We have a person in our board game group who just loves trains, so we have started playing a bunch of train games when they are around! Maglev Metro is a train related tabletop game where you and your friends are all competing to be the best maglev line in the town, building up routes and stations, and then picking up and dropping people off to upgrade your line and ensure you are doing well as a train company.
Maglev Metro is a hexagonal tile based game that has some really amazing board game pieces. The trains you will be moving around are metal and have a good weight to them, as well as having plastic detail to show your color. You can slot passengers into these pieces as you move them around the map. There are two map layouts to choose from, Berlin and Manhattan. For the purpose of this write-up we’ll talk about Manhattan. The middle of the board has a hub, where everyone starts, however you will be using your tiles to build up a rail. The tiles can be placed over other people’s route too, showcasing their routes at the same time as yours due to see-through aspects to the tilest. We did have some trouble fitting those in perfectly as the board got filled out, but it’s such a clever idea! Every aspect of this game just feels well thought out and fun.
All of the beautiful pieces aside, let’s get to the gameplay. Each player has, basically, a large card which defines exactly what features your train station can have. You will use robots and other people to unlock specific abilities within your turn. This means you can spend passengers to unlock more seats on your train, to allow you to place more tracks at a time, to upgrade your train to collect different colored meeples and more. Moving these people around your card will cost an action, but it’s often worth changing them around mid-game as you won’t need to build as much as you’ll need to grab more passengers.
You only have a limited amount of actions per turn, so you will need to decide exactly what you want to do before you start spending your turns. You are looking to create a good train line and get a bunch of people to their destinations, but at the same time each player also has a secret goal that will earn them more points at the end of the game, which you need to keep in mind.
Maglev Metro is a pretty simple board game, once you get a full line built in the game, you will find yourself just going to destinations, refreshing the station if it’s empty, and then bringing the people to wherever they are going before spending them. Building up your features on your railcard is a good way to ensure you are only using what you need to use, and to ensure you are ahead of where the other players are, so that you can quickly build your stations and pick up more people than others. With lots of decisions to be made, it’s easy to pay attention to only yourself, but you’ll need to keep an eye on others if you are looking to win. Maglev Metro is a really great train game, especially if you are looking for something with a very fun selection of playing pieces!
You can pick up Maglev Metro from Amazon.
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