Snowdonia Board Game First Impressions

Snowdonia builds tracks to the top of Snowdon.

If you can get your guys out of the pub.

The peaks of Snowdonia rise before you, encased in mist, their summits barely visible. The highest is Snowdon (Wyddfa) herself at 1,085 metres. The year is 1894, and the Snowdon Mountain Tramroad and Hotels Company Limited has been formed to build a branch line from Llanberis to the summit. You can scarcely believe it’s possible!

You have 2 workers and you’ll be placing them in the 7 spaces to perform actions.

Actions

These are…

Stockyard – Up to 3 of what I think are Iron and Ore maybe? (I’ll call them orange and Silver cubes :)) including up to 1 coal. These are drawn randomly out of a bag each turn so they can be rare some turns, not others.

When you fill-up these resources spaces White cubes can come out which can change the game a little bit.

If you’re the 4th player to go here, you get to be the first player next time.

Excavate – Collect dirt around the outside of the board (the track) in order. If you clear a card you get to put a token of your colour on it to claim it and score points

Works – Change 3 Orange cubes for a Rail or 2 Dirt for a Silver cube.

Lay Track – Spend Rails to claim track cards around the board, in order.

Build – Either spend Silver cubes to claim a space on a station or spend rails to claim trains.

Trains give you points and a bonus for actions but also allow you to spend coal at the beginning of the turn to take your 3rd worker out of the Pub for that round.

Site Office – Take a contract card. These give you bonuses too and lots of end-game points for meeting certain conditions.

Advance Surveyor – Move your surveyor around the outside of the board, track to track. This gives end-game scoring too.

Weather

After placing workers and resolving actions, you do the weather. The weather is on the back of contract cards so when they’re laid out the weather chart will be updated. The weather affects the conversion rate of the laying track and excavating.

You score for ownership cubes on Station cards and Tracks, Contract Card bonuses, Trains, and how far advanced around the track your surveyor is.

Snowdonia Summary

Snowdonia is a nice game… untidy with cards all over the place but pretty cool.

It’s a ‘Get this to get that to trade for those’ type game with a quite dull theme though,… better games are available I would think.

But still, Snowdonia is a nice game, just not for me when it comes to a 2nd or 3rd play.

Jesta ThaRogue