Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Game Review – Nippon Rails



It has been a while since I have written a review of one of the Empire Builder series of games so this week I will review one of the less common ones out there:  Nippon Rails.

The game is set in the land of the Rising Sun, Japan and like all games in the Empire Builder series is a game about developing and using a rail network in that country.

Nippon Rails plays like all of the other Empire Builder games.  It uses the unique feature of the Empire Builder family of games, the free form building of track.  The player uses special crayons that are included with the game to draw their track on the board.  Between games the marking from the previous game are erased from the game so that in the next play of the game the players start with a fresh board.

Game play is fairly simple.  The player gets three demand cards at the start of the game.  Each of the demand cards has three different load demands on them.  In order to complete the card, a player must deliver one of loads on a card to the city that needs the item.  Once the load is delivered the player discards the demand card and gets a new on in its place.  If the player does not like the demand cards they have they can opt to lose a turn and replace all of them.

A turn goes as follows.  The player moves their train along their track on the board, and then builds any additional track they need or upgrade their train before passing the turn.  The amount of movement the train can take depends on the size of train they have.  The starting train moved 9 spaces and can carry 2 loads.  The super freight, which is the best train can move 12 spaces and carry 3 loads.  During the build phase the player can spend up to 20 million yen to upgrade their train or build additional track.  Tack costs are the same as other games in the series, 1 million yen for plains, 2 million yen for mountains, 5 million yen for alpine, +2 million for a river crossing, and +3 million for a inlet crossing.  In addition there is an option to build a tunnel from Honshu to Hokkaido for 20 million yen.   In order to win Nippon Rails you must be the first to connect the four major cities and have 250 million yen. 

As with all the games in the Empire Builder series, Nippon Rails can be slow for players that are new to the game, mostly because they are not familiar with the map and where the loads originate from.  Because of this, I always recommend that new players play with the fast start rules to help speed the game along.  In the case of Nippon Rails those fast start rules are the player starts with five demand cards and they must discard down to three by the end of the pre-build.  The train speeds are increased from 9 to 12 for Freight and Heavy Freight and 12 to 16 for Fast and Super Freight.   The Tax Card is ignored.

The thing that I like about the current addition of Nippon Rails is that they made it possible to win the game if you start in the north.  In previous editions if you started anywhere be in the south, you were guaranteed to lose the game. 

The thing that I do not like about the game is that because of the shape of the board there is only one viable option to win the game.  You need to build your north south track as quickly as possible and do one or two delivery runs along that track to win.  The other issue with the game is that unlike the other games in the series the number of players for this game is 2 – 4 instead of the standard 2 – 6 because the board is so narrow.

If you are looking for a game to try in the Empire Builder series of games, this is not your best option.  You are much better off trying either Empire Builder or Eurorails.  Even though they tried to fix some of the problems that the first edition had they just cannot get around the problem of the shape of the board.  With this in mind I only recommend Nippon Rails for players who are completing their collection of Empire Builder games and those that really want to play a train game based in Japan.

If You Are Interested In Purchasing This Game:


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