Railroad Ink Challenge

Introducing a whole new game mode... Railroad Ink Draft!
almost 6 years ago – Wed, May 27, 2020 at 03:49:56 AM

Dear backers,

a few of you have been asking if we were planning any use for the "duplicated" sets of white dice that you find in each version of Railroad Ink Challenge (and/or classic Railroad Ink), and the answer was that yes, we were indeed. We've been cooking this update for quite some time, as our designers needed to work for a bit longer on the new game mode that makes use of multiple sets of dice that was initially planned as one of the big surprises for the end of the campaign. But we heard the feedback of the community, and we did our best to make it happen earlier (as much as we could), sorry if it still took a few days more than we initially hoped.

Without further ado, it's with great pleasure that we are introducing... Railroad Ink Draft, an additional game mode for Railroad Ink Challenge and our next free stretch goal! It is an upgrade for both the Lush Green Edition and the Shining Yellow Edition retail boxes (it will be a part of the core rulebooks of these versions), and as such it is included with all pledges at the Basic level or higher.

To play a game with the "Railroad Ink Draft" rules, you will need 1 box of the game for each player (they can be classic boxes and/or Challenge boxes). For example, to play a game with 4 players, you will need 4 boxes of the game! Railroad Ink Draft follows most of the normal rules of the game, with a very important exception: instead of using a single set of basic (white) route dice for all players, you will draft your dice from a common pool at the beginning of each round, creating your own personal set of 4 dice each round!

This is how this new game mode works. Take a set of 4 basic (white) dice for each player, and put them all inside one of the game boxes, shuffle them, then take 2 random dice and roll them. Take the couple of dice just formed and put it in the middle of the table. Then, take 2 more dice and roll them too. Repeat this process until all of the dice have been rolled and placed in the middle of the table in separate couples.

After this, a "drafting phase" starts. Starting from a randomly determined first player and proceeding in turns in clockwise order, each player will now have to choose 1 couple of dice and place it in front of them (without changing their results, of course). When you all have a couple of dice in front of you, you will all take a second turn (always in clockwise order starting with the first player) and take a second couple of dice. After this process, you will all have a personal set of 4 dice in front of you; these are the dice each player will have to draw on their boards during the current round.

Before proceeding with the "drawing phase" of the round (when you draw your routes as usual), you will have to determine who will be the first player during the following round. This will be the player with the single lowest-valued die in their set (see the table below).

In case of a tie, the first player will be the one with the second lowest-valued die in their set, and so on. When you have determined who will be the first player next round, mark a symbol in a corner of the first player's board as a reminder.

In the example above, both player 3 and player 4 have a Tier 0 die as their lowest-valued one, but player 4's second lowest is a double railway curve (Tier 1), while player 3's second lowest are the two curves (Tier 2), so the first player next round will be player 4.

After this step, you will play a "drawing phase" following the regular rules for the standard game mode (with the exception that each player will be drawing their own set of 4 dice, instead of a common one). At the end of the round, put all of the basic (white) dice back together in the same pool, randomly roll 2 dice at a time to create new couples of dice, then begin the new round, starting with a new "drafting phase" followed by another "drawing phase". After 7 rounds, the game ends, just like in the regular version of the game!

You can play the new draft mode also with Expansions: in this case, all the regular rules for that Expansion also apply to the draft mode, but the Expansion dice will NOT be drafted, they will shared by all players as usual. This also applies to Goals and Blueprints (you can use them, and they will be valid for all players as usual)!

That's all for today's update, folks! We hope you'll appreciate this new game mode, we've been testing it quite a lot in the past few weeks and it's a real blast to play! It's a completely new way to play Railroad Ink Challenge.

Also, remember that Challenge #8 is still open! If you didn't already, check the rules, download the board, and submit your score to help us unlock the Tentacle Expansion!

Until next time!

Sincerely,

the Horrible team

Challenges #6 and #7 results, a new stretch goal, and Challenge#8!
almost 6 years ago – Tue, May 26, 2020 at 11:59:01 PM

Dear backers,

wow! Challenge #6 was very, very popular! You sent so many submissions over the weekend that you would have unlocked the Investigation Expansion even by quantity alone (more than 120 submissions, that's crazy)! But you even managed to complete all of the "performance" fan boost prizes, unlocking all of the 900 points that were available... amazing! It was also great seeing you trying to help each other to figure out the correct solution in the comments, that's what we call a real community!

