Designer: Jacob Fryxelius

Terraforming Mars has been hailed as one of the biggest success of 2016, in fact, it was named Gamersdungeon.net game of the year for 2016 as well.  With all the hype and perfect 10 reviews from everyone and their mother, it stands to reason the game has a lot to live up to.

Approaching this game objectively was very difficult for me, having already claimed it as Game of the Year, you almost assume that its going to get a perfect score, so I will remind my readers that around here we do things by the book.  I chose Terraforming Mars as game of the year because that judgement is based solely on my personal opinion.  I apply zero objectivity, I simply find a game I think sets a new standard of design, one that rises above the rest in my mind and that’s the one that gets the accolades. When it comes to my review processes things get a lot more niddy-griddy and focused.

Ok without further delay here is your gamersdungeon review of Terraforming Mars!

Overview

Final Score:  (3.65 out of 5 Stars)

Terraforming Mars as the title suggests all about turning the red planet green.  Each player represents a future mega corporation tasked with making our closes neighboring planet habitable.   This is done largely through the playing of cards, resource management and tile placement on a map of mars.

The game features core mechanics like card drafting, representing the researching of technology, managing a variety of resources including the all important mighty dollar and putting elements into play both cards and tiles that adjust the planets temperature, oxygen levels and fill the planet with oceans, cities and greenery as well as populating it with all manner of life in later stages.

While this may appear to be a mutual venture, it is anything but, in fact, Terraforming Mars is very much a competition to see which corporation can make the greatest contribution to making the planet habitable and the competition is filled with nasty plays and take that moments.

Terraforming Mars is definitively stylized and designed as a Euro game, but it is far more interactive and perhaps one might even say cut throat then your typical benign Euro.  This combined with a unique theme certainly makes Terraforming Mars stand out of your typical Euro fare.

Components

Score: 
Tilt: 

Pros:  Good Quality Components, Great Board Center Piece.

Cons: Stock art on cards is very poor.  Flimsy player boards.

The component quality of Terraforming Mars is a real mixed bag and unfortunately while the good is great, the bad is awful.  On the one hand you have this beautifully artistic representation of the planet in the center stage, with a quality board and high quality tiles to go with it.  You’ll populate that board with high grade and very thematically colored cubes as well as put into play high quality cards.  In general the components of the game are sturdy and made to last and while as is often the case there are a few weak links like the flimsy player mats, all and all there is very little to complain about here.

Still there are some oddities that really distract from the general quality of the components and artistic presentation.  For one, the art on the cards themselves ranges from beautifully illustrated works of art, to stock photo’s of really random shit like a god damn white pudil that are outright ugly.  Its a very strange contrast, distracting to a point and while much of the art is fantastic, a great deal of it can only be described as not art at all, but random photo’s downloaded from facebook of peoples pets or random people standing around.  Its a shame, its clear the publisher simply didn’t have the money to maintain the level of art quality throughout the game and really does take away from the games general artistic presentation.

Its sadder still because the theme is so interesting and unique, yet so much is lost as a result of these very poorly chosen stock photos.  The component quality of Euro games usually takes a back seat to gameplay and longevity in my humble opinion, but in this particular case, because the theme itself is such a big selling point of the game, the card art suddenly becomes very important, in particular in the art style which detracts from the game.

You get used to it after a play or two and I can’t say I’m disappointed with the components here, but it certainly wasn’t perfect.  I may be judging it harshly, but of all the things I hate in games, stock art is among the most offensive.  Just never, ever do this.  Not unless the art has some sort of link to a TV show or movie and even then its usually not good.

Theme

Score: 
Tilt: 

Pros: An amazingly thematic game with a high level of connection to mechanics.  Its just pitch perfect.

Cons: Again Stock Photos, they really drain a lot of energy out of the theme.

The theme is really the biggest selling point of this game, which is very unusual for a Euro game.  The concept of Terraforming the red planet not only comes at a perfect time when such topics are being seriously discussed at NASA, but also because its so interesting to explore the technologies that apply to terraforming a planet.  Simply put, its just a really fun concept and much of the reason that Terraforming Mars was voted Gamersdungeon.net game of the year for 2016 was the theme.

