Arrival of Trains Planes and Automobiles

Trains Planes and Automobiles box art

Wednesday my publisher's shipment of Trains Planes and Automobiles arrived.  I could not have been more happy to have a production version of my game design in my hands, complete with professional art by Sean Cooke.

Trains Planes and Automobiles is a family game for two to six players, age eight and up, who play as news correspondents attempting to race each other to cover the most stories.  The game is set in mid-twentieth century North America, when airlines connected the largest cities, and newly built interstates allowed convenient long-distance travel by car, while trains still served as the workhorses of American transportation.  The board renders a map of most of North America in an old-fashioned post-card style, with Alaska and Hawaii as insets.  Faintly rendered hexagons divide the board into 100-mile-wide spaces for movement.  

Assignment card

The map includes 56 Canadian, American, Mexican, and Carribean cities (including Havana, accessible to the American traveler in the years prior to the Cuban Revolution).  Of the cities on the map, approximately a third have airports for travel by plane, about two-thirds are connected by railroads for travel by train, and the remainder can be reached only by automobile.  A number of island cities can only be reached by plane.  

Travel card

The game includes a deck of 57 "Assignment" cards, one for each city on the map.  The winner of the game is the first player to complete seven Assignments by traveling to assigned cities and claiming the corresponding Assignment Cards.  The game also includes a deck of "Travel" cards that govern movement on the board - by plane (the fastest means, but only between cities that have airports), by train (only along rail lines), or by automobile (anywhere on the mainland, but the slowest method).  The Travel deck also includes ways to slow opponents down (Bad Weather, Train Delays, and Car Breakdowns) as well as bonus abilities for faster travel.  

I have to say that I am really pleased with the feel of the game that Sean Cooke created in the art for this game.  It has a nostalgic atmosphere, with Travel cards showing paper plane tickets and folded road maps.  Assignment cards depict push-pins on destination cities (a subtle nod to a certain well-known earth map computer application).   

That evening my family sat around the dining room table and played my game with a real production copy for the first time.  They had participated in a number of playtests with early home-made prototypes, but it became a whole new experience to enjoy the game as a professionally made, artistically finished product.  My wife jumped to an early head start as she completed three assignments in her first three turns.  The kids of course ganged up on Mom to keep her from running away with the lead, but in the end it was Dad the Designer that won the maiden session of Trains Planes and Automobiles.

Both my sons (ten and 15 years old) said several times that they really had fun playing the game.  I think the gameplay is a nice balance of hand management, racing for goals while disrupting your opponent, and a little card luck as well.  There's no run-away leader, as there are some balancing mechanisms for trailing players to take action to stay in the game.  All in all, I have to say that I am pleased at how much fun TPA turned out to be, and the kids think so to.  I think this can be a real "family game night" hit.  

Worthington Games has published TPA under their new Blue Square label.  The marketing campaign is in work, so the game is not yet available online as the outlets for purchase are still being developed.  They offered TPA for sale for the first time at Origins Game Fair and will be selling it at the Boardgame Players Association's World Boardgaming Championships the first weekend in August. 

I plan to demonstrate Trains Planes and Automobiles in the Juniors Room at WBC starting Thursday 4 August.