The first 3 backers to send a board with 82 points (which was the maximum possible without miscalculating something), no errors (no routes left with open routes), a longest highway and a longest railway both worth the same points (which was 18 points in this case), and all 12 Exits connected to at least 1 other Exit were, in order of submission, Tobias, Erica, and Vichayanun! Congratulations, this was a difficult challenge! 😁

Once again, we would like to share a few more highlights from the community:

Challenge #7 also received al lot of submissions; even if they were not enough to unlock all of the "quantity" fan boost prizes, once again you managed to unlock all of the "performance" prizes... and this means that the Blueprint cards are also unlocked!

Despite the extreme difficulty of this challenge, many of you managed to submit a score with all 3 Goals achieved and no errors all in the same board, we're so proud of you! Here's a few highlights (and all quite different from each other), with the highest score at the very end!

Congratulations to GeminiX6 for submitting the highest score for Challenge #7 with 43 points! With the Blueprint cards unlocked, as we anticipated in our previous update, you'll be able to add a bit more variety to your games by changing the starting conditions of the board of all players. You will draw 1 random card from the deck at the beginning of the game, then all players must replicate the starting conditions depicted on the select card on their board. We suggest you to use them when you are confident enough with the rules of the core game (and maybe with a few expansions, too)!

With Challenge #6 and #7 now over, it's time to introduce Challenge #8! It's another "puzzle" challenge with a limited number of rounds: you will need to use this board (crafted for you as usual by Hjalmar Hach) where the first 2 rounds have already been played. Then, you will only have 3 more rounds, for a total of 5 rounds instead of 7! To make things worse, 2 of the Special Routes have also been already used... this will leave you with only 1 more (maybe 2 if you manage to trigger all of the Universities on the board).

You will also be playing with a new expansion: the Street Lamp Expansion, from the Electricity Expansion Pack add-on! It is a 2-dice expansion (both dice are the same); it is used in addition to the basic route dice, and its use is optional. Also, the game only lasts 6 rounds when you are using it (but for this challenge, we made even more extreme with 5 rounds only).

The two dice come with several faces showing a combination of Street Lamps and Routes (which need to be connected to pre-existing routes when you draw them) and a face with a "battery" symbol, representing a Generator. The Generator is a special face: you don't draw it by itself, you can only add it to one of the faces from the basic (white) route dice that you are drawing in the current round (NOT on routes drawn in previous rounds).

In the example above, you can see the four routes from the basic (white) dice being drawn this round marked in yellow, a fifth round from the first Street Lamp die from this round also marked in blue, and finally, a Generator being added to the straight highway thanks to the second Street Lamp die. The placement of the Generator is very important: at the end of the game, you will score 1 bonus point for each individual Street Lamp drawn on your board that ar orthogonally adjacent to at least 1 Generator. The two spaces marked by a green square are "powered" by the Generator and the 3 Street Lamps they contain will be worth 3 points at the end of the game (1 point each). The square marked with a red square is not powered yet, so the 2 Street Lamps it contains are currently worth 0 points.

These are the routes you will need to use:

You will notice that no Generators have been rolled... but don't worry! There is one final rule we need to mention: during your turn, you can sacrifice 1 Special Route (and cross it off from your board) to draw a Generator in a space of your choice (among those in which you are drawing one of the basic routes for the current round); this DOES count towards your "1 Special Route per round" and "up to 3 Special Routes during the game" limits. If you look at the board for this challenge, you will notice that 1 Special Route was already sacrificed for this very purpose by Hjalmar.

You will also have these 3 Goals available during the game, with another special rule for this challenge: there will be no time limits on these goals, and each one of them will be worth 4 points:

•  Goal N: Connect 2 Exits from two opposite sides of the board to the same network before the end of the 5th round to obtain 4 points.
•  Goal A: Draw a Route at least 5 of the Central Spaces on your board (they don't need to be connected, just inside the Central Area) before the end of the 5th round to obtain 4 points.
•  Goal B: Draw a Station in at least 3 Villages before the end of the 5th round to obtain 4 points.

