Isle of Trains (2014)

The Game

Isle of Trains: All Aboard won the best card game (strategic) at the 2023 UK Games Expo. When I saw the news, I thought the name of the game sounded familiar. I thought I had the game in my collection, but the box cover looked different. I dug up my copy, and realised it was an earlier version from 2014, named Isle of Trains. It was designed by the same design team - Seth Jaffee and Dan Keltner. The newer version introduces a new element - passengers. Allen gave me Isle of Trains quite some time ago, and I still hadn't brought it to the table. Now that the new edition had just won an award, I had a good justification to bring it out and see what it's about. 

Isle of Trains is a pure card game. Players manage their own trains, using the trains to deliver goods and fulfil contracts. You need to upgrade your train in order to be able to carry and deliver more goods. Contracts are the main way you score points. When the game ends, your train itself will score points. So do the goods you still carry on your train. The most points will likely be from your completed contracts. Highest scorer wins. 

During setup, you use six of the cards to form this island. These six are contract cards. They specify what goods you need to supply to claim them, and they are worth points. The island is just an aesthetic element and has no gameplay purpose. Every player starts the game with one basic engine which can pull carriages with a total weight of 4. If you want to be able to pull more, you need to upgrade your engine. 

On the back of these six contract cards, there are two more advanced contracts you can fulfil. They are worth more points but they also require more goods. When you fulfil a basic contract, you claim it and put it in front of you. You must proceed to fulfil one of the two advanced contracts before you can claim another basic contract from the island. The basic contracts are free for all so they are first come first served. Once you claim a basic contract, the two associated advanced contracts are yours and they are protected. However you are committed to them too. 

A card can be used in three different ways. If you build it, it becomes your engine, carriage or building. You can only have one train. Your train may only have one engine. It can have many carriages, as long as your engine is powerful enough to pull all of them. The most common function of carriages is to carry a specific goods type. Carriages have other functions too. You can only have one building. Buildings help you score bonus points at game end. 

In order to build a card (engine, carriage or building), you need money, and the second way you use cards is as money. If a card costs $4 to build, you have to actually pay 4 cards. To build a $4 carriage, you need to have 5 cards in hand, the carriage card itself, and 4 more cards which will be your payment. 

The third way you use a card is as goods. A card tells you what kind of goods it can become. Normally it's either coal, oil or boxes. Some cards are jokers and can be any type. when you load goods, you place cards onto carriages. 

On your turn you may perform two actions. You options include drawing a card, building, loading one goods card, and delivering any number of goods. When you do loading, you don't necessarily load goods onto your own train. You can load onto an opponent's train, and that's an important part of gameplay. When you load for an opponent, you gain benefits as specified on their carriage. Sometimes you get to draw more cards, sometimes you get to load or deliver more goods. Loading goods for others is often an attractive option, so much so that when you build carriages yourself you will worry about others taking advantage of the bonuses on your carriage. You will have an urge to fill up your own carriages quickly so as not to benefit your opponents. 

Sometimes you need both your actions to do something difficult. Your hand size is 5. If you exceed that at the end of your turn, you are forced to discard down to 5 cards. If you want to build something large, of cost 5 or more, it will be difficult. You will need to spend the first action on your turn to draw more cards (by loading goods for an opponent). Only then by your second action you will have enough cards to pay for expensive cards you want to build. 

This is a building. It helps you score more points at game end. 

The last action type you have is to deliver goods. With one action you get to deliver as many goods on your train as you want. What this means is you can discard goods to draw 2 cards per goods discarded, and you can also discard goods to fulfil contracts.  

Once a certain number of contracts forming the island has been claimed (which depends on player count), the game ends, and the highest scorer wins. 

The Play

I played with younger daughter Chen Rui. We were both new to the game. Isle of Trains is an engine building game. Your engine is literally that small train engine everyone starts with. It won't get you far. You build your train by upgrading that train engine and by adding carriages to it. You may also construct a building to help score more points. All these are part of the game's engine-building. As in most engine-building games, the tricky part is deciding when and how to transition from engine-building to point-scoring. Your engine is your means, but your objective is the points, not the engine. Your engine doesn't have to be perfect or to be the strongest. It is more important to utilise it as much as you can before the game ends to score the most points. If you focus too much on building the engine, you may not be doing enough of point scoring. If you start scoring points too early, your engine may not be strong enough and you will be inefficient. 

In Isle of Trains, your train itself, i.e. your game engine, does score points. The train engine and the carriages have point values. The contracts are the most effective way to score points, but they do nothing to help build your engine. Although it may seem inefficient to start scoring points too early, there is a counter point to that. Contracts on the island are first come first served. So there is an element of racing to get to the one you want before it gets snatched away by your opponents. 

In our game I concentrated on building my game engine, because that's what I enjoy doing. I focused so much on that that I didn't realise the contract I was working towards could be fulfilled by Chen Rui. When she took that contract from the island, she knocked my pacing off. I had to switch to work towards a different contract which needed a different combination of goods. I had to further develop my train before I could claim the other contract. My tempo never quite caught up with Chen Rui's. By the time she completed two advanced contracts, I only had one basic contract done. It was too late for me. When she took the next contract from the island, she would trigger the end of the game. By the time our game ended, I barely managed to complete my advanced contract. The contract I had was a higher-scoring contract, but it was not enough to compete against the quantity Chen Rui had. She had claimed three contracts from the island I had only one. She fulfilled five contracts to my two. My train did score more points than hers, because I did more upgrades, but the point difference in contracts was bigger. 

The half circles at the bottom right corners of the cards mean capacity (yellow) or weight (red). The train engine has capacity to pull weight, and the weight of all the carriages added up must not exceed this capacity. Carriages have different capacities for carrying goods, and usually a carriage can only carry one specific goods type. 

I upgraded my train engine to the highest level. I could pull a weight of 8. 

The Thoughts

I read the rules to Isle of Trains a few months ago, together with the rules of a few other Dice Hate Me card games which Allen gave me. At the time it didn't get me very excited, because it seemed like just another resource collection and contract fulfilment game. Now that I have played it, I would say indeed it doesn't break much new ground, but one thing I do enjoy is that element of how you want to help your opponents load goods. Those are golden opportunities which will likely help you even more. The engine-building aspect of the game is done well and enjoyable. 

Isle of Trains is a mid-weight strategy game, despite being a pure card game. There is some depth to it. The various carriages, buildings and goods are designed to have some character, so the game feels flavourful and not generic.