I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel to Japan earlier this month. It’s a country famed for the efficiency and quality of its trains. Let me tell you, it does not disappoint! While it’s not yet time to discuss the Tokyo Metro scenario in Grand Tour, it’s the perfect time to discuss the Japanese scenario from the master set: Mount Hakone.
This scenario was designed by Hisashi Hayashi, designer of Yokohama and the Spiel de Jahres winning Bomb Busters. He’s not a stranger to train games either having designed Trains (a personal favourite of mine from uni) and String Railways (beloved by designer Tony Boydell). Let’s see his take on Snowdonia!
New resource: lumber
Lumber is a fairly simple resource. It is spent to build hot spring spaces for points and can be traded in for resources using the C action.
The way it is acquired however, is more unusual. At the start of the game, one of the hot spring cards is randomly selected and a marker placed on the 2 indicated actions (See stations below). Whenever a player takes one of those actions, they gain a lumber. This remains this way for the entire game.
Lumber’s payoffs are nice, but only if you’re gaining it incidentally while taking other productive actions. I would only consider taking an inefficient action for the sake of lumber in niche situations where I have few other options.
Track and Overhead Powerlines
Powerlines are an alternate kind of track (seen at the top of these cards). They’re still laid with the D action but players may lay 2 of them for a single steel bar. Any player that places 2 or more overhead markers in a round gets their 3rd worker from the pub for free next round (even without a train). Overhead track can be built even with rubble in the way but must still be built in order “up the mountain”. Finally, overhead powerlines cannot be built on a track card that has already had normal track laid on it.
The VP reward for doing this varies from 2 to 6 depending on the combination of track cards involved. If you can get 4+ points from it, the trade is probably worth it given the additional worker it grants. For any fewer than 4 though, it’s hard to justify since these markers don’t count as track for contracts.
Stations
The main stations are all very similar to Mt.Snowdon here. Not much to say on these, excavation spaces remain strong. Lumber on B or E actions will make these even better.
The hot spring cards (which are each randomly assigned to a station during set-up) are mostly great given that the resource you’re building them with is free. The higher cost ones are better from an action efficiency standpoint. The 2 mixed-cost ones are incredible deals and should be prioritised.
New Conversion option
There is a new option here to convert 2 lumber into 1 iron ore or stone. This… isn’t amazing considering said lumber could be spent gaining victory points. If you have 5 iron ore though, then using this conversion to go up to 6 iron ore so you can still make 2 steel bars could be a handy clutch move.
Surveyor
This is fairly standard surveyor fare. There are better things to be doing with your time. Notably the G action cannot be one of the actions chosen at the beginning for lumber, so this never gets better.
Trains
No. 101 Chi-Ki
Effect - Whenever another player moves their surveyor, move yours as well.
This train is unlikely to be very good. Functionally it gives you a monopoly over the G action but given that’s a pretty weak action, it’s really hard to stomach the 2 coal cost for a worker here.
No. 102 Yu
Effect - Once per round when another player makes a steel bar using the C action, you also gain a steel bar.
At higher player counts, this is likely to pay out a steel bar every round. That sounds amazing, but bear in mind it asks for 2 coal to get a worker and that you paid 2-3 steel to get/maintain it. The outcome is a bit of a gamble: You need to be confident this is going to return 5 steel bars to be worthwhile, but if it goes beyond that, the returns quickly become incredible.
No. 103 Chi-Ki 3rd type
Effect - Once per round when another player takes the C action, you may immediately convert 1 lumber into 1 iron ore or 1 stone.
At higher player counts where the C action sees consistent use, this is strong, netting you a steady stream of extra cubes so long as the lumber markers are on actions you’re keen to take. Unlike the trains above, it can also hire a worker for just 1 coal, which is made relatively more valuable by those expensive trains.
Contracts
The contracts for power lines make building them a lot more viable and are all attached to useful bottom halves. It’s not so big a boost as to make the low VP powerline options worth it though.
Contract 13’s ability to refresh another contract is very powerful because you can use its effect to help fulfil its own conditions so long as you have another contract with a track laying or excavation ability.
Jaya’s Design Thoughts
This scenario sits firmly in the category of “good first scenario after Mt.Snowdon”. It’s overall pretty simple, but the lumber and variable set-up ask players to adapt enough for it to be good training for other scenarios.
I think new players could actually play this several times and learn a lot of good fundamentals from it. Each game changes which actions generate lumber and thus players are encouraged to regularly think about action choices, use them all and get a feel for when the right time to use each of them is. The overhead lines offering alternate ways to get workers also helps nudge newer players to understand that getting a train isn’t necessarily always optimal.
I sadly didn’t get to see Mt.Hakone in my time in Japan, but on my last day while riding the Shinkansen from Osaka to Tokyo, I was lucky enough to see Mt.Fuji (Or Fuji-san) in all its glory. Hakone is only 40 miles away from Fuji… so I got close at least!
On a separate note... We will be demoing Snowdonia at the UK games expo this year! You can find us on stand 3A-370. If you're interested in signing up for a demo - click this link!
We'll also be have a Snowdonia promo pack consisting of crossover trains with other Naylor Games titles! This will be available for £4. It's also available for free to any of our gamefound backers or those that buy a Naylor Games title on the stand!
I also want to make a quick pitch for my own game, currently codenamed "NG6". It's a real-time co-op dungeon crawler. Think Gloomhaven... but in real-time! I don't think it's quite like anything else out there, you can sign up here!
Finally, we're looking for keen players to take part in late-stage playtesting of Special Edition and Grand Tour scenarios, Solo mode and Campaign mode! This will provide valuable data for final validation and game balance.
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