Like the previous challenges, as you probably imagined, Challenge #8 is tied to a new stretch goal. Check the list of Fan Boost Prizes here below and don't forget to submit your score!

There are a whopping 1000 points available for you to unlock, but you only need 500 to unlock our next stretch goal. the "performance" prizes are 4 submissions with a score of 70 points or higher, 4 submissions with an expansion bonus score of 10 or higher (so, at leats 10 "powered" Street Lamps on your board), 4 submissions with all 3 goals achieved, and 1 submission with all of these targets met in a single board. But which the new stretch goal, I can here you say? Well, many of you asked, so here it is: introducing the Tentacle Expansion!

The Tentacle Expansion is a 2-dice expansion (both dice are the same); it is used in addition to the basic route dice, and its use is optional. Also, the game only lasts 6 rounds when you are using it. This is expansion is a little bit weird: there are this strange, giant tentacles entering our world from another dimension, and they want to reach the Central Area of your board.

They work a bit like the Renovation die (which was explained in update #7): they allow you to add a tentacle to a pre-existing basic route (from a white die) that can fit inside the dotted area on the die (even if you drew it during the current round). Differently from the Renovation die, though, you CAN draw a Tentacle in an empty space, too (but you WON'T be able to add a regular route to that space later, once a tentacle is there, the space is "locked").

The open ends of the Tentacles can only connect to other Tentacles (and open tentacle ends will count as an Error at the end of the game). There are 2 ways to make points with Tentacles: each Tentacle that is connected to one of the edges of your board while also reaching the Central Area will be worth 2 points at the end of the game. Additionally, for each space crossed by your Longest Highway and/or Longest Railway that also contains a Tentacle, you will gain 1 additional point.

Look at the example above. The Tentacle marked with an A start at the right edge of the board and it reaches the Central Area, so it will be worth 2 points. The Tentacle marked with B is also worth 2 points for the same reason, but since it has an open end, it has an Error that will make you lose 1 point. Finally, the Tentacle marked with C is illegal: there's one final rule we need to mention, Tentacles cannot have a "closing tip" on both sides, they can have up to 1 tip on 1 end, and the other end must either connect with an edge or be open ended (and thus, produce an Error).

Also, if we consider the visible Highway (6 spaces long) and Railway (5 spaces long) as the longest ones at the end of the game, they would respectively be worth 9 points (6 highway spaces + 3 tentacle spaces crossed) and 8 points  (5 railway spaces + 3 tentacle spaces crossed).

We can't wait to see which scores you'll be able to achieve with the Street Lamps Expansion! Ready your markers, and see you tomorrow!

Until next time!

Sincerely,

the Horrible team

Rainbow Expansion unlocked, a new stretch goal, and... Challenge #6!
almost 6 years ago – Mon, May 25, 2020 at 12:07:16 AM

Dear backers,

yesterday we were already extremely close to unlock the Rainbow Expansion, so we were sure we would be opening our next update with this very news: it's finally been unlocked! Hurray! The Rainbow Expansion will be included with all pledges at the Basic level or higher; to discover how it works, you can check at the bottom of Update #8.

We've been blown away by the creativity you showed with this challenge! We'll need some additional time to collect all of your submission in a complete gallery (lots of work to do behind the scenes today) but in the meantime, here's a few additional highlights... and the highest score of Challenge #5!

Congratulations to Daan, the author of the board here above, for his outstanding score of 82 points! And thanks to all of the players who submitted their decorated boards: you really brought a lot of joy to our work-intensive days, thank you again for participating! And sorry for not showing all of them, we will fix this soon. 😊

We would also like to share with you two more boards by two special artists... one was made by Marta Tranquilli, the illustrator of Railroad Ink, and the other ws made by none other than one of the two game designers, Hjalmar Hach!

We hope you enjoyed this visit at the "Railroad Ink Art Gallery"... but now, it time to move on to the next topic. With Challenge #5 now over, it's time to introduce Challenge #6! This will be another "puzzle" challenge: you will need to use a new board meticolously assembled for you by Hjalmar Hach and play the last 2 rounds of the game with the following routes:

Those grey faces to the right are from yet another expansion: the Super-Connection Expansion, a single-die expansion from the Future Expansion Pack! It is used in addition to the basic route dice, and its use is optional (but it's very, very useful, so you'll probably want to use it almost each round).

