Russian Railroads

Just to clear the heading from any suspicions, this game has nothing to do with 18xx other than the creators having only 18xx titles on their resume. RRR is as pure a worker placement game as you’ll find.

You are a railroad builder whose goal is to do the most impressive job on the Trans-Siberian RR aka score the most points after 6 or 7 rounds, depending on the # of players. The game contains a main board with the available actions and each player has their own personal board containing 3 railroad lines as well as an industrialization track. On each line you can place tracks of different quality with the higher quality scoring more points. The catch; higher quality tracks can never overtake a lower track so you’ll have to move the lower tracks before moving those you really want to.

Game play is fairly straightforward; on your turn you’ll place some of your workers (1, 2 or 3) on the main board on one action and perform this action. Most of the actions are about moving your tracks, industrialization token or building factories (for the industrialization track) and/or locomotives (scoring and sudden bonuses on the tracks). In addition you can pick up 2 rubles (which can be used as jokers), 2 extra workers for the ongoing round and of course the engineers you can hire. Each round one engineer is available for hire and they all have an action attached that will be available for the one who hired them.

At the end of each round you score points for how far you’ve gotten on each track, up to your locomotive level on that track, as well as points for how far on the industrialization track you are and these points are added to you total. The first couple of rounds there is not a lot of points scored but it quickly escalates and it’s not unusual to see scores of 100+ in the last round.

So, do I like it? Very much so, and I think that might be because unlike other WP games specialization pays off. Already from round 1 you’ll need to have an idea on how you will score those points in later rounds. Wondering a bit back and forth will almost assuredly result in you not winning so the first time you play it you are very likely to lose to someone who has played it before. The thing of beauty though, is that already for your second game you will have a much better picture of what to do.

I played Union Pacific. I played Ticket To Ride. So when a friend said he had picked up ANOTHER train game, I was a little worried. But then he told me that this was a worker placement game. I was intrigued. Was my initial fears met? Or was I in for another strong worker placement game? All aboard to find out.

Components

One of my complaints with Union Pacific and Ticket to Ride were the boring looking board, plastic pieces, and (for UP) paper money. Z-Man games gives us something else with Russian Railroads. The both the main board and individual player boards are bright, well laid out, and (in the case of the main board) dual sided for 3/4 players on one side, and for 2 players on the other.

Wooden meeples are always welcome. As were the wooden railroad tracks. The game features engineer cards. As these can be used as player specific placement spots (more on this later) they are made of nice thick cardboard.

The only complaint some might have is that the game does have a slight cartoony look and feel.

Set-Up

Besides the normal stuff (setting up board, players picking a colour, sorting out resources in to their own piles) there are a few unique setup elements for the game.

First, you need to shuffle the 10 End Bonus cards and remove 2 of them. This gives some slight variation to the game. What gives even more variation is the engineer tiles. While there are 15 tiles, only 7 are used. players will select 4 B tiles, and 3 A tiles and place them on the board on the round markers.

Lastly, players will need to select turn order. Something of note…turn order is not always clockwise or counter clockwise. Determine the starting turn order at random. Then shuffle the starting bonus cards and players will select one each in reverse order. This is nice as it provides a catch up mechanic for the player that doesn’t get to go first. As seasoned worker placement players know, going first is a BIG advantage.

Game Play – Basics

Russian Railroads is a worker placement game. At the start of a round once turn order is decided players will take turns in order by placing a meeple on an action spot and performing the action of the tile.

Of note is that players may use MONEY in place of a worker. This allows for additional actions, and in some cases (buying an engineer tile) players can ONLY use money on these action spots.

Once all players have ran out of meeples, money, or passed, the round ends. Players will score any end round points they are entitled to, and all engineers tiles are slide one spot to the right. In the event that the right most engineer has not been purchased, it is discarded from the game. Players remove meeples and money from the board, and the next round begins.

After the 7th round ends, players will complete all normal end round scoring, as well as score and end of game bonuses.

Game Play – Advanced Tactics

So what exactly do those wonderful worker placement spots allow you to do?

The first type of action is track extension. Each player’s personal player board depicts 3 railroads, which can be independently extended over the course of the game. Depending on how far each track is extended, players will unlock additional bonuses, points, or extra workers.

On top of their being 3 different tracks, there are 5 colours of rail that can be extended on those tracks. Players start with a back rail on each track and unlock the other colours by extended the black rail on the first track. Of note, the colours must be placed in order (black, grey, brown, beige, and white) and the colours can not be extended past the colour that comes before them. For example if a player has black rail on the 2nd section of the 3rd track, then they can only place the grey rail on the 1st spot of that track.

Next are locomotive action spaces. These allow you to purchase a new locomotive and place it to the left of one of the three tracks. Locomotives are used for two things: to unlock bonuses on the tracks, and to score points. One of the nice elements of the game is when you upgrade an locomotive, you can move the old locomotive to an open track. As you can only have 4 total, eventually you will discard some of the trains from the game.

You will find that the locomotive tiles are double sided. The reason for this is that you can only purchase factory tiles, and place them on the factory track at the bottom of your player board. These can be used to score points and unlock actions and bonuses, depending on how far you extend the factory track marker. The marker is moved by yet another worker placement spot.

There are also some basic resources spots (for player order, to gain money, an extra worker, or upgrade tiles).

Finally, I want to mention the scoring. Round scoring is based on your how far your tracks are extended (both rail and the factory track), as well as the colour of the rails on those tracks. Additionally rail tracks score depending on the locomotive connected to the track. What this means is that scoring starts slow (think 2-5 points for round 1) and EXPLODES. Some may not like the super high scores you can get in this game (400+), but it’s great to see the engine you’ve built come in to play.

There is also end game scoring for most engineers, and bonus cards.

Theme

Let’s be honest…this is an abstract cube pusher with a gorgeous skin. Sure the fact that it’s railways makes sliding a cube (shaped like a railroad track) up a line a little thematic, but this game is not for those who require heavy theme.

For most euro gamers, this won’t be an issue. For others…the high end components and artwork should be enough for the worker placement goodness to come in to play.

Replay Value

This is tricky. Because there are only a limited number of types of actions, the engineers don’t add a lot of variability from one game to the next. Plus there is only 1 factory and 3 different rail tracks to master. But the more you play the more you realize that if you can combo two of those tracks together, you can end up with some huge scores.

Still after 10+ plays the game can become a little stagnant and you may not rush to get it to the table. Still, 10+ plays is a solid amount of game.

And Z-Man has seemingly addressed some of those concerns with an expansion giving new player boards with customizable tracks.

Over All Impression.

For the most part this comes down to if you like worker placement, and how important theme is to you.

If you need a rich experience ala Imperial Assault or Betrayal At The House On The Hill, this game is not for you. If you like SOME theme, and prefer it not come across as pasted on, this will be a solid choice.

For worker placement fans this hits a nice complexity/time spot. It’s not as basic as something like Stone Age, but it’s not as dense as something like Caverna.

Russian Railroads also scales very well thanks to the dual sided main board. This is nice for me as I’ve played a lot of two player games of Russian, and the 3-4 player games feels like a fresh experience.

Should you get the game? For most I’d say yes. Again, depending on how much theme means to you, you may want to try before you buy. For others there’s enough game to make your time at the table fun, with just the right amount of worker placement induced tension.