Have your tickets ready to play these five fantastic train themed board games.
There is a board game theme that represents almost anything. Today I will show you some of my favorite games that fit into the train genre. From building rail lines to cowboys robbing a train, these games should be a blast to play.
5. TransAmerica
In this simple and quick game, players try to connect cities with train lines. Your goal is to connect a city from each zone to your home city.
Each player starts the game by randomly taking one of each color of the card. These cards represent the cities you will need to connect to your home city.
- The players place their starting marker.
- Each turn you play one or two pieces of track. You keep building your lines until a player connects all five of their cities. The first to do this wins the round.
- You can connect to the other player's tracks to help get connected to your cities.
After you have all five of your cities connected, the other players count the number of track pieces needed to complete all their unfinished connections. They advance their tracker that many spaces.
Clear the board off and start a new round. This round plays like the first round.
Keep playing rounds until a player’s point tracking marker moves past the barrier. The player with the least amount of points is the winner.
Short and simple. The game only takes about thirty minutes to play.
Publisher – Winning Moves Games
2-6 Players
30 Minutes
Age 13+
4. Colt express
Colt Express is a game where you play a robber trying to steal as much as possible from the train. The board is not a traditional game board. Instead, play takes place on a three-dimensional model of the train. You will move from car to car trying to find as much loot as you can carry. Steer clear of the Marshall. Unless you want ejected from the car.
On each turn, the players choose the actions they want to play during the round. You play a card to represent the action you want to take. You do not take actions until all players have played their action cards.
Actions
- Movement – You can move up or down from the roof to inside the car or vice versa. You can also move from one car to another even if you are on the roof. Mind the gap.
- Robbery – Take a loot tile from your current location.
- Punch –If you are in the same location as another player, you can punch them. Not only do they drop loot but you punch them into an adjacent train car.
- Shoot – Start blasting. Shoot a player in an adjacent train car. Give the player you shot one of your six bullet cards. This card goes in their deck of cards. It is now possible that they draw a bullet card limiting them on the actions they can take that turn.
- The Marshall – A player can move the Marshall. He moves from car to car. If the Marshall enters a car that contains a robber, immediately move the robber to the roof and receives a bullet card.
The round cards determine the turns. Take four round cards and a final round card. These cards show how you play actions during the round.
Once you play through all five round cards, the game is over. The player with the most loot is the winner.
Publisher – Ludonaute
2-6 Players
30-40 Minutes
Age 10+
3.Train Heist
Train Heist is a coop game where you have to steal from a corrupt sheriff aboard a locomotive. Grab loot jump from the train and ride your trusty steed into town to stash your newfound riches.
Set up
- Place two horse miniatures and the cowboy minis in the center of the board. Fun fact, the miniature cowboys fit on the miniature horses. Now that is detail.
- Randomly draw twelve loot tiles and place them in stacks of two on the designated spaces on the train cars.
- Place train cars on the track starting at the star next to town A.
- The sheriff goes on passenger car B.
- Place the bullet tokens on the designated spaces.
- Shuffle the wanted cards and place five of them face up next to the board.
- Place the switch tokens on the arrow spaces.
- Place the hangman token at the top of the noose.
- Set the small train speed arrow on the 1 and the large train heist meter arrow on zero.
- Shuffle and deal five poker cards to each player. Flip the top card of the remaining deck to form a discard pile.
- Build your event deck.
Each player has four heist actions and unlimited free action to use on their turn
- Moving – Move one adjacent space on the main board, or one space on the train board once you have entered the train. You can jump off the train if your horse in the adjacent space waiting for you.
- Move a horse – Play a poker card and move a horse equal to the number on the card.
- Loot the train – Play poker cards that match the conditions on the loot cards to collect the loot. Once you have the loot, drop off the loot before you can pick up more loot. If you use a wildcard to gather loot, the sheriff moves one space closer to the action.
- Drop off the loot – When you are in a town you can drop off the loot you are carrying. Draw new tiles from the loot sack and place them in the town. Then place your loot tiles back in the loot sack. For each returned loot tile move the heist meter one place closer to the goal.
