Compared to my presidential election game, it went better!

After cutting out 130+ cards (108 of which are used for the bulk of the game), I simmed a two player game for a while.  The game took place for an hour and I ended up calling it short because it was late and I had learned enough from the first part of the test to end things there.

In general, there's some potential to the system.  I had suboptimally put some information on the destination cards.  The spur cards ended up being more trouble than they were worth, so they were gutted in order to provide for towns (think of the dotted tiles in 18XX).  Some of the cards were pretty worthless and I swapped them out with some other powers.  On the other hand of things, the 'Short Sell' card (now renamed 'Partial Owner' worked really well at leveling things.  I will probably add some more special cards on top of the exclusive 'money' cards if need be, but I wanted to see how fewer effects would interplay.  Finally, I formally added descriptions to the cards to kind of remind myself how things went and also included abbreviations of the regions (Eastern, Centra, Midwestern and Western) and fixed a couple cards.  I also had the idea to include end game scoring to include finishing the route for railroads and limiting a hand to 7 cards.  I also dropped the Dividend cards for now and will make it so that random cards are turned sideways in the deck at semi-regular intervals (4 dividends before the end of the game).  The final change was to base train obsolesence on dividends instead of route building which should make it easier to keep track of when to clear out those 2 and 3 Trains.  And finally (jeez!), I'm going to dig out some cubes for markers for the partial owners so players can use that although I suppose I could dedicate some further cards to that endeavor as well.  We'll see. Forgot I killed the "Draw 2 More" cards as well as they were kind of pointless.

In short, it played way too long for a card game.  I'm willing to stretch it some because it is a train game.  I'm aiming for an hour for two players, but ideally want it clipped to anywhere from 30-45 minutes.

Another play tonight, hopefully, to try out the new ideas.   I think they will make it a little faster and a little more interesting.

For those of you who have casually followed this blog over the past year or so, you'll know I do a lot of thinking about train games.  One of the leading publishers of this niche is Winsome Games and they have done a number of great titles that I'm hoping to get my hands on at some point if my cash flow ever improves.  Regardless, the entry for Union vs. Pacific at BGG has always interested me.  An 8+ hour train game based on cards?  The logistics of building track, moving resources back and forth?  That's a long, long time to play a train game.

So, while waiting for this to be released as part of John's Essen set, I took yet another look at my unending fascination with the industrial northeast with an eye towards making yet another train game - this one with cards.  Bindle Rails is a card game at heart, but it has a fair amount of denseness to it.  Union and Pacific at its core could also have that kind of complexity although I've yet to try it.

At the same time,I am drawn to make a card game that my girls would actually want to play.  I tend to make complicated designs.  I can't help it.  Complicated things usually interest me.  Simple things don't.  Anyways, one of their favorite games for a while was the $5 Walmart special Monopoly Deal Card Game.  It's not my favorite, however, it moves relatively quickly and has enough screwage in it that is essential for my 11-year-old to enjoy any game of any type.  :)

So, with those two aims in mind, I'm bringing together a fusion of what I imagine Union vs. Pacific and Monopoloy Deal would end up being, with a touch of the original Ticket To Ride and yes, a little 1830.  I have my cards prototyped and they will be cut out and ready to go with 108 regular cards plus 27 train and RR cards and a few extra rules summary cards to boot.  The sucker's gonna be somewhat big and still need some markers I imagine and at least a scoresheet.

For those of you following at home, the object of the game will be to build successful railroads.  Railroads will be purchased and need to build in cities represented on city cards sprinkled through the deck.  Stations and spurs can also be built.  Trains can be purchased (2, 3, 4, 5 trains sound familiar guys?) based on what region the leading railroad is building to.  Track cards are required to build to the next region.  Wildcard cities are also available as well.  Anyhow, these route cards will have coal/goods/wood icons and these could count for bonuses later on.  There are other cards which can be used as money to build routes, buy trains, buy new railroads, etc as well as special effects of strikes, labor negotiations, dividends, etc.  The game ends when the deck is exhausted twice.  After each round through the deck or a dividend card is played, VP are tallied by using the trains to serve up from the home city the number of points they can achieve for every railroad you own minus the value of the cards in your hand.

So there's a lot here. The idea of buying trains, watching how many cards are in your hand, when to play cities, when to play onto other people's railroads, etc. are all part and parcel.  One of the more interesting cards is the Short Sell card which allows a player to gain half the profits from a railroad until the dividend round comes up.  Additional cards for resource revenue are in the mix.

Pictures to follow once it is assembled and a trial run is performed. 

It has potential to at least be interesting and hopefully be a relatively fast game to play. I am picturing it as a 1 and 2 player game but perhaps more could get in on things since there are 7 railroads.

Is it a true train game?  No.  Everything I make is a hybrid.  But the mechanics on this one could fit this card game in 30 minutes or less.  An hour at most.  We'll see.