Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition

Roll the dice, draw routes, and try to create a better transportation network than your opponents!

1-4 players, ages 8+
Playing time: 30 minutes
Designers: Hjalmar Hach & Lorenzo Silva
Artwork: Marta Tranquilli

Publisher: Horrible Guild
https://www.horribleguild.com/

Railroad Ink is a roll & write game: each round starts by rolling the dice. Players draw the routes shown on the dice simultaneously, trying to connect the exits shown on their player boards, but also creating the longest railway and highway as possible.

Each player must draw all 4 routes shown on the white dice, when playing with an expansion the results of the green dice are optional.

After 7 rounds (or 6, when playing with expansion), the game ends and players score points for their connected exits, longest highway and railway, filled central spaces, and lose points for each end of a route that doesn’t connect.

When Railroad Ink was released a couple of years ago, I immediately fell in love with this game: it’s easy to explain, plays superfast and each game is completely different.

I was very keen on trying out these new versions and I have to admit, it makes the game even better. Not only did they add some interaction by introducing goal cards, also some of the spaces on the player boards now show structures, allowing you to gain a special effect when connecting them to your network.

This Lush Green Edition comes with 2 expansions:

– Forest Dice: When drawing routes, you may additionally draw the results shown on the green dice, and create forests. At the end of the game, you’ll gain extra points for your largest and second largest forest.

– Trail Dice: The green dice of this expansion show hiking paths, and your goal is to connect as many stations as possible through these trails.

Extra variability is always a good thing, and that’s exactly what these expansions do: by offering different additional ways to score points, replayability goes through the roof!

I’m already looking forward to trying out the other new expansions, but one thing I’m already sure of: they’ll make sure Railroad Ink stays at the top of my favourite roll & write games for a long time!