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Train of Thought Touring Snowdonia - Malta Railway

Today we come to an end of the “Tunnel Trilogy” of scenarios. The first scenario we explored of this trilogy was the Wye Valley Tourer. It felt like an advanced version of the base game, fleshing out most elements of the game without any one particular element stealing the limelight. The next we looked at was the Bluebell Line, which did the opposite, investing most of its changes into the single cricket match minigame. Our final scenario in this trilogy is the Malta Railway. Malta sits perhaps somewhere between the two, having a lot of the versatility of the former but a very strong identity like the latter. New Actions and Resources This scenario uses the Daffodils previously seen in...

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Train of Thought: Touring Snowdonia – Bluebell Line

Overview and main changes Snowdonia is a game about building railways. I’m reminding everyone of this because I’m about to spend most of this article talking about cricket. The Bluebell Line is the next part of the “tunnel trilogy” alongside the Wye Valley Tourer we looked at last time. If you haven’t read that article, I highly recommend reading it before this one. The primary, titular tunnels appear in both. That said, Bluebell has its own quirks in the form of high scoring stations and a cricket match. The cricket match Bluebell’s most standout feature is this sporting event. Players may assign labourers here and their surveyors can also participate if they have reached the card in time. The match...

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Train of Thought: Touring Snowdonia – Wye Valley Tourer

Most scenarios we’ve looked at in this series are great because they create highly specific challenges for players to overcome. Australia taxes players with water and extreme weather, the Daffodil line inverts the excavation mechanic and Qinghai-Tibet asks them to carefully manage oxygen. Today’s scenario goes in a different direction though. Rather than use a lens that highlights a specific game element, Wye Valley Tourer instead adds nuances to multiple systems. This creates something that feels more like a levelled up version of the base game for more experienced gamers: There’s a new type of track worth a tonne of points Stations offer a much broader range of tactics for building The surveyor goes on a pub crawl in a...

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Train of Thought: Touring Snowdonia - Deep dive into Trans-Australian Railway

Last time, we looked at the Jungfraubahn, an explosive climb up a mountain in the freezing cold full of exciting opportunities in the Swiss Alps. Today, we are looking at a scenario that’s almost entirely the opposite: A mostly flat railway through the brutally hot Australian outback that will consistently challenge you. Welcome to the Trans-Australian railway. Let’s explore together. Changes - Weather + Water The first big change is the weather. All 8 of the fog contract cards here are replaced with extreme weather. Extreme weather repeats whatever the current weather type is and then triggers either a drought (if the weather is sun) or a flood (if the weather is rain). Both of these interact with the new...

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Train of Thought: Touring Snowdonia – Jungfraubahn

Today we’re looking at the Jungfraubahn, another of the earlier scenarios released very shortly after the Daffodil line we talked about a few months ago. This closeness in release is telling, I think, as both have a similar feel in terms of complexity level and feel like good “first forays” into scenarios. Daffodil achieved this by adding a new resource and playing with the way excavation worked; Jungfraubahn does exactly the same. Impressively though, the gamefeel it achieves is very different. Let’s explore further. Changes – dynamite Jungfraubahn adds dynamite, and as the title might imply, this resource has an explosive impact on the game. When excavating, players can spend dynamite alongside a single point of excavation to take all the...

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