Review of Take A Train

Blurb from the publisher: 'The biggest tycoons on the railway market are trying to enlarge their assets. For this purpose they are getting together for a big locomotive auction. What kind of bidding awaits them this time? Open, blind or maybe twist? None of them knows yet. Each investor is trying to buy the best locomotives at the possibly lowest price. Competition however is fierce. Any experienced player on the railway market knows that the locomotives aren’t everything. When each investor has already bought three locomotives a fight for wagons is on. Food, cattle, coal, luxuries or passenger wagons perhaps? Who will manage to gain the most lucartive transportation? And who will earn the most?'

What you get: Your EUR 19,99 or equivalent will buy you Take A Train, a bidding game for two to six players that lasts form half an hour to an hour. In addition to the English and German rulebook the game also contains the following: 105 cards (18 Locomotives, 87 Wagons, 5 Special), 6 Auctions tokens, 6 Sequence tokens, 18 Purpose tokens, 125 Money tokens in five denominations and 6 player screens.

The game is language neutral; the cards and tokens have only pictographs, no text whatsoever. If you understand any of these languages or if someone can explain the game to you, you are good to go.

In different markets the game has a different name. As an example in its original Polish market it is called Twoja Kolej, while in German is can be found as Nimm Den Zug.

Gameplay: In this multi-bidding combo game, players try to obtain the most money within three rounds, being railway tycoons and all. In case of a tie Purpose tokens act as tie breakers.

Each player begins with $5000 and three randomly drawn Purpose tokens, all of which are kept secret behind the screen during the game. These can be anything from ‘if you own three electric locomotives get $300’ to self-referential ones like ‘if you fulfilled your other two tokens get $1000’. When a player fulfills the preconditions of a token, he hands it out and claims his bonus.

Six locomotives are randomly drawn out of the game’s eighteen and are shuffled in a face-down pile. There are three types of locomotives: steam, diesel and electric. Each has a power (equaling its starting price), its maximum speed (a tie breaker) and a multiplier (how much extra the whole train investment is worth). The Wagons and Special cards form their own deck. Wagons are divided into six types: food, cattle, coal, heating oil, luxury goods and passenger wagons. These have values from $50 to $500. The special cards describe a particular event when they become available (from a $600 bonus to be immediately claimed to multiplier increases etc).

At the start of a round an Auction token is randomly drawn. This dictates the type of the action for the round: pass, blind, double blind, preemption, open and twist. For those not familiar with the different auction types, Pass is the auction which goes around the table and where, once you pass in your bid for a particular good you may no longer participate. Blind is when offers are simultaneous, yet the starting bidder has to offer at least the value of the good under auction (here: the locomotive). Double Blind is when, after the first revelation of the initial offer, a second, additional offer is allowed. In Preemption players will get to place secret bids revealed simultaneously, yet they do not relate to a particular good. After revealing the bids the players will pick the locomotive of their preference in descending order. In Open players bid as much as they want whenever they want (the most common type of auction, usually seen in films). Finally Twist is not really a bidding auction but a mechanism calculating financial risk. Players start with 3 secret Locomotives in their hands, keeping one and passing two to the player on their left. Once they have three in front of them they must pay the price according to the total value of the locomotives in front of them multiplied by the highest multiplier. If they can’t, they remove a locomotive replacing it with a dummy. Dummies have 0 cost and power, do not offer multipliers while they calculate profit based on one Wagon only.

In any event, at the end of this process each player must have exactly three locomotives. Once that is done, player order is determined according to the power of the purchased locomotives. Ties are resolved to the favour of the player with the fastest locomotive.

In the second stage of the round a number of Wagon cards are opened from the Wagon deck depending on the number of players (three for 2-3 players, five for 6). Each player, in the order that was just determined, can do one thing from the following three. First, he may add a wagon card, picking it up and attaching it to a locomotive. Each locomotive may only carry wagons of the same type, while a player cannot have two locomotives transporting the same type of goods. The card that was taken is replaced by a new card from the Wagon deck. A player may replace the face up cards before adding a card, as long as he pays the price indicated by the sequence token. Finally, a player may pass if he does not wish or he cannot purchase any of the Wagons. That part of the round ends either when a player attached his fifth Wagon to a Locomotive or once all players have consecutively passed.

