Board Game Review: Isle of Trains: All Aboard

Today, I have a small box train themed game to review thanks to a fairly recent successful Kickstarter campaign.  I ordered Isle of Trains:  All Aboard from Kickstarter and am happy to report that the game delivered as expected.  Now, the real question:  Is the game actually any good?!

Isle of Trains:  All Aboard is designed by Seth Jaffee and Dan Keltner and is published by Dranda Games. The game itself is a reworking of an older game simply called Isle of Trains that was released back in 2014.  As you can see from the above photograph, the Kickstarter boxes are all serially numbered.  The project delivered in July of last year and since that time I've played the game a number of times both in person and over on Board Game Arena.  

Let's dive in!

Game Summary:

In Isle of Trains:  All Aboard you are trying to win by collecting the most points.  Points can be gained by building out your train, constructing buildings, delivering passengers, and delivering goods.  

Game Setup:

Isle of Trains:  All Aboard is basically a card game with a few extra bits.  As such, the set-up process is super easy.  Basically, you place out the six destination cards along with their name plates and a random passenger tile for each location.  Then, turn three cards from the supply face up and place out the train track (with train meeple) that serves as the "timer" for the game.  Place the scoring tokens in a pile within reach of players.  Give each player a level 1 train engine (not shown above) and then deal each player two cards.  Finally, each player takes two random passengers from the bag of passenger meeples.  You are now ready to begin play!

How to Play:

On your turn, you will do two actions from a list of four possible actions (you may repeat the same action twice).  The basic actions are:

1. Take
2. Build
3. Load
4. Deliver

Take:  The Take action is simple:  Take 1 card from the face-up display or from the top of the train deck, or you can take one random passenger from the bag.  Passengers taken in this way go into your supply next to your train engine while cards taken go directly into your hand.

Passengers are color coded to correspond with one of the available cities in the game.  For example, only green passengers can be delivered to Flint Beach (with the green name plate) while only orange passengers can be delivered to Camp Eagle (with the orange name plate).  I should also note that the Kickstarter version of the game came with the lovely wooden meeples with great screen printed details. 

Build:  To build, you play one card from your hand onto your play area by paying the cost of the card.  All costs can be considered as "discard this many cards to play the new card."  Every card in Isle of Trains: All Aboard has multiple uses, including being worth 1 gold when discarded to pay for a building or train car.  

There are three main types of cargo cards in Isle of Trains:  All Aboard, they are hoppers (for coal), tankers (for oil) and boxcars (for crates).  There are also coaches (for passengers) as well as a litany of cabooses (all with unique abilities).  The train cars (and engines) each come in three possible levels (Level 1, Level 2, or Level 3) with the higher levels being worth more points but also much more expensive to play.  For example, in the above picture you can see the three different levels of hoppers.  The bottom (red) hopper is a Level 3 and it costs 7 cards to play.  While that might seem impossible for a game where you have to have no more than five cards at the end of your turn, there are a few ways to play big cards.  Perhaps the easiest way is instead of paying 7 outright, you can first play a Level 1 or Level 2 hopper and then on a future turn you can play the Level 3 hopper as an upgrade and only have to pay the difference between the original hopper and the new one (you can freely upgrade from Level 1 to Level 3 if you have the cards to pay for the upgrade)!

There are several considerations to take into account when playing out new train cars including the weight limit of your engine.  The large red dial in the bottom right corner indicates how heavy the car is for the engine to pull, you cannot have a total train weight that is higher than the power of your engine!  You'll also notice that there is an ability at the top of each train car, that ability comes into play during a load action.

In addition to train cars, there are also several buildings that you can build.  Building a building works the same way as adding to your train in that you must discard cards equal to the cost of the building.  Each building offers a unique reward and each player may only construct one building during the game (unless you get the specific caboose that allows you to have two buildings).

Load:  To load, you either take a card from your hand or a passenger from your supply and place it on an appropriate train car (or engine).  

