Circus Train
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Number of Players
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1 - 8
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Play Time
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90 Minutes
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Ages
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13 Years and up
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Circus Train is one of the few Victory Point Games that I
have tried. Since they are headquartered
near to where I am I decided that it was about time that I review one of their
games.
The theme of Circus Train is the players are owners of circuses
in the 1920s. They are traveling the
Northeast and Midwest o the United States by train trying to put on shows and
hire additional talent to improve future shows.
Every time a player’s circus performs, the players score the show based
on the demand of the show. If the score
is better than their previous best show, they will receive a bonus in their
payment for the performance. Victory
points are scored at the end of each month for the top three performances and
who has the most of a certain type of performer.
The players move around the board using a set of eight cards
that allow movement and actions to be performed. The players may only play a certain card once
until all of eight of their cards are used.
They may then start reusing them.
The actions included on the train are moving a certain number of cities,
performing, hiring talent, and paying performers.
Each turn 8 – 12 cities have demands for shows and act
looking to be hired. The number
available depends on how late it is into the season whit more being available
later in the season. When the players
get to the cities they must spend at least a turn there to perform the action
necessary to complete the demand. The
later in the season the more money is earned for the performance, but the acts
that are in demand are also more expensive to maintain.
While I like some of the concepts in the game, I found that
the game did not meet my expectations.
The main problem as I see it is that it is has an inherent rich get
richer engine in the game. In other
words if you get a good start in the game odds are that you will win the
game. There are a number of catch up
mechanisms present in the game to help the other players out such as the player
in last place can take an act from the player in the lead a number of times in
the game, but they do not slow down the player in the lead by much and can
actually help them.
The rule book is overly complicated and filled with a lot of
text and there are lots of rules buried in the text that makes the game difficult
to play out of the box. The first time I
was going to try the game, right out of the box I was hoping that I would be
able to read over the rules in 5 – 10 minutes and be able to review them with
the other players and start the game like many other Euros out there. Unfortunately this was not the case and we
had to put the game aside until somebody would have time to go over the rules
or learn it elsewhere. Once the rules
were explained to me, I was baffled at how easy they were compared to the way
that the rulebook made them out to be.
Circus Train is definitely not one of my favorite
games. It does have some potential and I
would play it again to be sociable, but it would not be one of my first choices
to play. If you like rich get richer
type games with overly complex rules then you should take a look at Circus
Train because it may be right up your alley.
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