The fantastic aspect of the game is that the theme and mechanics are so closely connected, the core gameplay just drips with thematic presence, it may in fact be one of the most thematic Euro games I have ever played.  As you put out cards their is logic to their existence, for example you can’t start putting out animals until the temperature and oxygen levels are high enough, or you might not be able to leverage early technologies late in the game when the planet has already become too warm.  There are also all sorts of big epic plays like crashing moons into the planet to create oceans, or lobbing nuclear arsenals to raise the heat levels.  You just have a sense of growth and progress on the planet over time and you really see it develop into a habitable world.

The developer has done an amazing job with a well chosen theme and above anything else about the game, the theme is really what stands out.

Its true that many of the arts, because they use stock photos kind of detracts a bit from the game, but this is more a minor annoyance than a real problem for the theme of the game.  I expect, sometime in the future we will get a much cleaner version of this game, its very obvious it was simply underfunded, which is a shame.  This is definitely a good candidate for a future kick-starter campaign or a deluxe version.

Gameplay

Score: 
Tilt: 

Pros: A wide range of wonderfully connected mechanics that work on many levels with rich and dynamic strategies to explore.

Cons: A bit long, in particular at higher player counts. Might be too aggressive for some.

While the theme lives and breathes almost in its own space, much of its successful presentation and feel comes from a really wonderful combination of mechanics.

The asymmetrical corporation for starters give you a feeling of ownership and us versus them, each with unique powers that create distinct opportunities for your corporation denied to everyone else.  This creates a healthy dynamic start, while simultaneously setting the player up for a sort of position in the project at large.

Next up are the cards themselves.  I love the fact that you draft the cards and then decide which ones you want to pay for and keep.  This creates an opportunity to deny your opponents the cards they might want to take, without getting stuck with a card you don’t need (often the case in drafting mechanics).  It also creates a moment of contemplation where you plan your move and choose cards to fit your strategy, while simultaneously considering your resources and the timing of each card.  More importantly the cards themselves are great thematic representation of development and growth of the planet.  Each card is important and has a place in someones strategy and as such, there is little waste here.  Its all very dynamic and well thought out, its very clear this mechanic was heavily tested.

Finally you have the board itself and again, the mechanics and theme merge to create a perfect union as you compete with other corporation to be the first in a wide range of technology and development races.  Your pushing for every advantage, creating cities, oceans, working the temperature and oxygen levels and trying to command nature to your benefit.

There is a lot of take that in this game and things can get pretty nasty with a wide range of direct assaults, as well as positional elements on the map and the various competition races for milestone awards.  Its a pretty hostile environment given the kind of benign theme and it may be a bit of a turn of players who don’t like that sort of targeted attack mechanic.  For me personally this is a vital element that is absolutely needed as otherwise it would be a very solitary game with extremely limited interaction.  The ability to strike out at point leaders works as a natural catch up mechanic and while of course people can be mean and attack the guy that falls behind, this typically works to their detriment as its the point leaders you need to go after.  There is a thought out balance there and it’s important to recognize that it works to the benefit of the game.

Other game play elements include your tableau where you collect cards that adjust your resource production and create new actions you can take.  The flow of the game is such that in the early turns you might only be able to take one or two actions per generation (round) but by late game you could be taking 8 to 12 actions in a generation.  More importantly the actions become more and more interactive in the course of the game, creating an almost battle like system where one player might be creating microbes to score points, while another introduces microbe eating animals that eat them.  Then later someone might introduce a predator that eats animals and so the progress of life on the planet starts to take on a life of its own.  It of course does wonders for the theme of the game, but mechanically it creates competition and interaction between players.

The end game scoring is also a bit tricky because while points = money during the course of the game, usually raising your Terraforming Rating (a kind of point/money resources) requires some sort of set back or cost to you.  Its often more beneficial to put out blue cards that create new actions for you, or play cards that raise your resources, but these usually don’t do much for your TR which is where the real race is.  There are always trade offs, managing these decisions is really where all of the strategy and tactics of the game live, doing it well is the only way to achieve victory.

Gameplay is extremely rewarding in Terraforming Mars, you have a sense of personal growth of your tableau, you have the sense of progress on the planet as it becomes more and more habitable and there are constant realignments of strategies and opportunities that come up as you gain new research cards.   The designers have really tapped into the essence of great game-play here, when it comes to design, this game is not over-hyped, it really is a wonderful melting pot with a very streamlined and natural flow.