Players add up the value of their Wagons and multiply it by the Locomotive’s multiplier. They then receive that amount from the bank and keep it hidden behind their screen. Dummy Locomotives only return to the player the value of one of the attached Wagons. The process is repeated twice, with the players tallying their money at the end of the game.

The strong points: If you are into bidding games Take A Train revolves precisely around that. Its whole gameplay is structured around creating, and following, an economic model. Bid to gain the Locomotives that will bring you the best returns, outplay the others in the set collection when getting the Wagons (buy efficiently to receive higher returns) and create a treasury that will allow you to repeat this during the next round. It is imperative to earn in each round not barely more but exponentially more than you invested. The Locomotive auctions are not easy to control, when choosing Wagons however you more or less know where you are going to end up what your are willing to spend. Thus, In between the two turns you should have a rough estimate of how much money you want to invest and how much you want to keep towards the end game.

Auction games by definition have interaction, so the game scores high in that respect. Downtime is kept to a bare minimum. The game is entertaining if you are into bidding, seeing how it incorporates five different forms of auctions and one form of drafting. In that sense it is superior to other straightforward bidding games you might have tried in the past like For Sale, Magellan and Das Amulett. It is easy to lose your balance and pay disproportionately, locking yourself out from the Wagon purchases, or horde up your money and find yourself with Wagons that could have delivered substantially better if you had higher multipliers. As with most bidding games (For Sale being a prime exception) its secondary mechanic is not bidding related; it is set collection, directly linked to the war chest that you build towards your previous turn. This works nice as a balancing mechanism towards keeping all players more or less in the game; it will not save you however if you throw away your money during the auction phase.

Quite obviously, the game is as abstract as they get. As with all bidding games, expect a big amount of luck; it is not just about the types of Locomotives or Wagons; you do not even know the auction type that will come up. When do you risk and when do you play more prudently? Thus, as with all bidding games, you are playing not only the game, you are partially playing your opponents. The easiest way to do that is to have a mental account of how much money everybody has at any given point. That shouldn’t be very hard to execute, seeing how all transactions are public. While the others are gasping and don’t know what you are hiding behind your screen, you will know exactly when to increase the prices of Locomotives that do not necessarily interest you and when to give way.

The components and art are of a standard quality, reminiscent of the style used in New York 1901. Again, the theme is pasted upon the rules. If you were looking for screens with a train theme for The Last Spike, here you go. It always works better when a publishers includes all the materials that are actually needed for play.

The weak points: If you are not into bidding, steer clear, even if you are into trains.

There is a string of games that I we saw lately that work substantially better with more people than with less (I am thinking of Ultimate Warriorz and Rush & Bash). While however the last two are practically party games, Take A Train aspires to be a sort of heavier experience. Just be forewarned. The only tense auctions with two contestants only can be found in movies, and involve amounts in the millions; not around a gaming table with nothing at stake. Now, I do not recommend that you turn Take A Train into a gambling experience; there are probably other games better suited for that..

No matter how good a planner you are, there is a lot of luck in Take A Train. That is not bad in itself, yet some might feel that the game lasts too long for what it offers. I can understand the feeling. At the end of the day the balance lies in whether you accept the extra time for a more involved bidding experience.

As much as the art is ok (nothing eye-catching but nothing bad either), two of the three numbers that are mentioned on each Locomotive do so on rather small fonts. There is plenty of space; I would have preferred seeing the Power and the speed in bigger fonts.

Conclusion: Take A Train is meaty purchase, yet it is a particular type of meat, like lamb or goat. Some might like it, some not. Auction fanatics can get a much higher value out of it; don’t be surprised if you start turning into one after a few plays.

For more info on Take A Train and G3 visit its website at http://www.g3poland.com/G3/marka,20/.

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