A Deckbuilding Look at Trains

Trains_boxtopAEG has already published some classic deckbuilders like Thunderstone (2009) and Nightfall (2011), so with this new release, Trains, it seems like they’re pushing harder on the deckbuilder genre than anyone else. It’s a combo train/deckbuilding game that’s one of the few deckbuilders to come with a playing board.

The Game

The core elements of Trains feel a lot like the premier deckbuilder, Dominion (2008). You have (blue) cards that are cash and you have (yellow) cards that are victory points (“veeps”). You use your cash to buy more cash, to buy (red) cards that do different actions, and eventually to push for victory.

The catch is that there’s a board that contains cities and other types of terrains; you can build tracks onto those locations and you can also build stations, which increase the value of your cities. This is all tightly integrated with the deckbuilding cards: some (green) cards let you build the tracks, while other (purple) cards let you build the stations. Just as in any serious train game, the cost of building into different terrains varies — and you pay those additional costs with your deckbuilding currency, which is to say the same coins that you’d usually use to buy cards.

Trains Board

The other catch is that the train actions (building tracks and stations) generate waste, which are dead cards that go into your deck, which you then must filter out.

The Good

Trains_Cards_SkyscraperCard Typing is Well Done. The use of strong suits in a deckbuilding game isn’t anything new, since it dates back to at least Ascension (2010), and the use of blue, yellow, red, blue, and purple cards here is really rudimentary: it’s mostly about categorizing the cards, not giving players a benefit from set collection, like DC Comics Deckbuilding (2012) or Star Realms (2014) do. Nonetheless, I appreciate the use of the card categories in Trains, because it makes the cards instantly easier to understand and assess, which is something that most deckbuilders could benefit from.

Lots of Resources. Those suits also show how many different resources there are in Trains. The game has coins and veeps (of course), but it also features track-building and station-building as crucial resources in the game: without the first, a player can’t get to new cities that would generate victory points and without the second a player can’t build the stations that generate victory points.

As a result, Trains requires a very careful sort of deck balancing not found in many deckbuilding games — where players have to make sure that a few different types of cards all remain present in their deck. However, the inclusion of multiple resources also shows the clear possibility for at least two different paths to victory (card veeps or city veeps), each of which requires the collection of different resources.

Trains2-RecyclingCenterWaste is an Interesting Resource. That all ignores a fifth type of resource: waste, which is of course a negative resource. I haven’t seen any other deckbuilding game that works so hard to put so much junk in your deck — though Demonslayer (2014) did use the idea somewhat with its miasma.

Remarkably, the deck play of Trains works even though players can frequently drawn hands with one or two waste cards. To help balance that, they have the ability to spend a turn to dump as much junk as they want … and of course red action cards might provide more trashing opportunities.

I think that filtering is often the great, forgotten tactical element of deckbuilding games, primarily because it wasn’t a strong presence in the original Dominion. So, I’m always happy to see new games that place more emphasis on it, like Trains does.

Trains_Cards_LayRailsThe Board is Well Integrated. Finally, the integration of the board and the deckbuilding is very well done; the two types of play are very symmetrical, something that reminds me of Copycat (2012), which similarly integrated worker placement and deckbuilding in a very symmetric way. Having the cards do the train building was, of course, a necessity. The fact that players spend their deckbuilding cash to build into more difficult terrains is probably the biggest innovation of Trains. Finally, it’s nice that players have possibilities for victory points in either high-cost victory point cards or in high-value cities — letting them assess the two parts of the game on a very even playing field.

Beyond all of that, it’s still very special having a meaningful board at all in a deckbuilding game. There are a few other deckbuilders that have gone this route, like A Few Acres of Snow (2011), Asgard’s Chosen (2013), and A Study in Emerald (2013), but most have been pretty abstract and overall the numbers have been few, so it’s interesting to see more of that sort of deckbuilding.

The Bad.

Trains_Cards_ExpressTrainIt’s Very Basic. To a certain extent, I think that combo deckbuilders need to be simple, since you’re adding complexity via a whole other set of mechanics — and Copycat showed how that can still allow for a deep and interesting game. However, I’m less sure of the balance here, and that’s after playing Trains: Rising Sun (2014), which is apparently the Trains game that has more complexity in its cards. Generally, the cards allowed for a pretty minimal variety of play, and so turns were often lightning quick because there was no thought or uncertainty involved.

The Integration Has No Surprises. If I was going to build a deckbuilding train game, without thinking about it too much, my design would look almost exactly like this. Even though I said the board gameplay is well integrated, there’s actually not much that’s surprising in that integration. Even the waste, which is one of the more novel parts of this game, doesn’t have a lot of depth: it’s a curse with no victory point loss.

Despite how far-flung Trains is from Dominion, thanks to a whole new set of train mechanics, it’s still very close to its predecessor in its deck management, which isn’t something I expect to see half-a-decade on.

Board Variations Are Limited. One of the lovely things about train games is that you can have new boards that considerably change around the gameplay. Except I’m not convinced that Trains allows for considerable difference. Sure, you have cities and terrains in different places, but that’s all pretty simple and abstract, and players are pretty constrained to where they can play, which all results in the differences being less than you’d think

Conclusion

Trains is a perfectly good deckbuilding/train game that’s not surprising and is relatively staid given its innovative mix of game systems. If you’re a fan of Dominion, it’s a good variation of the gameplay, but if you’ve played more deckbuilders and seen more of the possibilities, you mind feel this is a bit more of a been-there-seen-that. It’s still an enjoyable game, just not a particularly deep or thought-provoking one.

 

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