One drawback of the game is down time.  I have played it two, three and four player at this point and I have to say that the higher the point count the more down time and considerably longer the game draws out.  Really it misses the sweet spot by quite a bit, its just a bit too long even in a 3 player game it step over the comfort zone.  By the very late game you just kind of wish it had wrapped up 20 minutes ago.  I think with experienced players it will become more manageable but I don’t think I would want to play this with more than 4 players.

Replay-ability and Longevity

Score: 
Tilt: 

Pros: Plenty of dynamics and asymmetrical play creates great replay-ability.

Cons: A bit heavy, a bit too long for back to back plays.

There is plenty of dynamics in the game thanks to the card play and asymmetrical corporation to give the game some longevity.   It is however a fairly heavy and fairly long game so its not something your going to pull out all the time.  After playing it three times in the course of a couple of weeks I felt very much that I needed a break from it.  I think its very re-playable so I don’t think that’s an issue, but it certainly has that weighty feel that will have you considering whether or not you want to get involved with a game that overstays its welcome my a smidget or two.

I think the biggest boon for this game is that the theme is so refreshing, so if you stay away you start to remember how cool planet building is and are drawn back to it.  As such I think this one will remain in my collection for quite a while, it has that instant classic feel to it.

Conclusion

Terraforming Mars in my eyes is two things.  First, its a design achievement.  I tip my hat to the designer for creating something truly unique and clever.  This is a smooth game that represents the theme mechanically so well, in particular for a Euro game which usually don’t make particularly strong connections to theme.

Secondly is of course the theme.  I absolutely adore this concept, its such an easy sell too.  The designer has done a really great job of capitalizing on the theme of Terraforming a planet, for science-fiction nerds like me this is an absolute must have in your collection.

There are a few blunders like the stock photos and a perhaps the game is just a tad bit too long with a little too much down time, but their are logical explanation for both and both can be either overlooked or over come.  Stock photos, well, you’ll just have to get used to that.  As for the downtime and pace of the game, I think with experienced players you can really shave off quite bit of the playing time.

All and all this is a great game that belongs in your collection if your a Euro game fan, a science-fiction fan and in particular if you love thematic games and the concept of Terraforming a planet interests you.  I think if you don’t like take that games, you might want to try before you buy here.  It might be a bit too much for some gamers to handle, though I would argue its definitely an important inclusion for the game.

Designers: Wei-Hwa Huang, Thomas Lehmann

When it comes to a list of my favorite games to play, Race For The Galaxy is one that falls into the category of games that I like to call “love to play them, hate to teach them”.  That is to say, I think its a fantastic game, I will happily pull it out and play it but only with people who already know how to play.  Trying to teach Race for the Galaxy is a bloody nightmare to the point that I almost never do it.

Along comes Roll For The Galaxy, a dice based version of the same game, in the same style by the same designer.  The concept and goal is the same, build up your space empire by colonizing planets, discover technologies and of course doing it faster and better than the other guys.  Like Race for the Galaxy, Roll For The Galaxy is a race to the finish line but instead of cards, it uses a combination of tiles and dice.

Overview

Final Score:  (3.9 out of 5 Stars)

Roll For The Galaxy is a game of resource management and while its driven by dice, unlike most dice based games there is not that much luck involved.  Its really a game of manipulating your dice (resources) to create the most optimal engine that scores the most points.

Now the fun part about both Race for the Galaxy and now Roll For The Galaxy is that you have limited control over which phases will be played during a round and its in this roll selection mechanic much of the games strategy takes place.  You have to try to guess what your opponents will do, guess right and you can leverage their chosen actions as well as your own.  This is how you really get the edge in Roll For The Galaxy and as such its both a game of resource management and reading minds.

Components

Score: 
Tilt: 

Pros:  Streamlined, clear and easy to understand iconography supported by explained text on everything makes learning the game easy, high quality tiles and dice.

Cons:  Player mats are a bit flimsy, the insert is too small to fit all components so you have to pull it out to fit everything.

Rio Grande Games has a mixed reputation when it comes to component quality but with b Roll For The Galaxy they really put in the effort here.  The quality of the tiles is the absolute best it can be, the dice quality is also above grade and while some of the player mats are a bit flimsy there are some nice organizational touches here that make every component very handy for streamlining gameplay.

