Railroad Tiles (Collector’s Edition)

• Designers: Hjalmar Hach, Lorenzo Silva 
• Publisher: Horrible Guild
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30-45 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4nGq6a5
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

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!

To set up the game, the station board is placed on the table and the player pawns are randomly placed in the turn order area.  The Route tiles are shuffled in the bag and one tile per player is drawn out to serve as Starting Tiles; each of these must have a different track configuration.  They are chosen in reverse turn order.  The Placement tokens are shuffled and placed in a stack on top of the clock on the station board.  Finally, Objective tiles are chosen for the game – there are 7 possible Objectives, choose 3 to play in this game.  Each player gets one tile for each set.

The game has eight rounds – each following the simple format of Setup, Tile choice, Pawn placement and the deciding the start player for the next round.

Round Setup: Draw tiles from the bag to fill all the columns under the Station Board; each column has tiles equal to the number of square icons shown.  Flip the topmost Placement token and then put it beneath the clock, moving any previously placed tokens to the right.

Tile Selection:  Now, in player order (As determined by the left-to-right order of pawns on the Station board), players will choose any available column of tiles, placing their pawn at the top of the column and then taking all the tiles in that column.  These tiles are then placed one by one into their player area.  Tiles must be placed orthogonally adjacent to a previous tile, and they may be flipped or rotated as desired.  Additionally, like must be placed next to like – that is, the tile features must match at the edges.  Generally you have to place all the tiles from your column, though you are allowed to reject two tiles over the course of the entire game.   Additionally, if the Placement token for this round has a Flag on it, players must add one of their Objective tiles to their area this turn as well.

Pawn Placement: Check the Placement tokens on the Station Board; for each seen, players can place 1 matching pawn (car/train/meeple) on their tiles on a matching empty Pinpoint.  Each will score 1 point for placement plus one point for each other similar object connected to that Pinpoint via Rail/Roads – up to a maximum of 5 points per Pawn.  If you have Star Tokens, you can discard one to let you place the pawn of your choice in place of one designated by the Placement token.  Unused Star tokens are worth points at the end of the game.

Cleanup: Place a Star Token on the column not chosen in the current round.  The player pawns keep their left to right order and go back into the turn order area ; thus the player who took the most tiles in the current turn will go last in the next turn.  

Continue this for eight rounds. Players will have scored points based on their pawn placement during the game.  In addition:

• Cities – 5VP for each group of 3+ orthogonally adjacent town tiles
• Rectangle – 1VP per tile in your largest fully filled rectangle of tiles in your area
• Penalties –  Count up all the paths in your area which do not connect to other paths; the first 5 are free but then each other open path costs you a -1VP penalty
• Star Pawns – score 1VP per each unused Star Token
• Objectives – 5VP for each objective tile which you have met the scoring conditions

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of leftmost placement for tiles in the final round.

Once you are used to the base game, there are 9 possible expansions to add to the game.  In general, you can only play with one expansion at a time:

• Canal Expansion – your goal is to build Canals that are as long as possible (each Canal scores 1 Prestige point for each Canal tile it contains after the second tile, so a Canal with 5 tiles would be worth 3 points) and close as many of its open ends as possible (each is worth -2 points at the end of the game
• Countryside Expansion- Your goal is to create big Pastures with lots of Farms, but you want only 1 Animal of each type in the same Pasture or you will lose points. In contrast to all other expansions, the Animal pawns you get are tied to a specific column of tiles you get from the central board during the draft phase at the beginning of each round.
• Desert Expansion – create a Desert surrounding your regular tiles, placing Desert Attractions of the different types (Oasis, Pyramid, Sphynx, and Obelisk), connecting them to your regular routes through Desert Stations, and placing Camels to bring people seeing the attractions and gain a few extra points as well.
• Energy Expansion – Your goal is to create a power grid by building Wind Turbines and using Energy Cables to connect them to Town tiles and bring them energy. Wind Turbines have their own pin points, and can be placed by using any Placement token as a wild card, instead of placing the corresponding standard pawn, like gondolas in the Canals
• Forest Expansion – your goal is to build Forests all around your network, while keeping them separate from each other (a bit like Cities work in the core game; at the end of the game, you make 3 points for each group of at least 3 Forest tiles that are orthogonally adjacent).
• Lake Expansion – Your goal is to build Lakes and place Ferries in them to score points. Lakes also have another purpose: you can send a route into the lake side of a tile to create a Harbor (a bit like Canal End tokens work in the Canals Expansion), and all routes that are connected to the same Lake via Harbors are also connected to each other… basically, Lakes act as big Stations!
• Monuments Expansion – each player has an additional pawn, the Archaeologist, that can be moved around the landscape you are creating by using the routes you have placed by spending Action points. Your goal is to place sets of different kinds of Monuments (Arch, Temple, Tower) when you find archaeological sites.
• World Expansion – a special kind of expansion: it is the only one that can be mixed both with the core game and any other expansion (whereas you can only play with 1 thematic expansion at a time). It includes 2 kinds of components: additional Objective tiles and Special pawns.
• 5th Player Expansion (Collector’s Edition Exclusive)
• Hospital & Local Market Promo Tiles – 2 additional sets of Objective tiles!  Build the Hospital surrounded by Towns, and make sure the Local Market is well connected to your Highways!

 All of the above expansions are available separately, or they can be had in a bundle in the Collector’s Edition.  

My thoughts on the game

I have always been a big fan of tile laying / path connection games, so I have been eagerly anticipating this one.   Thus far, most of my games have been with just the base rules, and the game is an enjoyable optimization puzzle.   

Not only do you have to try to choose the best tiles for your area, you also have to manage the ramifications for turn order in the next round as well.  With all of the different possible ways to score, it’s never truly simple to find the best place for your tiles!   

Each game plays out a little differently as the tiles obviously come out in a random order, and your priority in choosing said tiles also varies.  Further, the different objective tile combinations in each game will change the relative strengths of certain tile features – so you’ll always be trying to find the best fit for your tile area.

In my limited forays into the expansions, each one that I have tried definitely brings a new dimension to the game – introducing a new rule or major strategy that you have to deal with.  Each one can be stored in its own cloth bag in my Collector’s Edition, so it’s easy to keep them organized and separated from each other.  My favorite expansion thus far is the Countryside expansion where you try to place unique animal types in the “pastures” that you are creating.

The game claims to be the “successor” to Railroad Ink, a widely popular roll and write from the same design team, but honestly, other than the theme, I feel like this is really a different game.  Don’t get me wrong, I adore both of them, but this game surely stands on its own.  To put it in terms of other great tile-laying games, it’s more in line with Kingdomino than Carcassonne as you make your own area of tiles rather than building a single communal layout.

The Collector’s Edition which I have does come in a humongous box, but then again, you’re getting the base game and 10 expansions!  I’m normally a gamer who likes to bag things and then throw them into the box, so I’ve not had any issues with storage.  Some of my gamer friends who might be a tad more OCD will be happy to know that there are a few user generated inserts available online if you want some more structure to your storage.  It did take a bit of time to punch the game – I’d recommend setting aside 45-60 minutes for that job…

If you want to try it yourself, you can also play it online at Tabletopia.  https://tabletopia.com/games/railroad-tiles

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Steph H, Justin B
• I like it.  Dale Y, Alan H
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4nGq6a5