Blue Orange | Next Station - London | Board Game | Ages 8+ | 1-4 Players | 25 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. You’ll also score bonus points for hitting tourist destinations on your line, as well as creating stations that have multiple colors running through them. Working alongside The London Sound Survey, we collected field recordings from 55 stations across the London Underground network over the course of three months, adding in sounds from our respective archives. One other way you can draw your network: if you draw the Railroad Switch card after the first or second turn of the round.

It also made it a lot harder (for some people) to get a lot of interchange stations because of the paucity of stations on those short lines. Everything is done very professionally with this company and always lets you know every step of the process. I’m keeping my inner Controller happy because my mind keeps saying “just one more game, just one more game”. There is an awful lot of rulebooks included, great for different languages but they fill up half the box and do feel a little wasteful perhaps. You first count how many different districts your route has crossed and multiply this by the number of stations your line passes through in your highest district.The highest score wins, with ties going to the player with the single highest Underground line score. Once you are used to the game, and you start to play with the pencil power cards and the shared goal cards; this also makes you approach each game in a different manner; different enough that I haven’t tired of it yet! The challenge is, some of my gaming friends often leave my markers out to dry, so there’s really no winning, here. When I first opened Next Station: London—and it is a handsome production, right down to the magnetic metal closing lid—I was worried about a few things, which turned into concerns tied to the game’s level of endurance.

These also have fun little illustrations showing commuters at the various stops, along with some London landmarks in the background of the street-level cards. You’re faced with a real dilemma: on the one hand you want to expand as quickly as possible but, on the other, you don’t want to get forced into dead ends. It’s a peaceful co-existence, where no-one can disrupt your efforts and everyone is responsible for their own risk management. Generally, you can only connect to a new station from either end of your line using the prescribed paths, and lines of different colours cannot cross. Players may draw a new section starting from ANY station on their line connecting to a station with the revealed symbol.

Getting in a position where you are reliant on a flip of the card to reveal something you so desperately need can be common. George (11): I think it’s a really fun game, I like the artwork because I can imagine the people in London. You don’t necessarily want to always double back, but you may need those Stations for later rounds (and you may be able to get Interchange Bonuses by doing so). The scorepad shows a simplified map of London with various spots on a grid, marked by different shapes.

In this case, the box starts off full but as you use up the scoresheets there will be a little more space inside for things to rattle around. Scoring in Next Station London is tight at both two and three players and the solo challenge has been a treat. The solo mode is essentially the same; you cycle through all four pencil colors (and all four pencil powers, if you’re using those). Lines are never allowed to cross, so you need to be flexible enough to reach any of the possible symbols. Note that the formatting will look a little strange on-screen, because it’s printed as a long sheet, accordion-folded.On this map, there are four starting stations, in green, yellow, pink and purple, matching the four pencils available to the players. The learning curve grows with every game you play and encourages you to try and do even better next time.

You'll need to work to their specifications, connecting up as many visitor attractions as you can and making the most of the tunnels that pass under the Thames. It’s really up to you, but it’s almost never a bad thing, since you have so many options for where to split the line. Score as many points as you can by optimising the routes of the four underground lines on your map in London. Note that you will always use all 4 pencils in each game, regardless of the player count, because each player will use each color once.If you have fewer than 4 players, there should be some pencils between players that get passed along. It’s important to know what cards have already come up so that you know what is coming and that you can calculate the odds of the round ending. There’s a temptation to traverse a lot of distance by drawing big diagonal lines between connecting Stations, but you run the risk of cutting off a lot of the board by doing that. Each round scores how many districts your route visits multiplied by the most stations you have in the busiest district. The whole thing fits into a small box with a magnetic flap lid, similar to the box for Downtown Farmers Market.