Folks - I’m really digging On the Underground. So I’m pitching to see if anyone else wants to give it a go?
Rules are almost Knizian:
There’s 8 or 9 different subway lines. Divide by number of players (2-4) to figure out how many you, personally, will be controlling.
Each round you lay four pieces of track - any combination of your lines. The only other choice is to replace a track action with “take a branch tile” - and then two branch tiles can be turned in to let you build out from the middle of your line rather than an endpoint.
Then a single passenger takes a trip on the subway, to one or two pre-determined locations based on a deck of cards.
Her route is somewhat constrained:
Least walking trumps all, so she will take the route that requires moving along the fewest trackless segments.
Fewest rail lines - she’ll ride halfway around the city if it means fewer transfers, even if a 3-line path is much more direct than a circuitous 2-line path.
Active player decides between any ties.
You get one point each time the passenger rides your rail. And you get additional points for reaching or connecting other points on the map.
And it all works in a delightful, frustrating tangle of competing priorities and rival track segments.
Yucata has good QOL here as well, as the interface is nothing but the board, and Yucata does the route calculations and keeps track of cities that are already discarded.
Anyone want to try Streetcar Suburb on Abstract Play? Make a route and gather scoring tiles that score based on your route’s adjacency to the cubes that are placed when you gather the tiles.
I’d be curious to give it a whirl! It’ll be a slow game for sure, but I’m curious if it will work… plus, I really need to figure out if I like ARCS or not!
Of my local online gamers, only one has expressed interest. With you, that could make three. I have no idea whether the game is better at three or four, but three would certainly be faster than four. If you are willing to play with an unknown (I’ve only met him twice, seems OK) we could get a game going?
Totally fine. Async and a learning game for all of us, it’ll be slow regardless. I’ll let you know if/when he joins and I set it up. I think he has to fly overseas for a couple of weeks due to visa issues, so it might be an even slower start.
EDIT: game started, links sent. If anyone here is interested in spectating to see how the UI looks, there’s a link for that too:
Spectate HRF