Review

From Hard-sleepers to luxury cars

First Class

Russian Railroads light

You take a successful board game and make it over into a card game. Usually, this is very simple as regards to topic and you can even recycle a lot of graphics and illustrations. And the quest for a name is also completed rather quickly: XYZ The Card Game. So far, so simple, so far, so cheap, small wonder that this principle was implemented so often over the last years. Let me note that the same was also tried often for dice game. The quality of those makeovers has turned out in very different ways, because one problem must be coped with by every designer or publisher who wants to make over a game into a card game. A good game usually is featuring a good mechanism and this mechanism must be realized with cards nearly as completely as on the board. A challenge that many have failed to meet, but there are also some very felicitous adaptations.

First Class, however, is no classic card game. The box is big and the size is mirrored by the price, and besides a lot of card you find some card board pieces and wooden game pieces in the box. And yet, I can’t get rid of the impression, that First Class is the result of the attempt to transform the very ingenious and multiple-award-winning game board game Russian Rails into a card game. There are a few indications: the publisher is the same (Hans im Glück), and even if only Helmut Ohley is named as designer and not Helmut Ohley und Leonhard Orgler, we remain in the railway universe as regards to topic, even if both games are not classic railway games in the sense that we connect cities or transport commodities.

However, when looking at details we find several differences. Instead of the different tracks and industries in Russian Railroads, we only construct a single track in First Class - and even this is done in a very simple way - and invest in the facilities and decor equipment of our trains instead. We add cards to our two trains and upgrade them step by step, until the pallet cars of no value have been transformed into luxuriously equipped passenger cars. Furthermore, we must make sure that the conductors patrol all cards, because if our passengers do not pay we will not score points.

The basic mechanism is very simple. You play six rounds. After rounds two, four and six, the game is scored. In each round, 18 cards are displayed. In turn, players choose one card from this display and resolve the action listed on the card, until each player has selected three cards. Players take the chosen cards out of the display, so that the cards are no longer available for the other players. Those cards enable us to expand and upgrade our trains and tracks in many different ways. The variety is provided by mechanisms that two decks must be selected at the start of each game. Every one of those decks comprises a fixed selection of cards which are shuffled with the standard cards and provide the basis from which the 18 cards are drawn for every round. Each of those decks features a topic and therefore plays in a unique way. Of course, this also provides a simple option to develop the game by issuing expansions for it.

A description of how the various cards influence our turns would exceed the scope of this review by far. Therefore, let me say that in general the cards allow for manifold manipulations and turn a simple core mechanism into a no longer that simple game, albeit not into a highly complex one. So, Russian Railroads is clearly a lot simpler then the big brother Russian Railroads which was definitely developed for expert players, and therefore First Class plays a lot quicker.

According to our expectations from Hans im Glück, the graphic design by Michael Menzel, the rules and components are state of the art for board games and leave nothing to desire or to question.

Markus Wawra

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Time: 80+

Designer: Helmut Ohley

Artist: Michael Menzel

Price: ca. 38 Euro

Publisher: Hans im Glück Verlag 2016

Web: www.hans-im-glueck.de

Genre: Drafting and collecting cards

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en es nl

In-game text: no

Comments:

Simple core mechanism

Many options from various cards

Very good rules

Attractive components

Compares to:

Russian Railroads, Müll & Money

Other editions:

999 Games (nl), Devir (es), Z-Man (en)

My rating: 4

Markus Wawra:

I am a great fan of Russian Railroads. Therefore, I was thrilled about First Class and expecting a lot from the game, so that the bar was set rather high. The hope that First Class would be able to keep up with “big brother” Russian Rail has not come to pass completely, because First Class does not offer enough in-game depth. For me as a frequent gamer, First Class, therefore, is only my second choice. It is not a bad game, but currently “only” a good average game, albeit with potential for improvement if the publisher provides ingenious expansions.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0