Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 90-120 minutes
Complexity: 3 (of 10)

The Components

Freight Train comes with:

• 234 cards
• 1 wooden engine

Cards: The cards are all half-sized, printed full-color front, one-color back with rounded corners on slightly thin cardstock. They’re a bit teeny and flimsy, but there’s no way the game could have been prinetd with larger cards, as the nearby picture of the components pretty clearly depicts.

176 of the cards depict the 11 different car types in the game. Each one has a name ("Tank") and a dominant color (white). Most of the cards are easy to distinguish, but there are a few where the colors are too close together (particularly the two yellows, Gondolas and Stock cars, and to a lesser extent the two dark cards, Hoppers and Coil Steel). It's not a terrible problem since you have the pictures and the names, but you have to be careful. The artwork is generally bright and attractive from a distance, but a little muddy up close.

The remaining cards include: 35 locomotives and 15 bumpers (which are both used to mark rows of trains); 1 end-of-day card (which is a deck timer); and 7 cabooses (which are used as an optional rule). Much like the main deck, the bumpers, locomotives, and cabooses all have nice, colorful artwork. The cabooses additionally have a list of the 11 train types on their backs, which is a nice touch.

Wooden Engine: A cut wooden engine, though at least my copy wasn't cut well and has a bunch of shavings at the top.

Rulebook: A 16-page rulebook, printed in black & white. Generally I found it a bit hard to follow the rulebook and I had troubles using it for reference. Fortunately, there's a 2-page quick-reference at the end that works much better.

Overall, I also have to comment that the components are poorly designed in that they take up much too much space. A two-player game fills maybe two-thirds of my decently sized dining room table. A four-player game would fill every inch of it, and I don't think I could fit a five-player game unless we all sat on the floor. Thus, the components in a roundabout way make it hard to play the game because of space issues.

Overall, I think the components for Freight Train are a little substandard. The cards are colorful and evocative, but not high-quality beyond that. Beyond that, as already noted, there are space issues with the game as a whole. The game was produced in 1996, and it was probably pretty average at the time, but in today's market it earns a slightly below average "2" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Freight Train is to put together the largest trains in a variety of types, while at the same time maintaining good control of your private freight yard.

Setup: Freight Train has a slightly complex playing surface for a card game. A game starts with the construction of the main freight yard: five bumper cards are laid out, then five freight cars are placed in each row (all drawn from the draw deck of freight trains and placed in order of draw). Next, each player gets two bumper cards for his private freight yard, and six cars are laid in each of those rows (again, in order). Finally, each player gets from five to seven locomotives, depending on the number of players; these are placed directly in front of him. The draw deck is then split in two, and the "End of the Day" card is shuffled into the bottom half of the deck.

A score sheet is also started, with each player beginning with 5 points.

The Freight Trains. The freight trains are divided into 11 types of cars: auto racks, box cars, coil steel, containers, gondolas, hoppers, ore cars, piggybacks, refrigerator cars, stock cars, and tanks. These are 16 of each car type (though this total is reduced to nine or twelve for two or three player games).

Order of Play: Each turn a player has one optional action to take:

• Refill Main Yard

Then he must choose between four regular actions:

• Switch from the Main Yard
• Switch from Private Yard
• Reorganize Private Yard
• Take a Locomotive

Refill Main Yard: If there are two or more empty rows (marked by those bumper cards) in the main yard, the active player may choose to refill one of those rows. He takes the top five cards from the draw pile and places them in order in front of one of the empty bumpers.

This action is entirely optional unless the player wants to switch from the Main Yard and there aren't enough cards there (in which case its mandatory).

Switch from Main Yard: As his main action, the active player may choose to move exactly three cards from the main yard to his private yard and/or locomotives. (It's never been clear to me if all three trains must go the same place, private yard or locomotives, one of the ambiguities of the rules; we've always played that you can place them freely in either location.)

All switching is always done starting with the cars farthest from a bumper: you can't get to the "inside" cards until you've dealt with the outside cards in some way; this is true for switching from both the main yard and private yards.

Switching into Private Yards. Cards placed into private yards are simply placed at the end of the appropriate row. There's a limit of 8 cards per row.

Switching onto Locomotives. Locomotives house the "sets" you're building in this game. Each locomotive can only have one type of cards behind it, with one exception: you may, if you wish, build a mixed train which has instead no more than one of any type of car. You can only have one mixed train each day, max (and likewise only one of each pure set).

