Blue Orange | Next Station - London | Board Game | Ages 8+ | 1-4 Players | 25 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

The game lasts four rounds and in each round players will be drawing networks from their starting departure station to another station. I kind of wish I had the shelf for these, and maybe I’ll get one eventually, but there’s a ton of these games that all have the same general profile and footprint. If you select this option when starting a solo game, and have enabled "Share data with Blue Orange" in the game's settings, you will be dealt a solo game with a pre-shuffled deck of cards for the day. Add in the Pencil Powers and the Shared Objectives, and you’ve got a game that’s a very different animal, every time you play.

In Next Station: London, the city of London has commissioned you to redesign its underground network! Figuring out when to use your power each round can be tough—use it too soon, and you may regret it when a better opportunity comes up later.

It also made it a lot harder (for some people) to get a lot of interchange stations because of the paucity of stations on those short lines. In each round, the owner of the card can use the action once (flipping it over to show it has been used) and take advantage of the special effect on the card. You can also (or in lieu of Shared Objectives) use Pencil Powers, assigning one power to each pencil color; those powers will pass with the pencils, each round. I would have preferred more options for the maps, but maybe that would have increased the cost of the game.

That’s the basic game, but including in the box are two mini expansions or advanced modules that allow for more scoring objectives and opportunities.Ultimately this is a multiplayer solitaire experience as players pass around pencils and puzzle out the best way to draw their current line to maximize points.

Next Station: London gives you some tough choices to make: since the score for your line is the number of districts multiplied by a number of stations within a district, you need a bit of both. This, coupled with points for crossing the Thames, as well as the need to connect multiple colors to a single station, all add a lot of fun tension for such a short experience. The Railroad Switch card and the two “Joker” cards (which give players the right to use any of the four station symbols) are easily the most important ones in the game to provide flexibility, so if they show up, scoring bonanzas may occur.

On each turn draw a line to complete a section of their line with their coloured pencil – making sure they are following the construction rules. Interchange Bonuses are pretty helpful, though, especially if you can get three or four lines through one Station. Scoring in Next Station London is tight at both two and three players and the solo challenge has been a treat. Your aim is to score as many points as you can by optimising the routes of the four underground lines on your map of London. As part of set up, the five shared objectives are shuffled and two are randomly drawn and placed face up in the play area.

In this way, you can intentionally draw a line from the middle of your existing network into other parts of your map. Our ultimate guide to board game cafes has everything you need to know about what a board game cafe is, or how to find one in your area! You never know how long a round is going to last, but with only ten cards of each color (the eleventh card being a junction option), players can easily press their luck by knowing which symbols are still in the draw pile. Here is the bold statement though: if I had to choose between the two, this would stay ahead of Metro X.

One card is a Railroad Switch symbol: when this card is turned over, turn over another symbol card, but you may start your straight line segment from any station on your current line (creating a fork in your track).