Introduction
Railroad Ink is a 2018 roll and write (think Yahtzee, but good) game published by Horrible Guild. Each player is a city planner charged with the design of the best possible infrastructure route (roads and railroads) for their own city - and if you are thinking "wow this sounds boring", then get ready to be amazed at how a concept so drab can be made charming with a few simple rules and some nice art. If you want a quick description and rules explanation, here's British funnymen Shut Up & Sit Down's review of the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC6PVAmP7Bg
- The game is played over 7 Rounds.
- At the beginning of each Round, a common pool of 4 Route Dice is rolled, presenting the players with a combinations of symbols from this list:
- Each player has to draw all four symbols on their board, filling up a grid that looks like this:
- Every Route drawn has to be connected by at least 1 side to either one of the Exits (orange arrows along the borders) or to a pre-existing Route.
- You can freely rotate and/or reverse the pattern you see on the die.
- You can't draw a Route in a way that directly connects Railways with Roads unless you are using a Station (black square that connects a Railway and a Road, IE: the last 2 die faces in the list above).
- Each player also has a list of Special Routes that can be used once per round. Each Special Route can only be used once per game and only up to 3 of these can be used during the entire game:
- Each player must mark the spaces where they have drawn Routes this Round by writing the number of the current Round in the small white box inside the space:
- After the 7th Round, the game ends and the scores are tallied.
- The main way to score points is Connecting Exits (orange arrows). You check how many Exits are connected by the same network of Routes (including Railways and Roads connected by a Station) and you gain points based on this table (if you have multiple networks, they all score points individually):
- The Longest Road (longest unbroken streak of adjacent spaces with Road Routes, not counting branches - marked in blue in the example below) is worth 1 point/space. Spaces with a Station do not interrupt the streak.
- The Longest Railroad (longest unbroken streak of adjacent spaces with Railroad Routes, not counting branches - marked in blue in the example below) is worth 1 point/space. Spaces with a Station do not interrupt the streak.
- Each space occupied in the Central Square (orange square in the example below) is worth 1 point.
- Each end of a Route that does not connect with any other Route or the outer edge of the board counts as an Error (marked with an "x" inside a circle in the example below). Each Error is worht 1 negative point.
- I'll give players 1 week to sign up. Each player has to write a post in the thread with the name of their awesome/terrible Town.
- If you don't have PMs, please send me an email at gloomhavenlp@gmail.com from your preferred contact. The email should contain your SA username.
- After the signup window has expired, I'll send each player a PM/email with a blank sheet image (you'll be able to pick the color of your preference at this time).
- Each Round, I'll publish the roll results in the thread. Each Round will last 1 week to let everyone participate at their pace.
- During this time, every player will have to update their sheet (using any tool they prefer, from Photoshop to Paint) and send it back to me, marking down the new routes (don't forget to mark the Round number as well!). If you are using one of the Special Routes, please cross it out from the top of sheet.
- If you prefer, there is a Tabletop Simulator mod that you can use for this, and it seems legit, but I'd rather not commit any :files: crimes so I'm not going to link to it. If you own the game, you could also just draw on a real gamesheet and take a picture of it. The sky is the limit.
- Every time I publish the next Round of dice rolls, I'll also post everyone's in progress effort in the thread.
- At the End of the seventh Round, we'll count the points and crown the winner of the 1st SA Railroad Ink Tournament! If there is a tie, the thread will vote on the winner for the best looking Town.
- The winner, on top of the bragging rights, will receive not one but two forum upgrades of their choice. Or, if they prefer, I'll donate
to a charity of their choice.
- Feel free to ask if you have any doubts on the rules (in the thread or in private); you can also consult the full rules here
- Are we using any expansion dice? No. We are using the base game "white" dice only.
- What if I'm late to the party? If you are late for the signup you can still take part in the game if you manage to do so before the first Round results are published, since nothing has been revealed yet. After that, you'll be unable to participate.
- What if I'm late with a Round update? Same as above: you can still send me your updated sheet up to the point when the latest Round results are published.