Floyd Sherrod
United States
Sharpsburg
Georgia
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Cable Car is a a remake of the game Metro. Metro as you’ll recall is a tile-laying game where players take on the color of one set of trains, and then lay tiles that extend the track from the edges of the board. Once a track reaches another edge or the middle, that train/player scores equal to the number of tiles that train traveled. Easy.
Cable Car revamps Metro by greatly improving the components and artwork, and adding a twist to the play. Unfortunately, it comes in a box that is much too big for the game. You can still play classic Metro with this set, but the Cable Car variant adds an element that in my opinion makes an already good game even better. Instead of associating yourself with one color train at the start of the game, players associate themselves with train colors/companies via their stock holdings. In Cable Car ALL the colors are used and there are four stock certificates for each listed at 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%. At the start of the game all these cards are shuffled and one in each denomination is given to each player and held in secret such that they total 100% in a random mix of colors. The remaining cards are placed to the side in four stacks with one of each denomination face up.
Play begins as in Metro with players either placing a tile OR (this is new) exchanging a stock certificate for another of the same denomination. They may choose either the face up card on offer or the top one from the pile, and the one they exchange goes to the bottom of the appropriate deck. At the end of the game, the trains are ordered from 1 to 8 based on whether they had the shortest to longest tracks during play. Then the game is scored according to a player’s stock holdings. So if for example, the blue train fared best during the game, it sits on the 8 spot and if I am holding the 40% certificate for blue, then I score (4 x 8) 32 points. Add up holdings for all your certificates and the highest score wins!
This mechanic adds an interesting element because no longer is a player vested in a single color. If they wanted however, I suppose they could be and a perfect score in this game would be 80 by a person holding all four certificates in the train whose color finished best for the game. It is more likely you will find two players start working together once they realize the other is also advancing their line. Do you focus efforts on one or two train lines, or does it make better sense to diversify and try to see that all three or four holdings you have finish near the top? Without knowing for sure what other player’s interests are, Cable Car makes for more interesting decisions on which trains to advance and when to swap certificates as you watch the board develop.
This game was a blast, and aside from the oversize box, makes for an excellent gateway game that will appeal to gamers more than Metro. Good fun and highly recommended!
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Andy Andersen
United States
Newark
Delaware
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I've started looking into this game. I have a train fixation. Thanks for the review.
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J. Jefferson
United States
Columbus
Ohio
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I found Metro to be sort of one-dimensional. It only held my attention for a couple of plays. This sounds like it adds a really nice twist that would make it fun. I can't totally envision how the strategy would play out. I see the risk that with several players, the strategy might be really foggy, with each player not really having a good sense for what anybody else is trying to do, and not being able to plan ahead to block them or advance towards your own goals. But that could be totally wrong--anybody have an sense of this?
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