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 mini-game that’s half race and half timing

• The weather gives players more freedom in fog but also disrupts the surveyors

There’s a lot going on here, so let’s dive in!

The surveyor, beer and postcards

Despite the fact that the surveyors are on a pub crawl, they’re more useful than they’ve ever been! In this scenario, the G action has limited spaces and players are given a post card in set-up. When taking the G action, you move the surveyor once, and if the station they reach is serving beer, you may place a player marker there to claim a bonus on your post card. The surveyor doesn’t score at the end of the game but the postcard bonuses include generous helpings of VP, resources and actions so it's well worth it.

That said, the beers are in limited supply and it’s first come, first served. Leave it too late and the rewards will have dried up. If you do fall behind, you can spend a coal to move your surveyor to any station, allowing you to reach pubs that have not yet been emptied.

Regarding the post card bonuses, I’d advise going for the steel bar or extra worker first. The 11 points or “6 points + build” are better in the late game. I would generally advise avoiding the contract bonus unless desperate, you pick your contract after all the workers at the contract office so it’s inferior to just taking the normal F action.

Tunnels

Tunnels are a new form of track card. When excavating them, players spend a stone alongside their excavation point to take 2 rubble from the card and place a player marker there. Once all rubble is removed from the tunnel, it immediately flips and the player markers there grant points. They also contribute towards scoring track contracts. 

Tunnels are one of the most incredible value propositions in all of Snowdonia. It’s most easily shown as a side by side comparison with the usual track laying process:

In the base game, tet’s say we want to lay 3 track on 3-value track cards, and that the work rate is also 3. We will assume no interruptions from other players/events:

Excavating the 9 rubble on the track cards - 3 actions

Collecting 9 iron ore - 3 actions

Converting iron ore to steel - 1 action

Laying the track - 2 to 3 actions

This takes 9 or 10 actions to gain: 9 VP, 9 rubble and 3 track markers for contracts.

Now let’s compare to the process of excavating a 6-value tunnel.

Collecting 3 stone - 1 action

Excavating the 6 rubble on the tunnel - 1 action

This took 2 actions to gain 6 VP, 6 rubble and 3 track markers for contracts.

The tunnel contained 80% of the reward for about 20% of the cost when you take into account that track contracts are the most rewarding in the game.

Don’t give your opponent’s free reign over the tunnels or you’ll really struggle to close the gap. Stone will naturally be in much higher demand as a result of this also, so make sure to grab it!

Weather

The weather effects are fairly simple here. Thinner fog is in effect, meaning only one space of the B and D actions are blocked during fog rather than all of them. And rain prevents surveyors from drinking beer.

Thinner fog will keep game momentum higher. Rainy rounds might feel similar to the foggy ones, since most players won’t want to take the G action at all and the efficacy of B and D actions are reduced by the lower work rate. Think carefully about when you deploy your 3rd worker; the changed G action means there’s no longer a catch-all consolation prize in play.

Stations

There’s a lot going on with the stations in this scenario! Ross-on-Wye offers some resource rewards, though, admittedly, only the 2 iron ore for 1 steel bar is a truly positive return on your investment. Getting a free steel bar in Tintern is nice also.

Monmouth Viaduct and Duke of Beaufort’s Bridge are both exciting, offering a growing number of points for each marker you place there. The best part? They’re a decent exchange even if you only get one marker there. So if you can get 2 or more, your score can really take off!

There are opportunities to get beer as a reward in Monmouth May Hill and Chepstow. This is obviously nowhere near as efficient as just moving your surveyor and getting the beer for free, but it’s still a very good exchange rate for what beer can get you, so if your surveyor is struggling to elbow in at the bar, they’re good options!

Building Kerne Bridge for 8 rubble is also pretty great, given excavation strategies often end up with some spare rubble if they haven’t found the right contracts. 

Contracts

The contracts here, sadly, are less effective. As stated of the original Mt Snowdon’s contract 27, 2 points for coal isn’t that great (though its special effect is cool!). Card 29 is unusual for asking specifically for different stations, it’s a good exchange rate but be careful if you’re investing heavily into the single station strategies of Monmouth Viaduct and Duke of Beaufort’s Bridge.

The tunnel contracts though, really don’t pass muster unless desperate. Player markers on tunnels can be used to fulfil track contracts. Those are worth *so* much more than these, that these really are just consolation prizes. You could score the 5x track card for 40 points and quadruple the offering of contract 8’s equivalent ask.

Trains

All three of these train designs are really unique so we’ll discuss each in full. Note: It is possible the Conveyor Belt and Drunken Worker are promo trains. The Master Set rulebook describes how they work here, but the set-up instructions only tell you to include the Excursion Train.

Excursion Train
When bought, this train takes all the other player’s workers from the pub and places them on this card, sending them on a nice excursion! (Taking them hostage). Other players can get their worker back like normal but they pay the coal to you instead. Any workers left here at the end of the game are worth 5 points.

How good or not this is, depends entirely on player count, the more players, the more workers you send on holiday! (kidnap). At 2 it’s bad, at 3 it’s fair and at 4 or 5 it’s great!

Drunken Worker
The drunken worker is very weird, and not just because he’s apparently a man built with steel. The space he works on becomes unusable the round after. This allows you to pull off some rather unusual maneuvers like locking the first player marker or completely shutting out track or contract actions in lower player count games.

I imagine he’ll be divisive, he opens up unusually aggressive playlines, even for Snowdonia!

Conveyor Belt
This might be the strongest train I’ve ever played with, this train is free, but removes your pub worker from the game. In exchange however, you gain access to a special A action that gives you ALL the cubes in the stock yard above 5 iron, 4 stone and 2 coal. Additionally, you get to take a free C action every round.

I only used the benefits of this train on 2 turns, but in those 2 turns I gained 25 resources and 2 free conversions. Effectively 8.3 extra actions that other players’ trains required steel and coal to make happen.

Snowdonia was designed such that some games can be won without  buying a train. This train however, is free to anyone that wasn’t planning on buying one, making it a huge power spike relative to other players. This scenario even lets the owner spend the coal they gain here on their surveyor!

Jaya’s Design Thoughts

This is a scenario I would enjoy playing any time! It eschews the specicifity of other scenarios to offer a consistently challenging puzzle that will vary a lot depending on who you’re playing with.

I would also expect this to consistently yield high scoring games. Tunnels in general are a big shot in the arm to scoring potential because of how many track markers and rubble they let players rack up at great speed. That won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but I’ve come to enjoy when a scenario has a unique scoring profile. It changes the rhythm of play and challenges you on what to pay attention to and when.

The contracts here are a bit more curious for me. I think flattening the numbers in Snowdonia to make everything perfectly balanced would actually make the game significantly worse. That said, I personally find the gap between tunnel contracts and track contracts a little too vast for comfort. In practice though, this will very rarely cause problems! 

The excursion train is super cute and thematic. The pub workers leaving just to go sightseeing is a funny thematic beat. The conveyor belt, however, I think I would rather play without.

I think the changes to the surveyor here though are fantastic, this is one of those scenarios that makes you feel “Ah, this is how the surveyor should always have worked!”. I especially like that the vision for the surveyor is very different in each case. The options provided by the post card and beer are fun. The limited nature of the action spaces and beer spaces turn the G action into a legitimately exciting and competitive place to be. Snowdonia is at its best when players are all getting in each other’s way and you can’t quite do everything!

If you’d like to learn more about Snowdonia: Grand Tour, our Gamefound preview page is now live! Follow the project here!

If you’re interested in playtesting Grand Tour and are able to make “print and plays”, you can sign up to our playtest mailing list.

Jaya Baldwin