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

Product Information

Interchange station points (interchanges that connect different colors: 2 points per interchange connecting 2 lines, 5 points per interchange connecting 3 lines, 9 points per interchange connecting all 4 lines). Each player starts the game with a sheet and a pencil. The sheet shows a portion of the London underground system, broken up into a 3×3 grid. In each corner, there is also a super small 1×1 region that is separate from the larger corner region. There are stations scattered around the board: circles, triangles, squares and pentagons. The game will be played over 4 rounds, and in each round, players will only draw the specific line that matches the pencil in their hands. The current controller for the round shuffles the eleven Station cards together. They will place the cards face down on the table to form the draw pile. But swapping in a pen for a free pencil is no hardship. To my mind, Next Station London has just enough crunch for when you need a hit but not one that breaks your brain. And you could be forgiven for presuming that it plays too fast and seems too simple for there to be many strategies involved. But I think you would be wrong! Final Score: 3.5 stars – An enjoyable infrastructure-building flip-and-write that misses a couple stops on the way to its destination.

You will now trade pencil colours. Pass your pencil to the left. Then play the new round with the new colour. Roll and Write games were once all the rage; every time that you looked around, there was a new one to try. After a while, I’ll admit that they all felt a bit same-y, and my enthusiasm for the genre diminished a bit. That being said, I continue to be impressed with the RAW designs from Matthew Dunstan – and we’ve reviewed a number of his recent designs here on the blog: Aquamarine and Voyages – as well as a board game which feels like a RAW, The Guild of Merchant Explorers. Given this recent pedigree, I was actually pretty jazzed to get a chance to try this one out. There are four pencil power cards in the game and are shuffled as part of set up. One of each of the cards is assigned to a coloured pencil at the beginning of the game. These powers will move around with the specific coloured pencil but can only be used once per round.The game lasts four rounds and in each round players will be drawing networks from their starting departure station to another station. Each player starts off with a different coloured pencil, representing a different line. After each round pencils are passed to another player and after four rounds and each player has drawn networks of all four underground lines, the game ends and points are awarded. Set-Up Next Station: London features a relatively simple ruleset and action design space. The game plays from one to four players in about twenty-five minutes. Each player is given a sheet featuring an abstract map of London with thirteen districts displayed as a grid. Within these grids are symbols that represent stations, as well as some that feature compass points to designate them as tourist destinations. Two different color sets, one of which is the round time. You want to see blue drawn if you’re to expand that line! When drawing a section, you must follow the dotted lines printed on the map. You may not connect two stations that are not connected with a dotted line.

a b "Part D: Annexes" (PDF). Better Rail Stations. Department for Transport. 2009. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 June 2011 . Retrieved 2 April 2010. The artwork may not be for everyone, but I welcome the overall vibe. The bold colours and style feels retro while being modern, a bit like much of the underground artwork. For want of a better way of putting it, they have made it feel very ‘London’.

Setup

In each round you will use one of the four colored pencils included with the game. Each round you will use a different color. Decide whether you are going to use the Shared Objective and/or Pencil Power cards. It is not recommended that you use either until you are familiar with the game.

The game ends after the fourth round, when all players have drawn their network. Add together the points scored, the most points wins! After you have completed scoring the last line you created, the current round is almost over. You need to complete some cleanup before you start the next round. If the last round was the fourth round, the game will end. There is also one station card which is wild and can be used to connect to any shape. Generally, you can only connect to a new station from either end of your line using the prescribed paths, and lines of different colours cannot cross.Randomly select 2 of the 5 shared objectives. These 2 independent objectives remain visible for the whole game. Each player scores 10 extra points at the end of the game for each completed objective.

The artwork by Maxime Morin is vibrant and playful. There isn’t much beyond the Thames representation on the maps though that relates to London. The sheet could truly be any city, and the people in the art feel like they are from a generic business graphic design project. As such, the theme certainly relates to the breezy flip-and-write, if not quite inspired, and you can see where if successful this could spawn additional Next Station games for different cities. It’s a shame that this game didn’t come with different maps to try. The variability would be a nice addition. Also, while the colored pencil powers are certainly fun (wish there were a couple more options), the shared objectives module is not as great. The objectives are pretty easy to achieve and we’ve not felt that they’ve added much to our sessions with everyone scoring the same for them. It must also be noted that the final interchange scoring can be unnecessarily difficult as you scan through the map to find them. Final Thoughts: 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. Outside of the final comparison of scores, there’s not much here that provides an extroverted excitement. Yet, there’s something satisfying about the way that each player utilizes the same card draws for different lines and how a simple decision to draw a line in a certain direction can cause tension for the next draw. If there is a tie, the tied player that scored the most points from one single Underground line wins the game. If there is still a tie, the tied players share the victory. Next Station London Advanced ModulesWhen this card is flipped over, the next Station card is immediately flipped over as well. As the card revealed after the Railroad Switch was a circle card, you will draw a line to a circle station. To score the interchanges you will first count up how many lines connect to it. Interchange stations score points as follows: The game includes a simple Beat Your Own Score solo mode. In a multiplayer solitaire type game, there is no reason why it cannot be played solo. And although I usually like an AI to gun for, I am very happy simply trying to optimise my own network. If not, the controller will flip over another card. You will follow the same process as the previous card. Construction Rules Most of the cards show a station type (shape), and you could draw a line from any end of your current line to a station of matching shape to that on the card. You are not obligated to draw a line if you do not want to. You must follow the grey line possibilities on your sheet. You cannot cross through a previously written line nor can you return to a station already on the current line (i.e. don’t make a loop).