You have shields to hide your dice area, cups for collecting and rolling dice and there is fantastic organization of information on everything.  Really most of the components act as player aides so while the game has a lot of iconography like Race for the Galaxy did, its less confusing because the rules of each icon are always spelled out on the tile or player mat.  This makes the game very easy to reference and easier to pick up.

My biggest complaint about Race for the Galaxy is the difficulty in teaching it and this is largely due to the fact that the game has a ton of Iconography and its not explained anywhere in the player components, its all stored in the rule-book or index card requiring constant reference.  In Roll For The Galaxy they have solved this problem and its a huge blessing, deserving of all my praise.

Roll for the Galaxy is not a complex game, but there are a lot of special powers on the tiles, unique actions and a variety of special rules.  Thanks to the layout of the games components however, it all becomes second nature after a couple of rounds of play.

While there was quite a bit of art pulled from Race of the Galaxy, the majority of it is new and this was also a great decision.  The game feels fresh and the art work is colorful and themed just right even if you already own and have played Race For The Galaxy.

All and all the component quality here is really fantastic, I see little to complain about other then the player mats which are a bit flimsy and will definitely wear and tear over time.  The insert was also really bad, it doesn’t leave enough room in the box to fit everything so I had to throw it out.  Not really a big deal, but you have to wonder what they where thinking.

Theme

Score: 
Tilt: 

Pros: A sense of “race” remains in the game, art work does a lot to promote the theme.

Cons: Very abstracted and disconnected in most places.

Rio Grande Games generally makes Euro style games and Roll For The Galaxy, despite being a dice based game, is very much a Euro game.  Despite its roots, Roll For the Galaxy has more theme then most Euros.  Your building a space empire, playing out improvements, technologies, installing governments and colonizing planets.  All the science-fiction bells and whistles are here supported by great art that heightens the perception.

That said the game is not really particularly thematic, its all very abstracted, though in a dice game this is a given.  Its clear that everything that could be done to make this game thematic was, but it still does not result in an overwhelming sense of time and place.  It works well as a science-fiction theme and being based on Race for the Galaxy it retains that “space race” feel, but the theme here is pretty interchangeable, it could have just as well been themed to be medevil Mediterranean trading or well pretty much anything with trading and exploration.

I don’t think this really has much impact on the game though, you don’t really sit down to it expecting a thematic experience.  Its a fairly short, strategic dice game with roll selection and resource management.  The mind games of trying to guess your opponent strategy and intended action each turn is a lot of fun, but I’m not sure how that ties into the theme at all.

Needless to say the theme is sufficient, but isn’t going to overwhelm the senses and that’s just fine.

Gameplay

Score: 
Tilt: 

Pros: Great core mechanics, streamlined and fun.  The game pace and timing is just right in the sweet spot.

Cons: Very little player interaction.

I consider gameplay to be of utmost importance in a game like this as it involves dice and that is very easy to fuck up.  In fact, I would say the overwhelming majority of dice games are huge disappointments to me so when I find a good one like Roll For The Galaxy its cause to celebrate.

Roll For The Galaxy functions on several levels, its actually far deeper than any dice game I have played before to the point where I’m not sure it fully qualifies as a dice game in the sames sense that Voyage of Marco Polo or Kingsburg may arguably might be considered to be in a category other than dice game.

On the surface its a game of resource management.  You roll dice in your cup which represents your available resources or work force.  The icons on the dice determine what options are available to you although there are countless ways to manipulate the results, in particular once you get a few developments into play.  Your also managing your money to bring already used workers back into your cup for your next turn.  There is a kind of engine here you have to coordinate to ensure you always have some resources to work with and much of the strategy of the game revolves around this cycle.

On the second level you have your action for the round.  Each round you will select one of the five possible actions to take, however each player does the same thing.  Only the actions selected by the player will be triggered, and since you assign dice to actions at the start of each turn, guessing correctly what actions your opponents will take will allow you to take both your action and the actions of your opponents.  This is a kind of mini game of trying to deduce what your opponents will do, its both a big part of the strategy and fun of the game.  Guessing correctly on a regular basis means you will gain a big advantage over time, as will your opponents.  Which again flips things where you don’t want to be obvious with your actions to prevent your opponents from guessing correctly.  Its really a kind of fun mind game, it can even create a bit of Analysis Paralysis.  I really love this aspect of the game.

