Trains are pretty cool. There a lot of train board games out there. You have Ticket to Ride, there is Trains, TransAmerica is next to Union Pacific, and there is a lot more. But the one that really caught my eye is by one of my favorite new game makers.

Hit the jump to come aboard!

Railroad Ink has you being a city planner in a manner of speaking. Design where the tracks go and the highways (fires/volcanos/rivers/lakes too!) are placed. Make your town the most confusing and/or super connected to win!

I can’t go on too much with that front. There isn’t really a story behind it. This is a dry erase board game! Chuck some dice and everyone has to draw the results on their board. The more exits you hit in one connected system, the more points you get. Longest railroad & highway earns you points. But you get negative points for every dead end/unconnected corner.

It is a fast, simple games to play but it can get bogged down when it comes to scoring. Sometimes you have to let things slide on the first game because it is hard to check everyone’s map perfectly and not everyone has clear line-drawing skills. But it is always interesting to see how everyone lays things out on their board from where they start to where they draw their pieces.

There are two boxes for this game. Deep Blue is considered the “nicer” version as it has optional expansion dice that you can draw rivers and lakes. Blazing Red has fires and volcanos on its extra die. While I have this version, I haven’t played it yet and can’t attest to the absurdity. They also advertise that if you have both sets you can play up to 12 people! But honestly this is another one of those games that you can play as many people as you have pens and pads. You could own three Deep Blues and play up to 18. Still nice to be able to do that with a larger group. And unlike another game you can do this with, this one doesn’t have “first” goals so lends itself more open to giant groups play.

This is a small, pen-writing game that is light (scoring really isn’t too bad) and easy to bust out. It is all about getting the best score and since the pieces are based on the dice, you never know what will come up next.

Railroad Ink
Horrible Games
1-6 Players (per game)
15-23 Minutes