presentation

Trans Europa & Trans Amerika

Tracks between cities

Trans Europa and Trans Amerika are track-building games, or more accurately, track placement games, using maps of Central Europe and USA.

Each version uses 35 city cards in five colors; each color represents a region of the maps. Aim of the game is to be first to score 13 points over several rounds of the game.

For a round, you draw one city card of each color – depending on the number of players, varying numbers of cities are in play – and need to be first to connect your cities. For your first move, you place your starting piece on any crossing or any city on the map. Starting from there, you place two tracks per turn for two single track segments or one track for a double segment, to continue or own network, without building over other track or crossing lakes or ocean. If you connect your net to another player’s net, you can continue building at any point in that net, too. If you are first to connect your cities, you score 4 prestige points, the others score 3-2-1-0 points for 1-2-3/4-5 missing connections in their net. Then all track pieces are removed, and you draw new city cards for the next round.

This new edition features a double-sided board and introduces a version using special cards – for each round, you turn up one which changes the rules for all players for the round.

A simple and yet sophisticated game with more tactics than you first expect. Especially interesting is the indirect interaction from connecting to other nets – at the end of the round there is one joint net – and the often unintentional connection of a city from another player’s net. Highly attractive entertainment for all types of players!

Players: 2-6

Age: 8+

Time: 30+

Designer: Franz-Benno Delonge

Artist: Franz Vohwinkel, A. Climatoribus

Price: ca. 29 Euro

Publisher: Ravensburger 2018

Web: www.ravensburger.de

Genre: Track placement for network

Users: For families

Version: multi

Rules: de fr nl + en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Simple, easy rules

Interesting indirect interaction

High replay value

Compares to:

20011 first game of this kind

Other editions:

Rio Grande Games (en), earlier separate editions at Winning Moves 2002, 2005, 2007 (de) and Winsome Games 2001 (en)

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0