Trains - Tips & Strategies

When you feel like you have the game well in hand, it’s time to shut it down and count points. There are a few ways to accomplish this: run out of Station Markers to place (possible but unlikely), run out of your Track Markers to place (highly likely), or deplete any four of the buy piles other than the Trash (fairly likely). If you are paying attention to what people are buying, or are using a heavy rail strategy to thwart others’ VP buys, you can command the tempo of the endgame. Using a high-production turn to finish out multiple piles which are running low can abruptly end the game and cause your opponents frustration. Just be sure to time the ending and your points position correctly.

When placing your first rail tokens on your chosen city board, there are several strategies you can consider. Which strategy you choose to employ will depend on where you fall in the placement order, as well as how many opponents you have.

Two players: Whoever places second will dictate the tone of the game. Either both players will be ruling their own chunk of the board, effectively playing parallel solo games, or there will be fierce competition from the start. Competitive two-player allows for more opportunism in the form of building into your opponent’s fully loaded cities, but since there are only two people, there is no solid advantage to any single person.

Three players: Under most circumstances, the first two players will stake out the largest cities on the map (the ones which can hold three stations). The last player here should take care — there will inevitably be competition for at least one part of the board in the end, but if the first two players have built far away from each other, you should place towards the middle of the board, in a position that lets you opportunistically grab for points from either of your opponents. If you are the middle player, it may be beneficial to stake out that central position first to force the final player into a general region of the board.

Four players: These games will always end up being contested on the board. The second and third players are in the most interesting spots — their most successful tactics will likely involve finding an edge of the board where there is plenty of room to develop (lots of chained cities and remote locations), as far from the first player(s) as possible. The final player here needs to decide whose position looks more enticing as far as point grabs goes, and also must consider if the first three placements have left one player relatively alone on the map — a defensive containment strategy against that player is probably the best move. If you can do that while leaving an opening to reach out to the other two players’ cities, then you should do reasonably well.

If you plan on building out your rails quickly, avoid boxing yourself in with terrain. A city space surrounded by mountains is much tougher to establish board position from rapidly than a city with one or more plains spaces surrounding it.

Tourist Train is debatably an overpowered card. Whatever you do, don’t let a single player buy them all up or you’ll get left behind on the point track. Make it a priority to buy them up as much as you can.

If there’s one thing I learned from playing the game is the fact that some will indeed use the Big Money play, buying the money cards while spending it on those victory point cards. A good tip I decided to try out is trying to surround them in their city in order to make them pay to get out and at the same time, giving you the chance to expand on other cities nearby.

Often times, this still doesn’t work but you can also try to take the bulk of the money cards as well. Knowing what they are trying to do, you can try to stop them from going all out on cards as well, give or take which ones you decide to use.

Holiday Timetable is an “invest” Action card, purchasable for 3 Money, which can be trashed as an Action to produce 3 Money. At first glance, it seems pointless: why spend money on something that makes the same amount of money only once, instead of getting a reliable 2 Money production out of Express Train, for example?

When drawing only 5 cards a turn, your early hands will usually be 4-5 Money from Normal and Express Trains, but if you draw the Holiday Timetable you bought plus three Normal Trains, you have 6 Money with which to buy the Limited Express Train (which produces 3), jumpstarting your early economy. Not only that, but because HT trashes itself for the cash, it no longer clogs up your deck, and you’ll draw that Limited Express one card sooner after reshuffle.

If the hand economy doesn’t work out — if you have a HT card in hand and can’t get to a good large purchase — it is perfectly good strategy to trash one HT to buy another. Since there are only ten cards in the stack, denying more of them to your opponents is a worthwhile endeavor.

Instead of expanding your empire to claim territory, cities, and remote locations, hone your deck into a turbo-economy machine and make a late-game flurry of VP buys. Executing this strategy requires discipline, but it can be very effective.

1) Don’t build track or expand stations at all; this way, you won’t get any waste clogging up your deck. Note, however, that you may need to do a little of this to keep from tipping your hand.

2) If you can, get Wagon Factory (culls the low-value Normal Trains from your deck) and Temporary Timetable (has an exponentially better impact if you push pure economy). Early Train also has a good snowball effect by placing high-gold cards on top of your deck.

3) Buy the cards that produce the most gold you can each turn.

4) Get some waste-reducing cards as late in the game as you can push it.

5) When your deck is consistently getting 8 gold and better, start grabbing all the VP cards you can. Start with the high-value ones and work down. Use these buys to empty decks and end the game.

This strategy is not without risks. If someone picks up on your strategy, they can splurge the map and end the game before you are ready, but this is a solid strategy that has won Your Humble Advisor several games.

There are several cards which can be very strong if a player is allowed to corner the market on them. Anything that gives you card advantage or cycle, such as Control Room or Information Central, or the VP-granting Tourist Train, will be quickly snapped up by savvy opponents.

Since every randomized card pile only comes with 10 copies of a card, make sure you get in on the action before someone manages to buy a majority share of the copies. It can also be useful to draw attention to another player’s buys, so that you’re not the only one trying to thwart them. The sooner the pile of strong cards is depleted, the sooner they will be unable to fall back on that single-buy strategy.

If there are certain cards that are part of the random setup that you don’t like or think are too powerful, you can just redraw for another card.

For example, if you don’t like Tourist Train, just decide to not play with it and draw for another type of card at setup.