A review of Mini Rails, a rail building and stock buying train game.

Title: Mini Rails

Year Published: 2017

Designer: Mark Gerrits

Publisher: Moaideas Game Design

Players: 3-5

Game Time: ~60 minutes

Set-up Time: ~5 minutes

Ages: 13+

Theme: Trains

Mechanisms: Route Building, Stock Holding

How to win: Have the largest value of stocks at the end of the game.

Game Description

Mini Rails distils the essence of the stock-buying and track-laying game genre into a tight experience that can be finished under an hour.

Set Up, Game Play & Game End

Mini Rails Round-Up

The box says this is up to 60 minutes per game. But if you’re experienced I fully believe you can get this game done in 15-20 minutes. Each player only takes 12 actions per game so in a 5-player game that’s 60 actions. It doesn’t take a minute per action. In fact, sometimes your move is so obvious that an action it will only take seconds.

This is because your second action will be the one remaining action of the two you can take in a round. So if it’s buying stock, buy the best stock. if it’s lay rails lay the best rail. If you’re late in turn order and options are limited, this is an easy move.

It’s a quick game is what I’m saying, it’s no 1846 🙂

But, just because choices are quick and sometimes limited, it doesn’t mean they aren’t important. Every share will provide you with a score, every track will adjust a share and every disk taken is not going on to the taxation track.

The taxation track is a fun part of the game. You can use to eradicate your negative points or your opponent’s big scorers if you can…

It’s something else to consider and remember, this is a fairly light game that plays in less than an hour that some 18XX-loving friends enjoyed.

The only issue I have with it is that I don’t feel like I have much control. In most of the games I’ve played, I didn’t really know what to do. I just played stuff and hoped. This game requires a lot of hope that things go your way.

Rating

A fun, quick and fairly strategic game.

I give it 7/10

Mini Rails First Impressions June 2018

This is a brief overview of gameplay including my first impressions.

Jesta ThaRogue