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...
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...
Last month we looked at the Qinghai-Tibet scenario, one of the most recent scenario designs. It’s popular for its depth, a poster-child for Snowdonia’s potential as a scenario-based game. Before that, we looked at the Daffodil Line, an earlier scenario that’s a fantastic place for those with a few games under their belt to hone some essential skills while whetting their appetite for more. Today though we’re going even earlier, to what was once the only alternative to Mt Snowdon: Blaenau Ffestinog. Coming in at an absolutely flyweight 8 cards, Blaenau is a bit of an experiment. A pioneer for the entire scenario concept. How does it stack up? Overview Blaenau Ffestinog offers a few simple but meaningful changes to...
Scenario-based games, regardless of their genre, often follow a similar arc in their scenario design. Early on into their life cycle, they explore small tweaks to the familiar system. Players don’t need to see a lot of change for it to feel like a big difference. Over time though, scenario designs tend to become increasingly experimental or complex. The Qinghai-Tibet scenario (designed by Matt Dunstan and released in the Deluxe Master Set), demonstrates this by making the core worker placement loop significantly crunchier than usual. That twist has proven popular though and Qinghai-Tibet has become a fan favourite scenario because of this. Overview – oxygen There are a few changes in this scenario, but by far the biggest and...
An important part of any great journey is the crossing of the threshold of “home”; those early steps where one is not yet in truly alien territory, but is equally no longer in the comfort of the hearth: Jason and his Argonauts first hitting the open ocean, the hobbits taking their first step out of the shire, the Darling children flying over London with Peter Pan. One would not normally think about such moments in the context of board games, but crafting this emotional beat is exactly the challenge Tony was faced with when making the early scenarios for Snowdonia. This is in part because scenario-based Eurogames were a fairly alien concept prior to Snowdonia. The closest I could find...