Finally their is the third layer where you decide what planets to colonize and what developments to build.  Here you have another engine where you explore tiles by pulling them out of a bag when taking the explore action, then choose which tiles to develop.  This is where you will build your long term strategy, a critical component to being successful in the game as the tiles both give you advantages like more dice for your cup, ways to manipulate dice or just outright score points.  The tiles themselves are also worth points and generally the more resources it takes to put a tile into play the more its worth, but of course the longer it takes to get into play.  Its a fine balance of tough decisions requiring you to have a flexible and well thought out strategy.  It is also the trigger for the end game, once any player has 12 tiles out, at the end of the round the game ends.  So there is strategy to how fast you develop, do you go for big hard to put out tiles to score big points, or do you rush to the finish line with lots of smaller tiles.

All of these elements come together to create a very thinky, very engaging game that far exceeds the expectations you might have of a simple dice game.  Much like Race for the Galaxy there is not a tremendous amount of interaction between players, its effectively a space race to see who can do it faster and better, but the game is sufficiently short that this does not become a problem.  You’re really focused on your own stuff, but because of the role selection mechanic your always keeping a close eye on what your opponents are doing in anticipation of having to guess what actions they will take.  It works really well to keep players interested in each others progress despite not really having much you can do to affect it negatively.

I absolutely adored the gameplay in this game, it has the exact same concept/premise of Race For the Galaxy, with the same feeling, but without the overly complex Iconography to slow the game down.  Its very easy to teach and learn and its very short even with a full complement of players.  Its a really great warm up game, yet it has sufficient depth to keep veteran players engaged and interested.

Replay-ability and Longevity

Score: 
Tilt: 

Pros: Scales well, dynamic starts and plenty of randomization to create new experiences each time you play.

Cons: Nothing to complain about

Its really hard to measure the longevity of a game like this, but I think the fact that its a fairly short game (typically under an hour) its replay-ability ratio is very high.  I can see this acting as a warm up game for a lot of game sessions in particular because it scales so well with any player count.

The randomness of tile draws and dice rolling ensure that you are never going to play the same game twice, in fact, I would say even your strategy is very dynamic.  You are going to base a lot of your strategy on what tiles you start with and what tiles you draw, so your not going to walk into this game with a “this is how you win this game” pre-planned strategy.  Every game is different, requiring a different approach,  which does wonders for replay-ability.

Very little to complain about here, its easy to teach and learn, so you really can pull it out at any game session without fear.  It has a great dynamic start ensuring your going to be seeing the game through new eyes each time you play.  Just a good solid mechanic with plenty to explore.

Conclusion

Roll For The Galaxy has turned out to be one of the most solid titles to come out of Rio Grande for quite a while in my eyes.  It definitely surpasses its predecessor Race For The Galaxy and despite being a dice game, its a very strategic game well in the control of the player.  Lady luck plays her part but not nearly to the extent one might imagine in a dice game.

This is a multifaceted game that works on a fairly wide range of depth, yet manages to be easy to understand throughout.  It scales really well, it has a short play time that really hits the sweet spot for warm up games and there is plenty of exploration for repeated plays.

Definitely a highly recommended title for Race For The Galaxy fans and fans of dice games, but really this game is far more than the sum of its part.  This is a thinky, strategic game, worthy of the shelf space of any gamer out there.

Designers: Helmut Ohley & Leonhard “Lonny” Orgler

Final Score:  (1.6 out 5 Stars)

When it comes to worker placement games there are lots and lots of options and lots of variations on the mechanic , proven by the countless designs that have flooded the board game market in the last few years. Worker placement games and games with worker placement mechanics have become practically a staple go too mechanic in design today, in fact there are so many that I will be doing a top 10 worker placement game list in the near future.

Russian Railroads definitely caught my interest very early on but I was very wary of the reviews of this game because while it scored high with most reviewers, the common underlining comment was that the game had virtually nothing to do with railroads thematically. Being a big theme guy, this really was a bit of a turn off but thanks to the wonders of digital platforms and the magic of Yucata.de I was able to play many games of Russian Railroads online and it’s now time to review this beast in all its glory.

It’s important to note however that this will be one of the first games I review based on digital (online) play only and while I personally think this makes absolutely no difference with the exception of discussions about component quality, some might differ in opinion about that so in the interest of full disclosure, well, there you have it.

