e., going back through a station already forming part of that line) – I always knew the Circle Line in London was dodgy! It’s a peaceful co-existence, where no-one can disrupt your efforts and everyone is responsible for their own risk management. The main interaction between players here happens between rounds as you pass pencils around the table. The latest fast playing flip and fill game from Blue Orange Games and Coiledspring, this little magnetic box of hyper colour happiness has captured our hearts.

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. You will be balancing getting your route into as many of these districts as possible while getting as many stations in each district too.It’s somewhat avoidable if you plan things out, but experiencing it (being unable to connect to a new Station) kind of sucks. I’m relatively unaffected by it, though I’ve been playing more of the solo games on Board Game Arena, to avoid wasting my sheets. The other aspect of Next Station – London that I appreciate is that you can simplify the game play to accommodate younger players and allow for them to be competitive. Optimise connections, serve as many sights as possible and exploit the tunnels that pass under the Thames.

There will be a few occasions where you can’t go, but this is much more likely to be because of your own actions than because of the flip of the card.

The objectives are simple enough to understand and are explained in further detail in the rule book.

Note that a round only lasts as long as it takes to flip over the 5 station cards so there could be anywhere from 5 to 10 turns.Plenty of game rules are now set up this way, so this may just be the concern of some gaming dinosaur who is out of touch with modern things. By this, I mean that previously drawn lines or decisions as to which direction to take your route, or even how to use a wild card, are much more likely to be the cause of an impasse than the map itself.

In the station cards, there’s one of each shape in blue and pink, one wild in each color, and then the blue track split card.Next Station: London has a simple concept and comes from a publisher that I have generally enjoyed ( Paco’s Party, Kingdomino: Origins). The next card in the stack is flipped over, and you can draw a line from any station on your existing line to the type of station indicated on the second card. You also cross off the number of tourists sites that your line has visited on the tourist site score track. This phase has several turns according to the station cards that are flipped over by the controller.