Super-Connections are represented by those wavy lines ending with a small triangle on the edges of the dice. They act as a sort of "wild card": any route can directly connect to a Super-Connection, and it may even count towards both your Longest Highway and your Longest Railway!

In the example above, all of those 4 Exits are connected to each other with the same network, and at the end of the game, if we assume these were your longest paths, you would have a Longest Railway worth 6 points and a Longest Highway worth 9 points... and note that two of their spaces are shared between the two longest paths thanks to the power of the Super-Connections! It will be an interesting challenge for sure. Don't forget to submit your score!

You can find the goals for this challenge in the image above. We tried a slightly more complex approach this time: the first 4 goals can be achieved separately (for 50 points each), but if we will receive at least 1 submission who meets all 4 of them at the same time, an additional 200 points will also be unlocked! Your goal is to obtain at least 500 points (out of the 900 points available) in order to unlock our new stretch goal... the Investigation Expansion!

The Investigation Expansion is a single-die expansion. It is used in addition to the basic route dice, and its use is mandatory. Each face of the Investigation die shows a route and a magnifying glass icon, representing Clues. Additionally, at the beginning of the game, you will have to choose 1 Exit of your board and draw a little stick figure next to it, outside of the main game area, representing your Investigator.

At the end of each round, after you have drawn all of the routes for the round, you may spend up to 2 "movement actions" with your Investigator, with the goal of reaching spaces that contain a Clue. When you move the Investigator, you erase it from their starting position and draw it again at their destination. At the end of each movement, if the Investigator lands on a space containing a Clue, you must make a circle around its symbol to mark that it was collected (note that an individual Clue can only be collected once). But how can you reach these clues?

The movement range of the Investigator depends on which kind of route you use to move them. When moving on highways, the Investigator can only move to an adjacent space. In the left part of the example below, you can see the Investigator starting from space A, moving to the adjacent space B and collecting a first Clue, then using their second movement to move to the adjacent Space C and collect a second Clue.

When moving on railways, instead, the Investigator can "teleport" from one Station to another Station directly connected to the first by railways. Note that you need to stop at each Station, you can't skip a Station to reach another one further along the same railway! In the right part of the example above, you can see the Investigator moving from space D (where they collected a Clue in the previous round) to space E (which contains another Clue that was collected in a previous round too). The first movement of the Investigator must end here. With their second movement, the Investigator can finally move to space F, where they can collect a new Clue.

A game with the Investigation Expansion lasts for 7 rounds. Since you must use the Investigation die each round, by the end of the game you will have drawn 7 Clues. You will score 1 bonus point for each Clue that you collected during the game, and if you manage to collect all 7, you will gain an additional +3 points (for a total of 10 points)!

Have fun with the new challenge, don't forget to submit your score, and see you for the next update!

Until next time!

Sincerely,

the Horrible team

A clarification on the rules for Challenge #6, a new stretch goal, and... an early Challenge #7!
almost 6 years ago – Sun, May 24, 2020 at 12:45:09 PM

Dear backers,

we'll start today's update with a small clarification regarding the challenge announced yesterday. There was one bit of rules that we forgot to mention (sorry about that): if you trigger the effect of a Factory, you can only use it to duplicate a basic (white) Route die! You cannot duplicate an expansion die (specifically for Challenge #6, this means that you can't duplicate a Super-Connection route). Sorry for the confusion! If you already submitted a score without taking this rule in consideration, feel free to re-submit a new score!

With that out of the way, we have another small surprise... we decided to reveal a new challenge earlier than planned to keep you all entertained during the weekend. Introducing... Challenge #7! It will be another "puzzle" challenge, with a different approach from the earlier ones. You will have to use this special empty board, and you will only have 3 rounds to play instead of 7! These are the routes you will need to use:

To make things worse, only 1 of the Special Routes will be available, as the others have all already been crossed off from your board and you won't be able to use them. You also have just 3 rounds to complete the Goals below!

• Goal J: Connect at least 3 Exits to the same network before the end of the 3rd round.
• Goal E: Draw a Route in each space of a 3x3 area on your board (they don't need to be connected, just adjacent in a 3x3 area) before the end of the 3rd round.
• Goal C: Draw a Route in each of the 7 spaces of a single row or column of your board (they don't need to be connected, just adjacent) before the end of the 3rd round.

