Railroad Ink... but with Tiles!

🚂 Railroad Tiles is basically a “3D version” of Railroad Ink, though I guess that won't come as a surprise. It goes for the same gameplay experience: A relaxing and cozy puzzle of making clever railroad and highway connections, with just a touch of stress and fear that you won't find that perfect piece to complete what you were planning all along - but with spades more tactility and table presence. The water color art is so beautiful. 😍

The game has a simple drafting system: You randomly draw tiles into multiple columns then in player order everyone chooses a different column. Later columns have more tiles, but also lead to a later player order for next turn. ☝️ However, more tiles aren't always better, as you have to place them all and they might not fit as well.

There is a new addition compared to Railroad Ink. Every round you can place car 🚗, train 🚂 or passenger 👤 meeples according to the active placement tokens, but only if you have tiles with empty spaces for them. Your goal is to place more and more of the same meeples into the same connected network for bonus points. 

As for building your little network, there are several things to keep in mind: 🧐

🏘️Cities made up of 3 or more town tiles are worth 5 points. You need to build multiple standalone cities to score well.
🔲Your largest rectangle is also scored so you want a bit of an order to your tile-tableau construction.
🏟️There are 3 goal tiles that you have to place during play, each with their own objective for 5 extra points. E.g. the stadium requires at least 3 meeples in the surrounding tiles.
🚧Open connections are negative points so try closing a few roads every now and then.
🚙The aforementioned meeples are also a big source of points so having a few large networks is definitely the way to go.

Naturally with games such as this, not everything will go the way you want, or some tiles will not come up. It's up to you to pivot and make the best of what you get. 😉 There can only be one winner after all!