Switch from Private Yard: Instead you may move one, two, three, or four cars from your private yard to your locomotives. As always, you can only takes cards from the outside of any row.

Rearrange Private Yard: Alternatively you may reorganize all of the cars in your private yard in any way you see fit (except, of course, there still can't be more than 8 cards per row). This cost one (scoring) point.

Take a Locomotive: Finally, you can, no more than once a day, take an additional locomotive for use.

Ending a Day: A day ends after the end of day card is drawn; everyone gets an equal number of turns, counting from the starting player, and then the day ends. A number of actions occur then.

First, everyone's trains are scored. This is based on majority control of each type of train. Whomever has the most cars of each type (behind locomotives, not in private yards), get 3 points, and whomever has the second most gets 1. (Ties offer 2 points each.)

In addition, private yards are scored. On day one, they're worth one point per two trains (to +8 max); on day two, they're worth nothing; and on day three, they're worth minus one point per train (to -16 max). Clearly, there's incentive to max out your private yard on the first day, then maximize its efficiency so that it can be emptied on the last day.

Next, all the cards in the main freight yard and behind locomotives (but not in private freight yards) are discarded & shuffled. After a new set of main freight cars is dealt out, the End of the Day card is again placed in the deck: but it goes in the bottom third for day two, and the bottom fourth for day three.

Finally, anyone who did not take their extra locomotive during the day is given it now.

Ending the Game: The game ends after the third day; the person with the highest score is the winner.

Relationships to Other Games

Alan R. Moon likes train games. His train releases include: Santa Fe (1992), Freight Train (1996), Union Pacific (1999), Santa Fe Rails (2002; a rerelease of Santa Fe), Ticket to Ride (2004), and the very recent Slow Freight (2004). Like many of Moon's other train games, this one centers on maximizing sets of cards, but it's also a unique game on its own.

To be a bit more precise, Freight Train is a set collection game with majority control scoring. In other words, each player is trying to get sets of like cards (as in Ticket to Ride, say, or Rummy), and the value of those sets is based upon whoever holds the largest collection of the set (a mechanism also found in El Grande (1995) and so many others).

Freight Train distiguishes itself from other set collection games by having somewhat baroque, and very constrained, drafting methods. Between the main freight yard, the ability to refill it, and the careful organization of cards in a private freight yard, a player has a lot of ability to influence what cards he takes, both in current and future rounds. Nonetheless you can see similarities to other set collection games based on a drafting mechanism, such as the very popular Coloretto (2003).

Freight Train is closely tied to another Moon game, Reibach & Co. (1990), released in the U.S. as Get the Goods (1997). They share the same set collection & majority control elements, though R&co. has different scoring methods. Of his other train games, Freight Train is most like Union Pacific (1999) which seems to have adopted drafting methods from Reibach & Co., and also uses majority control scoring, though its method of valuation is more complex.

The Game Design

Freight Train is a simple but clever set collection game. Here's some of the best design:

Good Long Term Strategy: There's a lot of really nice strategy in this game, starting with looking ahead at what's in the main yard and how many locomotives you have left, but also including figuring out how to rearrange your private yard from round to round, to ensure that you can clear it by the end of day three.

Good Set Limiting: The limitation on total number of possible sets (by limiting locomotives) introduces hard decisions into the game, much as with similar game, Coloretto.

Nice Hard Decisions: As with many of Moon's games there's extreme limitations on actions which means that you have hard decisions every turn as to which action to take. I think this is carried off better in Union Pacific and Ticket to Ride, but it's still a nice element here.

Here's my complaints:

Too Long: This is my major complaint about the game: it's about twice as long as it should be. Unfortunately, you can't really limit the number of rounds, because then you lose the delightful manipulation of trains in the yards from day to day.

If this was a shorter game, I'd want to play it quite frequently, because it's very clever. Unfortunately the time issues really constrain how often I'm willing to play the game. Still, with its interesting and baroque hand management, and its simple but effective majority control system, I've let Freight Train eke in a low "4" out of "5" for Substance. Despite that, I'd love to see a revised verison of the game out that better marries the simple, but interesting gameplay with a more appropriate timeframe.

Conclusion

Freight Train is a nicely themed set collection game with heavy emphasis on a baroque card management system. If it ran half the time and fit into a filler slot, it'd be right up there with some of the best, such as Coloretto, but as is it's unfortunately too long (and too big) for its relatively simple gameplay. Nonetheless, it's a good & innovative set collection game, worth the time if you like the genre.