Recent Train of Thoughts have all been about more complex scenarios. With all the excitement of Grand Tour and Special Edition building… I wanted to go back once again to the earlier end of Snowdonia’s scenario catalogue for some reflection. I find the scenarios of Snowdonia’s youth offer very interesting opportunities to compare the game’s origins to its form in the present day. Like turning around on a mountain hike to look down at how far you’ve come, it’s pleasing to play a simpler scenario and think about just how much the game’s design has advanced since then. The early scenario we'll be looking at today is the Britannia Bridge.

Menai Straits/Britannia Bridge

These two cards are found right at the start of the line with the “Menai Straits” side face-up. They can be built on for four stone, causing the card to flip to its Britannia Bridge side. The player that did this gets to place an ownership marker in the bottom space of the revealed station and may use that marker as track when scoring contracts.

Four stone for a track with no inherent points is an okay deal, it’s a little easier than doing the work to make steel. Track is hard to come by in this scenario so it could pay dividends with the right contract.

The game cannot progress until these are built so If you manage to grab the early stone in this scenario, you will gain a lot of control over the tempo of the early game.

Track

There are only nine track cards total in this scenario. There are one or two bridge cards in addition to this depending on player count, but even then, this is a short scenario.

There’s less rubble and track opportunities as a result so be careful not to overdo it on contracts by accident.

Stations

Most of the station spaces here are in line with those found in Mount Snowdon. There are, however, a few standouts. The excavation spaces on stations are above averagely generous, most of them scoring five points for four rubble. Notably, the very first station has excavation spaces on it creating an exciting source of early competition. The spaces on the flipped Britannia Bridge are tasty scoring opportunities worth pursuing over the singular steel spaces elsewhere. There are also three spaces on the line offering track for contracts as a reward which given the lack of regular track could prove invaluable. The space on Valley costing a single stone for a track is a misprint and should cost one steel.

Finally PS Hibernia on Holyhead offers 12vp for any seven resources. This is good if you already have a mix of resources going unused at the end of the game, but the stone spaces are generally superior value otherwise. This space also isn’t allowed to be used on a building contract. Which is minor but does hurt its position.

Contracts

Contracts 28 and 29 provide a novel scoring method. You need one marker in every station from 1-7 and one on Britannia bridge for contract 28 (Or just a run of 6 for contract 29). This is a big commitment but it does provide a sweet payoff. If pursuing these, watch out for events completing one of the early stations. If it does this before you’ve got there, you’re locked out of scoring these.

Contract 27 only has its bottom half changed from a bonus surveyor move to an extra build action. This is a small buff to the card but overall I still see 2VP per coal as a weaker contract.

Trains

The Dawn Raider gives players a very unique ability. When a lay track event occurs, this train allows you to hijack proceedings and lay that track instead of the game (provided you can pay the required steel and that there’s no rubble in the way).

This is potentially very powerful, functionally offering a free action. But it’s more impactful than just that. By taking the spaces usually taken by the game, you’ve doubled the pressure on the other players. The few track cards left will be precious to other players, but if you can get them, you will cement an already powerful position and leave them doubly behind. 

That said, the train does have a downside in the sense you have little control over when events happen. If you’re going to use this train, you’ll want to have a few steel bars to hand at all times. Because of this excess you’ll be carrying, keep an eye on the end game as well. As soon as it’s looking like you’ve had your last “lay track” event of the game, you should leverage any remaining steel you have asap as otherwise it’s a lot of wasted potential.

Surveyor

It’s a fairly normal sad day for the Surveyor. Fifteen points (and one resource as they cross the bridge) for six actions is below what you could and should be achieving elsewhere.

The Surveyor can’t move far at the start of the game as the bridge blocks their path, but since you don’t really want to be using them anyway, this limitation is unlikely to have much impact.

Jaya’s Design Thoughts

To start with the positive, The Dawn Raider is a very cool train. Events in Snowdonia are almost entirely immutable. No matter what scenario you’re playing, when an event occurs, players usually  just have to let it happen and adapt accordingly. Using the Dawn Raider’s special lay track maneuver feels like you’re cheating, it’s great.

This is also the first debut of Snowdonia’s bridge mechanics. Though they haven’t remained exactly the same, the concept of track built like stations can be seen in many scenarios to come. I quite like that the bridge is right at the start of the scenario as well. It’s an unusual choice but as an experienced player I greatly enjoy having my first few rounds of play shaken up.

But all that said, were Britannia Bridge released today, I think I would ask “Why do we need this?” This scenario feels even closer to Mount Snowdon than Blaenau Ffestiniog. It’s not a meaningful enough variation on the core game to justify the rules and components to me. If I want a light shake up for a newer player, I’ll play Blaenau and if I want the simplest option I’ll choose Snowdon. It just doesn’t feel to me like there’s much need for a scenario in between those two.

However, it was among the first expansions printed for Snowdonia and through that lens I think it’s more interesting. It feels almost as if the designer, Tony Boydell, hasn’t quite struck on just how fantastically versatile his own system is yet. Scenarios today tend to have more flavourful and mechanically interesting core twists, more varied options in stations and unique fleets of trains. Perhaps back then, Tony thought this smaller level of variation was all the system could accommodate. Either way, it is amazing to see just how far Snowdonia scenarios have developed since then. Grand Tour, the ultimate culmination of this, offers up gameplay experiences I think the Tony of 2013 may well have scoffed at as impossible.

How do you feel about Britannia Bridge as a scenario? Do you feel it earns a spot in the scenario roster after all? Are bridges a mechanic you like seeing repeated in other scenarios? Let me know!

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Jaya Baldwin