- Flip a switch – If you are on a switch space you can flip the switch tile changing the direction of the train.
- Trade Cards – If you share a space with another cowboy you can use an action to trade cards with them. Remember, there is a five card max hand size.
- Take a bullet – Your take one of the bullet tokens from the board and save it for later. This token will give you a bonus heist action to use later.
- Escape from jail – If the sheriff catches you he will lock you up in the jail car of the train. He will also take all your loot, bullets, and poker cards. Use your heist actions to attempt a breakout. Use your action to draw poker cards. You are looking for key cards. It will take three key cards to escape. While in jail you must shovel coal. This increases the trains speed by one for each round you are in jail.
At the end of the round, the train moves spaces equal to the train's speed meter. If the train moves over a star, draw an event card. If the star is by a town, the train will collect all the loot in that town. If the town does not have any loot, then the hangman token id advanced one space.
If the train heist meter reaches the goal, the players win. If the hangman’s token reaches the noose first the game, is a loss.
Publisher – Cryptozoic Entertainment
2-4 Players
45-60 Minutes
Age 12+
2. Russian Railroads
Russian Railroads is a worker placement game. In the game, you not only build railroads but also build factors and work to industrialize Russian.
The game lasts for seven rounds. You will need to advance three different railroads, add factories, and advance industrialization to earn points to claim victory.
Each player can place one set of workers in a turn. These will give you track advancements to help extend your railroad.
- As the track is advance new and better track becomes available to you.
- You can place workers to build factories and locomotives.
- You can place workers to advance industrialization. Building factories increases the length of your industrial track allowing you to advance further. Factories also to help advance other aspects of the game.
- Hiring engineers will allow you to get extra advancements based on the engineer purchased. The engineer will also give extra points at the end of the game.
Scoring
- You gain points based on the color of your track: the black track is worth 0 points, the grey track is worth 1 point, the brown track is worth 2 points, the tan track is worth 4 points, and the white track is worth 7 points. Multiply these points by the number of spaces advanced on the track back to the next best color of the track is reached. For example, a grey track is worth 1 point and is on the fifth place. The next better piece of track is brown, worth 2 points, and is on the second space. The grey track counts spaces 5, 4, and 3, as one point each. The brown track counts spaces 2 and 1 for 2 points each. This gives you 7 points on that track.
- Locomotives limit scoring. If you have a locomotive with a value of 5, you can only count up to the fifth space in the track when adding up your score.
- Different spaces on the track award points or give other benefits.
Publisher – Z-man Games
2-4 Players
90-120 Minutes
Age 12+
1. Ticket to Ride
Ticket to Ride was my first experience with train-themed games. The game is easy to learn, but still a challenge to play. With good planning, you can come out victorious.
To set up the game first layout the board. It represents a map of the U.S. with all the train routes.
- Choose a color and place the corresponding point tracking token. Place the tracker at the beginning of the scoring tracker.
- Deal four train cards to each player and then lay five train cards face up on the table.
- Deal three destination cards to each player.
The goal of Ticket to Ride is to be the player with the most points. You can score points a few ways.
- Place trains.
- Complete destination cards.
- And have the longest train at the end of the game.
- Every time you complete an action that gives points, advance your point tracker.
- Be careful with those destination cards. If you have any incomplete destination cards at the end of the game, you will lose points.
On your turn, you can take one action. You have three actions to choose from.
- Draw two train cards. – Draw cards from either the top of the deck or the face-up train cards on the table. If you draw from the table replace any cards, you took with new cards from the deck.
- Claim a route. - To claim a route, you play train cards from your hand that matches the color and number of the route you want to claim. If you want to claim a purple route with four trains on it, you would have to play four purple train cards. Then you place your pieces on the board to finish claiming your route.
- Draw Destination cards.
Whenever any player has two trains or fewer, every player takes only one more turn. All players then calculate their final scores. Add or subtract for destination cards. The player with the longest continuous train gets ten points. The player with the most points wins.
Publisher – Days of Wonder
2-5 Players
30-60 Minutes
Age 8+
