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

Product Information

It’s also found a comfortable spot sitting on my desk ready for when lunchtime/post-work decompression time comes around. There are 13 districts total: each corner station is its own district, and then there are 9 more in a tic-tac-toe pattern. Like the art design of Zoom in Barcelona—another Blue Orange production—I love the look and clean lines of the cover art on the Next Station: London box.

That’s enough of an endorsement for anyone looking for a new distraction while not completely forgetting about the desire to explore other areas of the board game world. The game does have a little bit of a solitaire feel, in that you can’t affect another player at all—each player is filling out their sheet independently, and your domain is your own.The Gamewright edition uses slightly different cards, which makes the game a bit easier (though no less fun, in my opinion). 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.

Maybe lacks a little variety after 10-15 plays compared to a game like Rustling Leaves or Welcome To Collector's Edition. I kind of like that from a consistency standpoint, and it makes them all look good together, even if they have very different styles. Next Station: London makes for a fun puzzle for an afternoon or two, but I am having a hard time imagining a world where I play it 20-30 times.The game lasts four rounds and in each round players will be drawing networks from their starting departure station to another station. Try not to draw too many lines that cut off other routes; you can’t cross anything you’ve already done. Each of these is worth 10 points if you achieve the objective by the end of the game using a combination of your four Underground lines. Every round each player has one of the four coloured pencils (pink, purple, green, and blue) and you flip over cards from a small stack of station (pink and yellow) and street (blue) cards. The downside is that this one is truly simultaneous solitaire – there is no interaction at all between players other than handing them a new color of pencil.

The station cards come in two colors, blue and pink, representing the street-level stations and the underground stations. D] Upkeep – (also probably doesn’t have to be a phase on its own) – pass your pencil to the player to your left.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). Splitting your line gives you a third (sometimes a fourth, with Pencil Powers) way that you can expand.

You'll be flipping over cards, drawing in the new sections of tunnels onto your map all in an attempt to optimise your 4 tube lines as best you can. Any time you connect to a starburst station, you mark off a starburst icon at the bottom of the score sheet. If there are fewer than four players, set the unused pencils between the players (equally distributing them, as best you can). You are awarded points by the Mayor based on a number of things; how many districts your line passes through, how many stations you connect into in your busiest district, how many colour based interchanges you establish, and how many tourist sites you pass through.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.