Overview

Russian Railroads puts players in the role of a train company manager using a very classic and very standard worker placement mechanic. In fact, Russian Railroads as a game can be described without any extra wording as a worker placement game as this is what it is, nothing less and nothing more. To win you must score points, the abstracted representation of success and to score points you must wisely use the wide variety of worker placement spots to advance your railroad business. Whether its upgrading your trains, hiring engineers, building tracks or advancing your factories, most elements of a railroad business is represented here. Abstracted to be sure and without a game map commonly found in Railroad games, Russian Railroads is like many worker placement games, a race for victory points through resource management. Your main resource being of course your workers, the lose representation of your workforce and effort as a company. Sounds pretty thematic on paper, but does it hold up in play?

Components

Verdict:
Tilt: 

Pros: Colorful art work, streamlined easy to understand iconography.

Cons: The art work goes to waste on a game which fails to connect its theme and gameplay rendering the thematic art work pointless.

Again, since I did not ever hold the actual copy of the game in my hand, I can’t comment much on the quality of components here other than the art and aesthetics of the game. I have confirmed with several friends and colleagues who told me they were very satisfied with the components, calling them sturdy and built to last. No real surprise as component quality has become less and less of an issue with published games from well-respected companies like Z-man games.

I don’t ever place much emphasis on game components when it comes to worker placement games, typically you’re dealing with cubes and meeples and Russian Railroads is no different. What is absolutely vital for Russian Railroads is the art work, it’s vital because this is the only link to the Railroad theme the game has as many reviewers point out and I can confirm.

The only real connection between game-play and theme in this game is the fact that the pictures on the components, depict, railroad stuff. You have engineer and train tokens, there are pictures of railway tracks and components that look kind of like railroad blocks. Suffice to say however while the art work is good, it’s insufficient to carry the games theme without the thematic connection to the gameplay which I will cover more in the theme section of this review. The important thing to note here is that the art is creative, colorful and the iconography clear and streamlined to relative simple identification once you get the jist of the iconography patterns. It doesn’t take long before you can easily identify the meaning of everything on the board and card and or deduce the meaning. In this regard Russian Railroad does a great job and I certainly give it credit for making this simple.

The components can be said to pass with flying colors and on par with what you can expect from a great company like Z-man games. I put very little weight in this part of the game reviewer and so its impact on the final score is very minimal but I’m very happy to see the days of Euro games with ugly artwork and flimsy components is well behind us.

Theme

Verdict:
Tilt: 

Pros: Railroads are a cool theme that doesn’t scare off casual players.

Cons: The theme is just a ruse; this game has very little if anything at all to do with Russia or Railroads.

While again I would not place theme in the forefront of a worker placement game, when you choose a popularized theme like Railroads you are in essence banking on players choosing this worker placement game over others because of the theme. In a sense there is a bit of trickery here because Russian Railroads has about as much to do with the railroads thematically as a railroad themed deck of poker cards. Sure there are pictures of trains on the cards and game board, but mechanically speaking the game is so far removed from the theme it actually makes it feel a bit scandalous to use it.

Suffice to say this was a huge disappointment for me in particular since I love train stuff and I’m always on the lookout for an interesting take on railroad themed games. Russian Railroads is so focused on being a worker placement victory point puzzle that any element of the railroad theme gets virtually washed away and really even the game board itself from an artistic stand point is quite unclear what exactly the abstractions are supposed to be representing. You place workers on spots like 3 black spaces which allow you to move your black colored track, which I guess mean that you are building a section of the rail and the different colored tokens are different speeds or quality of rails? I don’t know, it’s all quite fuzzy even as an abstraction it makes little connection to the theme and even the manual makes little effort to explain or justify any element of that theme.  Its a all business Euro, you put down meeple workers to score points, what anything represents has little explanation or point to it.

At the end of the day, the theme here is almost completely non-existent, this game is a worker placement puzzle, you will not get to do any fun train stuff you might hope for given the cover and the claim on the box where “Players compete to build the largest and most advanced railway network”.   Given that the extent of competition is that you are denied a spot to put a worker when someone else already put one there, its hardly a competition.  Yeah ok, abstractions are abstractions, but I guess what I’m saying is that there is no sign of the economic, construction or chu-chu part of the railroad theme here. It’s a game about railroads because there are pictures of railroads on the game board and that really is the extent of the connection.