This Challenge, as you probably imagined, is also tied to a new stretch goal. Check the list of Fan Boost Prizes here below and don't forget to submit your score!

We are follwing the same kind of approach we introduced with Challenge #6: the first 2 goals can be  achieved separately (for 50 points each), but if we will receive at least 5 submissions who meet both of them at the same time, an additional 200 points will also be unlocked! This could be just enough to obtain the 300 points needed (out of the 600 points available) in order to unlock our new stretch goal... a set of 3 Blueprint cards!

Blueprint cards are an entirely new (and optional) game mechanism. They will be included with all pledges at the Basic level or higher. You can think of a Blueprint card as a sort of "scenario", a different starting condition for your board (instead of the usual blank slate) to spice things up and introduce new hurdles into your games.

Take the two examples shown in the image above. The Bunker has 4 insurmountable walls at the corners of your Central Area, making it more difficult to reach and grab its precious bonus points. The Old Railway instead has a mix of walls and pre-built railways: will you use them to your advantage, or will they just be an obstacle on your path to victory?

We'll share more details about the Blueprints when they will be unlocked, so... what are you waiting for? Ready your markers, boot up your brain, and join the challenge! We hope you'll spend a nice weekend playing with Challenges #6 and #7. See you on monday!

Until next time!

Sincerely,

the Horrible team

Challenge #5 update! Epic board rules details! Also, we've been nominated to the Kennerspiel des Jahres!
almost 6 years ago – Thu, May 21, 2020 at 02:11:59 AM

Dear backers,

we would like to start today's update with a completely unrelated but extraordinary news. We're extremely pleased to announce that The King's Dilemma, a game that we released in 2019 and designed by Lorenzo Silva and Hjalmar Hach (the same creative duo behind the Railroad Ink games) has just been nominated to the Kennerspiel des Jahres, the "games for experts" category of the German "Game of the Year" award!

The Spiel des Jahres is one of the most prestigious awards a board game can receive, and even being just nominated is an incommensurable honor. Between this news and your amazing support on this campaign, there's a lot for us to be happy despite the difficult time in history that the whole world is going through. We definitely feel very lucky and grateful for all of this, so once again, thanks to each one of you for your support... and cross your fingers for us! The competition for the Kennerspiel is fierce :)

Our designers are still cooking some of the surprises we have in store for you (more about those in future updates), but today we would like to explain more in detail how playing with the Epic boards will work. First of all, Epic boards have a grid of 11 x 11 spaces: with so much space available, a game played with Epic boards will last 10 rounds, instead of the regular 7.

Also, you will need 6 basic Route dice to play, so you need 2 Railroad Ink boxes. You will use 4 route dice with straights/curves/t-junctions (which are available in both classic and challenge boxes), and the 2 "special" dice with Stations, dead-ends, and/or double curves that you only find in a Railroad Ink Challenge box.

There are a total of 15 Exits on an Epic board: 12 around the edges of the board (3 on each side), and 3 "internal Exits" (representing "individual cities" inside this much bigger landscape). The Score Table of the Epic boards is expanded accordingly, with each Exit in excess of 12 worth more points than usual (5 points for each additional Exit instead of 4). The Epic boards also feature mountains that force you to use routes of specific shapes to go through/around them (this is marked with dotted lines on the board itself). Mountains also have an upside though: the sort of count as an "edge" of the board, so if you send open routes directly into a mountain, it won't count as an Error at the end of the game.

With the game lasting for more rounds, the number of Special Routes that you can use is also increased: you can still only use 1 of them each round, but you can use up to 5 during the whole game, and if you trigger 3 Universities, you can even manage to use all 6 of them! However, you can still only play with 1 Expansion at a time (with the exception of the expansions from the Engineer Expansion Pack, which can be used in addition to other Expansions by default). Just like the regular boards, the Epic boards allow you to play from 1 player to... basically infinity, as long as you have enough Epic boards for each player.

One final news: we're extremely close to unlock the Rainbow Expansion! To close this update, we would like to share a few more highlights from the submissions we received.

So, the highest score among the above is William's 78 points... and yet, this is not the highest score we received so far... but it's quite close! Yes, we do like to tease you :)

Until next time!

Sincerely,

the Horrible team