Railroad Ink Challenge

Challenges #6 and #7 results, a new stretch goal, and Challenge#8!
almost 4 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 4 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 4 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 4 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

Challenge #5 update, details on the green/yellow expansions, and more free stretch goals!
almost 4 years ago – Thu, May 21, 2020 at 02:02:19 AM

Dear backers,

we already received a good amount of wonderfully decorated boards for Challenge #5! While we didn't reach the goal of 80 decorated boards needed to unlock the Rainbow Expansion just yet, if you keep sending them at this pace we will definitely unlock it very soon! Here are a few highlights from the first batch of submissions (but it was very difficult to choose between so many funny, cute, or downright beautiful submission, so we will also probably share a full gallery after the end of the challenge):

There's so many more decorated boards that we would like to show! We will show a few more in the next update, and as we said we'll also share a link to a complete gallery of all the submissions we will have received by the end of this Challenge. Before we move on to the next topic, just to add a bit of spice to the score competition... be aware that we didn't reveal the highest score we received yet; we'll just say that it's quite a bit higher than Daniel's 73 (which is still very good)! 😜

Today we would also like to take some time to explain in greater detail the 4 new "main" expansions that will be included in the Lush Green and Shining Yellow editions (as was requested by some of you in the comments).

The Lush Green Edition includes the Forest Expansion and the Trail Expansion.

Forest Expansion - Using the results of the Forest dice is optional, and when you play with this expansion the game only lasts for 6 rounds instead of 7. The Forest dice contain faces with routes + trees (straights and curves for both highways and railways) or faces with trees only. You can draw faces with only trees anywhere on your board, but if the face also shows a route, you need to follow the regular building rules (i.e., you must connect these routes to pre-existing ones).

At the end of the game, you will score points for each space contained in your biggest group of orthogonally adjacent spaces with trees inside (with or without routes).

Trail Expansion - Using the results of the Trail dice is optional, and when you play with this expansion the game only lasts for 6 rounds instead of 7. The Trail dice contain faces with all basic kinds of routes (straights, curves, t-junctions) + trails. You must follow the regular building rules when drawing the Trail dice (i.e., you must connect that face to a pre-existing route OR trail).

Differently from routes, which always go through the middle of the side of a space, trails go through the corners of a space instead (this simple fact changes the game quite a bit already)! When you have a trail that ends in the corner of a space with a Station inside (no matter if you drew the trail or the Station first), the trail "automatically" connects to the Station.

At the end of the game, you will have created a sort of "parallel" network system connecting your Stations by trails. Each of these "Trail networks" will allow you to score points depending on the number of Stations that it connects (half of the points granted by an equally big regular network of Exits).

The Shining Yellow Edition includes the Desert Expansion and the Canyon Expansion.

Desert Expansion - Using the results of the Desert dice is optional, and when you play with this expansion the game only lasts for 6 rounds instead of 7. The Desert dice contain faces with routes (straights and curves for both highways and railways) with cacti OR oases, faces with cacti only, and faces with an "Arid climate" symbol. You can draw faces with only cacti anywhere on your board, but if the face also shows a route, you need to follow the regular building rules (i.e., you must connect these routes to pre-existing ones).

The "Arid" symbol is not to be drawn: it only triggers an (admittedly rather nasty) effect. When it shows up, all of the cacti on your board that are not orthogonally adjacent to a space with an oasis will die because of the harsh desert climate (so you want to be strategic when placing your cacti and oases)! However, if you still have Special Routes available and you didn't already use one in the current round, you can "sacrifice" one of your special routes (actually crossing it off from the score lid of your board) to cancel the effect of the Arid symbol.

At the end of the game, you'll score 1 point for each individual surviving cactus (if a space contains more than 1 cactus, it will be worth more points). Note that after the end of the final round you will have to roll the 2 Desert dice one final time, and resolve the effect if at least 1 Arid face shows up; this can still be canceled by sacrifing a Special Route face, if you spared one for this purpose.

Canyon Expansion - we explained it in detail in update #7. Check that out for all the details about this expansion!

One final news: we decided to unlock two additional "free" stretch goals: a set of 3 River Goal cards AND a set of 3 Meteor Goal cards! They will allow you to play full Railroad Ink Challenge games with Goals specific to the River Expansion (from the Deep Blue Edition of the classic Railroad Ink) and the Meteor expansion (from the Blazing Red Edition) respectively, and they will be included with all pledges at the Basic level or higher.

We'll have more of these free stretch goals coming in the next few days, as well as more Challenges, so stay tuned! 😉

Until next time!

Sincerely,

the Horrible team