and expansions. But this gives a lot of potential effects, only eight of those cards are used for Trains, as well as for new cards as for new in an individual game of Trains and provide boards. some variation, again nearly identical to Do- For me, the allure of a deck building game is minion. There are also victory point cards, essentially, even before an elegant mecha- even those are very similar to those in Do- nism, is in the options for deck building. And in that aspect Trains is, at least so far, Markus Wawra clearly weaker than Dominion, even when Trains turns Dominion into a railway game and, taken all considering the railway part of the game. in all, this artistic feat works quite well. But in the long run But that is my personal opinion and I am it doesn‘t really enormous me. The strategic choices are sure that Trains will have its fans. Its exis- rather limited and this reduces the replay value. In total a rather average game, but with lots of potential if followed tence, all in all, is justified. And so I would by very good expansions. place it somewhere in the middle between 40 Lines for Meeples “not here - not there” and “ingenious”. There Dagmar de Cassan, Editor-in-Chief are better deck building games and there are better railway games, but the mixture is minion, but providing a manifestly worse interesting and will gladly join a game when cost/efficiency ratio. Trains is put on the table. þ Markus Wawra Entirely new in Trains are those cards that take the railroad game into play. First and Which game shall we put on the table today, foremost I need to mention the game board which game will a play at all over the coming that is spread on the table. This board shows INFORMATION twelve months? a map featuring plains, rivers, mountains, PLAYERS: Especially at Christmas, when underneath towns, oceans and out-of-the-way loca- Designer: Hisashi Hayashi 2-4 our tree - I’m assuming that our readers are tions. The basic game comes with two such Artist: Ryo Nyamo AGE: famous for games among their family and boards, for Tokyo and Osaka. You can now Price: ca. 40 Euro 12+ friends - there is not much else but games. use Rail Laying cards to place railway tracks Publisher: Pegasus Spiele 2013 TIME: And what do we give to ourselves? New into those landscapes, an action costing a www.pegasus.de 60+ games! bit more or a bit less money, which must Maybe I exaggerate a bit, but all the same be paid for with the afore-mentioned Train we have an overflow of games in our limited cards. Each player builds his own railway EVALUATION and cluttered space. And unless a next-gen- network in this way. At the end of the game Deck building, railways eration member moves out, we must reduce players score victory points for connecting Users: With friends our games. Version: de towns and out-of-the-way locations. How- Rules: de en fr jp And this leaves the question, how? ever, towns must first be upgraded in order In-game text: yes Shall we give away games that have not been to yield victory points. For such upgrades Comments: played for a long time or never? there are the Station cards, which allow you Dominion variant * Simple, clear design * Or those games that are simply not fun? Standard mechanisms to set up a train station in any town of your Or those games, that my fellow players do not Compares to: choice. Dominion and its variants like, but which I like? Other editions: What do you think, do you think about this It must be mentioned here that you have Okazu /Japon Brand, Alderac, Filosofia at all? Do you leave it to chance? Or to some- to take a completely useless Waste card body else? both for playing Stations cards and for Play- More and more fantastic new games will not ing of Rail Laying cards or Buying Victory make this decision easier. We want to assist a Point Cards. The consequence is, that play- little bit with our reviews! ers’ decks are constantly and permanently Merry Christmas! bursting with garbage, in the truest sense Do you like our WIN? If yes, please become a of the word. subscriber! We have a PayPal account, so the payment of € 6,00 for an annual subscription All in all, Trains, despite all similarities, plays can be made easily and safely, see also rather differently compared to Dominion. http://www.gamesjournal.at. While you need to buy victory points in Do- Unser Games companion GAME BY GAME minion in the guise of cards, this turns out 2014 is available since SPIEL at Essen: to be a rather inefficient track in in Trains. My rating: http://www.gamescompanion.at WIN The Games Journal now also available as eBook! www.gamesjournal.at For all information on that check our website. ISSUE 459 / DECEMBER 2013 3 OUR REVIEW u WOOOLF!! depending on the number of players - first WHO IS THE SHEEP? or maximum as the third player, you are voicing a so called “early suspicion”. Such an early suspicion is rewarded with 2 in- WOOOLF!! stead of 1 victory point, but - should you be AND WHERE IS THE BIG BAD WOLF HIDING? wrong - cancels your right to voice an early suspicion in the next round of the game. If you voice a suspicion you turn the wheels Who is the wolf, where are the sheep, is card shows an additionally small circle that on your spinner to mark the numbers of there a sheep at all? Damn and blast, is there either shows the character of the card or a those players who you suspect to be the a dog or not? These questions and many question mark. If the circle depicts the card characters corresponding to the marks on more are asked all the time and you will ask character, for instance the hunter, you place your cards- characters. Should one cha- them yourself while playing a deduction your hunter marker in front of the player. All racter really be embodied by to players it is game of Wooolf (yes, the title is spelled with other players have now also received this sufficient to mark one of them. The wolf has three o), published by Capstone and in a information. If the circle shows a question only one goal, he needs to find a sheep; but German version by Smiling Monster Games. mark, however, you place a question mark as sheep are not always in play it can take tile in front of the player, and all others have Wooolf is fun, an incredible lot of fun, but learned a lot less than you - but this can be Gert Stöckl only in a congenial group of players, oh, and valuable too, as not every character has a Definitely one of the best deductions games, probably just by the way, a bit of deduction is required question mark in the circle. But there is an because it manages to get be entirely without werewolves or vampires, albeit there always being a big bad wolf! too, just playing along as in a simple dice exception for the Shepherd. If he should game is not in the cards, you must employ see the character in the little circle instead your brain to arrive at the right conclusions of a question mark, he - as the notorious on which character is played by who? old swindler that he is - must always place some time to be really sure.