I think the disappointment comes mostly from the missed opportunities to leverage such a great theme.

Gameplay

Verdict:
Tilt: 

Pros: There is considerable variation in how the game plays with different amounts of players remaining as interesting with 2 players as it is with 3 or 4.

Cons: Very bland and basic worker placement mechanic with very few dynamics or surprises.

One would hope that a game that lacks theme makes up for it with great gameplay, in fact as far as worker placement games go, traditionally this is the case. Unfortunately Russian Railroads is banking largely on the popularity of the mechanic so heavily it fails on every other level to innovate or even make use of more updated existing innovations of the mechanic. It basically takes the core concept from its earliest conception, placing workers on spots that score points and takes it no further.

Before I start bitching, the good stuff. This is a solid implementation of the classic worker placement mechanic as far as the options you get. It feels tight and every action you take really counts, so you are put to some fairly difficult choices at times, though this sense of tough choices is short lived. It is a puzzle and a fairly complex one, which offers players plenty to experiment with and explore, which in turn makes the first few games of Russian Railroads pretty interesting for fans of worker placement games in particular. In fact, this may be the most complex and involved victory point mash I have seen yet and while it fails to inspire a theme or innovate in its genre by adding something new to the table, it does what it does very well.

Unfortunately that is not enough to carry the game,  it really landed very flat with me. In fact I think if you have played Voyage of Marco Polo, Lords of Waterdeep, Pillars of the Earth, Stone Age.. even Caverna, you will find the worker placement element of this game fairly bland and uninspired both from gameplay perspective and an objective design perspective. Sure it’s an interesting puzzle as all worker placement games generally are, but there isn’t a whole lot more to it, there is no dynamic or shifting options from game to game,  what you see on the surface in the first game is all there is and all there ever will be. Once that puzzle is solved, there really isn’t much else to draw upon.

The game really does boil down to you placing down workers and collecting victory points, there is almost nothing else going on in this game. Worse yet is that there are obvious patterns of play every round, where one player will grab the first player spot, one player will grab the money spot and one player will grab the available engineer, elements of the puzzle you will catch onto quickly in particular when playing with experienced players that know what they are doing. This pattern repeats itself in a round robin circus as this is the one and only good opening move to make in almost all cases and your order in this sequence determines which of the three choices you will make.

Sure there is some variance, occasionally an engineer is not worth taking, or you might be better of grabbing one of the other spots over going first next round or taking money, but in as a whole there is a sort of sequence of uninteresting events that open most rounds. From there you’re really just grabbing whatever spots are available that enhance the strategy you chose pretty much at the start of the game. Which brings me to the other problem, in almost all games once you figure out what Engineers you will get based on the round robin sequence you can calculate in advance you will know what strategy you will go with to the conclusion of the game and in essence prioritize what spots you will take each round with your workers. The strategy really then becomes about trying to figure out what your opponents strategy is (or will be) and taking beneficial action when you can and taking action to deny your opponent beneficial actions when you can’t take one for yourself.  I guess this is what qualifies as competition in Russian Railroads, but it feels less like a competition between Railroad Barons and more of a competition between two mathematicians.

Sure there is some interesting choices now and again and certainly when playing with experienced players this puzzle can become fairly complex and sometimes even dynamic. It isn’t enough to carry the game though, in particular since any choice you make will have some form of alternative so while you can sometimes slow opponents down you really can’t stop them. Experienced players will generally focus on simply finding the fastest route to their method of scoring and among experienced players the game really becomes more of a race.

This may draw some interest at first as you try to figure out the pattern in the novelty of it all, but after a couple of games you will have unlocked the puzzle and the game really becomes a monotonous game of choosing from many choices with one very obvious best option you must clearly make each time your action comes up. You feel neither like an operator of a railroad or like you’re making decisions and more like you are working according to a pre-ordained plan adjusting only when someone does something unexpected, typically when a less experienced player makes a mistake or a more experienced player catches on to your strategy and diverts his attention to blocking you rather than doing something beneficial for his own strategy.

