/pic3539689.jpg)
In First Class: Unterwegs im Orient Express, players try to score as many fame points as possible by building a rich network of rails, by building luxurious train cars, or by serving well-paying passengers.
From the Publisher's website:
In the early days of the twentieth century, rail is the preferred mode of transportation for the elite. Luxury lines scramble to accommodate the needs of business tycoons, diplomats, and even royalty. Step into this world and compete to build the most luxurious train lines possible in First Class. Guide your lines from humble beginnings into rivals of the fabled Orient Express itself as you carry out actions each round. Add cars to your trains, upgrade those cars to attract wealthier clientele, extend your lines towards Constantinople, and more. A limited number of action cards is available each round, so pick your actions carefully and choose a path for your rail lines. There are many ways to score points, but only a true railroad baron will accumulate the most points and win the game.
First Class is a card game that includes aspects of board games, creating a unique and dynamic experience every time you play. Cards represent your train cars and provide a visual reminder of your empire's growth as they extend out from your player board. On top of that, every game of First Class uses two of five interchangeable decks of action cards. Each deck provides new challenges for building your rail empire. One game might have you catering to the celebrities on your trains and fulfilling contracts along your route, while another game asks you to accommodate passengers and their luggage while you get swept up in a murder mystery. Each combination of modules opens many possible strategies and provides even more thematic flair. Return to a time when rail was king and grow your empire!
- More accessible than Russian Railroads
- Includes many modules in the base game
- Russian Railroads
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Card Drafting — you are basically drafting these cards out of this big Tableau kind of like seven wers duel honestly you're drafting these cards and then you're putting them into uh your board either as tracks for trains to go on or tracks for passengers cars for passengers to go on uh or special abilities to enact as well or scoring opportunities
- Modular Board — there's a bunch of different little modules all the different modules are all in the base game they act as like kind of mini expansions that you play with
- Set Collection — cards for passengers to go on
- Track building — you're putting them into uh your board either as tracks for trains to go on or tracks for passengers cars for passengers to go on
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- this is kind of a placeholder for all of the ticket to rides we own like five maps to this I think we own like nine if you factor in the sand alone Germany and Europe and London we have a ton of these Maps we really like these games they are extremely streamlined to what a game is
- this is the game I would recommend every library to purchase if they have a circulating board game collection because it will get played and it will get circulated
- also a great game by the way it's going to be higher up on my list spoiler alert but this game is also great
- I just really really like that you don't have to be good at games be good at this game cuz you're just rolling dice like that's it that's all the game is you're just rolling Dice
- because of that corers is in my heart
- you are either playing a card you're getting a card or you're picking up your cards and that's it that's all you're doing
- it's really challenging to know when to do that and when it's going to be beneficial
- people feel really smart and clever while they're playing it but also not like overwhelmed with all these different things
- this is a game that you have an action you get to play an action but then everyone to do that exact same action you just have to do a stronger version of it
- the actions that don't get drafted actually get a little bit of money added to them
- it's a classic
- you're trying to draft all these marbles in order to make these drinks
- there's also some that are not like what you want they will do bad things to you but some of those selections might have just a ton of marbles in them so you're willing to risk it risk this negative thing happening to you in order to gain all of these so you can complete your orders
- it's really cool with this recessed board as you're putting all of these marbles in all of these places and you're drafting this these cards it just it's a really fun one to play
- worker placement game but usually worker placement what that means is when you place a worker no one else can go there it's the exact opposite in fact you want to go where you already have people placed
- my favorite mechanism in this game is you can go and you can arrest other people's groups of people and basically sell them to the jail for money
- there's kind of this morality track as well as you're um as you're going up kind of building this church this Cathedral as well