Interestingly, you may load onto your train OR any of your opponents (following all placement restrictions, of course).  If you load onto an opponent's train car (or engine) you get to take the special ability of that car/engine.  For example, in the above photo if my opponent loads a crate into my Level 1 boxcar, then my opponent will get to draw four cards.  Of course, I then get a free crate (which I can use for the deliver action).  You need to be careful when loading something in someone else's train that the benefit you receive outweighs the free cargo that you are giving them!  

It should be noted that each card also can serve as a specific type of good (coal, oil, or crate) based on the small icon on the middle of the right-hand side of the card which gives you yet another consideration to keep track of while playing!

Deliver:  Finally, to deliver you take the cargo from your train cars to fulfil a contract and/or passengers from your train cars to matching color destinations.  

To deliver a passenger, you simply take a passenger and place it on the leftmost space on the appropriately colored track and then take the reward you cover up.  To deliver a contract, you must have the appropriate cargo.

For example, to deliver a contract to Flint Beach, you need one oil and one crate.  If you manage that, you'll gain six points.  After delivering the initial contract, you then take the card to work on one of the two secondary contracts (shown on the right-hand side of the card).  Those will require even more cargo...and if you manage to also deliver the secondary contract, you could then go back to the main board and try and claim a new destination by delivering yet again!  

While the available actions are certainly easy enough, there's a surprising amount of tough decisions to be made given such a simple framework.  The biggest difficulty in the game is managing your hand of cards because at the end of your turn you must have no more than five cards in hand.  Since many cards cost more than five, it takes some finesse!  

Winning the Game:

The winner of Isle of Trains:  All Aboard is the person with the highest point total when the train reaches the end of the track (the amount of "steps" the train has to take for the game to be over depends on player count).

My Thoughts:

I definitely enjoy playing Isle of Trains:  All Aboard.  Once you get a handle on the iconography (which is a little tricky but the rule book is quite good), the game flows quickly and easily.  In a two player game, Isle of Trains:  All Aboard can be a tactical match while in three or four players there's incentive to help the person doing the worst by loading up their trains (while you just so happen to also get some nice bonuses for doing so).  

Since I have the Kickstarter version, I should note that in addition to the nice passenger meeples, I also have a few extra passenger tiles along with an extra destination (and an extra engine card) that can be used to add a bit more variety to the game.  

There's also a solo mode in the rule book which looks interesting but I haven't yet had a chance to try that mode out so I cannot comment on it any further for now.

Lastly, a big "thank you!" to Dranda Games for packing Isle of Trains: All Aboard in as small of a box as possible.  Like any collector of virtually anything, my board game shelves are always bursting at the seams so having a small box with a lot of game inside is definitely appreciated.  Don't take my word for it though, look how tight the box is when all of the components are inside:

That's a thing of beauty, no wasted space - and yet, it doesn't take complex diagrams to get everything to fit inside.

The Bottom Line:

Pros:

• Fairly easy-to-learn
• Quick playing
• Scales well 2-4 players
• Solo mode included 
• Great components
• Small box footprint
• Quality components
• Fun, light game

Cons:

• Iconography takes a bit of time to get used to
• Multiuse cards can be confusing for new players
• Some cabooses are much better than others!

Overall Score:  

8.  Isle of Trains:  All Aboard earns a solid 8/10 in my book (using Board Game Geek's rating scale - see below).  This is a fun game with quick set-up/tear down as well as a quick playtime and yet there are plenty of interesting decisions to make.  It's also a rather rare game in that it does have player interaction but it's all positive (you can't really hurt the other players in any meaningful way, all you can do is help them a bit less than you help yourself)!  I'll also note that this is available to be played over on Board Game Arena and I'm always up for playing it (you can find me as NachosGrande over on BGA)!  

Note:  I am using Board Game Geek's rating scale to come up with my score. 

Board Game Geek's Rating Scale:

10:  Outstanding - will always enjoy playing

9:  Excellent - very much enjoy playing

8:  Very good - enjoy playing and would suggest it

7:  Good - usually willing to play

6:  Ok - will play if in the mood

5:  Mediocre - take it or leave it

4:  Not so good - but could play again

3:  Bad - likely won't play this again

2:  Very bad - won't play ever again

1:  Awful - defies game description