The novalty wears of quickly with Russian Railroads. It’s unfortunate that Russian Railroads did not leverage some of the more interesting worker placement mechanics that came before it like Lords of Waterdeeps quest cards and Lord cards which could easily be adapted in Russian Railroads as Baron cards and mission cards just as an example. Instead Russian Railroads went with the very stuffy and largely uninteresting ultra-simple worker placement mechanic with little else driving it or evolving through the course of play. Other than the very limited engineers you don’t unlock anything interesting, there are no deviations, or randomized elements to mix things up and for the most part there is kind of a packing order of devolving options, getting less interesting with each passing round. Very dry stuff.

One of the big failures of Russian Railroads as well is that it’s really tough to catch up and very unfriendly to beginners, if a player gets ahead on points, in particular on the points earned per round where its cumulative, a game can be effectively over halfway through. This is something that happens quite easily in particular when experienced and inexperienced mix making this a poor choice for mixed groups.

You ultimately want to play with already experienced players, but as you’re showing people how to play they are going to have to drudge through 2 or 3 games before the strategies kind of click into place and they can offer something that resembles competition for you. Worse than that though is that the game is not intuitive despite being very simple, so it takes a couple of games before you have any idea how the engine works and it’s easy to make a mistake that will take several rounds to correct by which time, again, you are so far behind that the game is effectively over.

In the end the conclusion is that pretty much every worker placement game I have played in the last 10 years has better game play than this one and no one is more surprised than me because this game rates so high with so many reviewers and gaming communities. I was really kind of hoping to have found a gem in the rough. In particular something coming out of Z-man games.

Replay ability and Longevity

Verdict:
Tilt: 

Pros: You can play it for free on Yucuta.de with a wide variety of opponents of different skill levels allowing you to explore replay-ability of this game to its fullest extent.

Cons: You discover the game has virtually no replay-ability and thank Yucuta.de for saving you some money.

Another huge fail in my opinion and as a worker placement game this will have the greatest impact on the game’s final score. In short, there is very little longevity here.  After you have played this game 2 or 3 times there really is nothing of interest that will either surprise or delight you. I played this game at least 20 times to be sure, in fact I kept hoping that at some point I would discover some new strategy, some new puzzle piece or string to pull on but in the end it really is kind of a shallow game. I can’t recall a single memorable moment or a close game that wasn’t pre-ordained early on, In fact by round 2 or 3 I knew whether I would win or lose in most games and the final rounds where players largely just going through the motion.

I suppose the one nice element of the games replay-ability is that the game really changes a great deal when you play with different amounts of players. It’s a very different puzzle as the boards themselves are actually different for different player counts with 2, 3 or 4 players, so you could conceivably extend its life and explore the new challenges different amounts of players produce. In the end though, there just isn’t enough variation in the game to sustain multiple replays, given that there are so many wonderful worker placement games with innovative and interesting mechanics, a simplistic and straightforward variant like this really just doesn’t hold up.

Conclusion

Russian Railroads is a highly acclaimed and often well-spoken of game but like many Euro games I have a tough time explaining why that is. Like Settlers of Catan, Agricola, and Puerto Rico it just falls into that category of games where most people seem to love them and I just don’t. I really think as you read this review you have to consider the reviewer. If you love Agricola and Puerto Rico and don’t understand why someone doesn’t, Russian Railroads might turn out to be a great pick for you. I do think it’s worth pointing out however that there is a difference between disliking a game and objectively believing it’s a mediocre design. For example I do believe Agricola and Puerto Rico are or perhaps better to say were innovative designs for their time, If I reviewed them I would expect them, despite my dislike for them, to get good reviews from me. I guess the point I’m making is that I didn’t just look at Russian Railroads and decide I don’t like it and gave it a bad review, I think it really does lack the elements that great board games have. Whether I like it or not.

Russian Railroads is neither innovative, clever or interesting and I believe very objectively that it’s just not a very well designed game.

Sure it has good structure, it’s streamlined and balanced, but that’s not a selling point of a game in today’s world of designer board games, that is an expectation from every game. These are automatic. A great design must be innovative, must add something to the genre, must have some dynamics and cleverness to it. None of those descriptive terms can be applied to Russian Railroads, it is by very definition of the word a very status quo game, relying on the most basic elements of worker placement game design. Worse yet its implementation is so far removed from the theme, there is hardly a point of pretending that its somehow relevant to the game.

I can’t recommend this game, even to worker placement fans. The list of fantastic worker placement games is long and distinguished, Russian Railroads is just not among them.