Welcome to the Isle of Trains, where you are the conductor, and constructor of one of the island’s locomotives. You’ll build trains and load a range of goods to complete contracts across the island, and also deliver passengers to their destinations.
Isle of Trains: All Aboard is a card-based engine building game where cards have multiple uses: You can use cards as locomotives, freight cars, passenger cars, or buildings to improve the effectiveness and abilities of your train. Cards can also be spent to pay for the construction of your new train cars and buildings, or you can use your cards as cargo and load them onto available freight cars.
You will also have a range of passengers who want to be taken to different destinations. You will draw these passengers at random from a bag when you build passenger cars and certain locomotives. You can then load passengers into any available passenger car. When passengers are delivered to their destinations, they will give you an instant powerful bonus!
Loading cargo and passengers into opponents’ trains is important on the Isle of Trains as it’ll also gain you extra bonuses that turn! But this will help the other train conductors get a little closer to completing their goals, by giving them the cargo or passengers, which they can then use for deliveries and big end game points!
The game ends when a certain number of contracts have been completed, or a certain number of passengers are delivered. You win by scoring the most points, which you earn by building up your train, completing contracts, and delivering passengers.
Isle of Trains: All Aboard is all about balancing the need to upgrade your train, with loading cargo or passengers onto opponent’s train for big bonuses, and delivering cargo and passengers to their destinations before anyone else. Build your engine effectively enough to be remembered as the greatest train conductor on the Isle of Trains!
- Snappy, short turns with a clear action economy
- Solid solo mode with scenarios
- Attractive production value and components (deluxe variant) with nice artwork
- Good player interaction through shared cargo and timing
- Scales well from 2 to 4 players
- Iconography can be busy; some icons aren’t on the reference card
- A few edge cases aren’t covered on the reference card and require the rulebook
- May require the rulebook nearby to explain engine/caboose abilities
- Railway logistics, cargo management, and passenger transport
- Rail transport network on a small map with various locations to visit and upgrade trains
- Abstract/logistical
- San Juan
- Race for the Galaxy
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Building and upgrading trains and buildings — Use cards to construct new train cars and buildings that grant bonuses and scoring potential.
- Caboose and building abilities — Caboose tokens and buildings grant unique abilities that influence play and scoring.
- deck-building — The deck represents currency, trains, and cargo; players use it to perform actions and acquire resources.
- Deliveries and contracts for points — Deliver cargo to locations to gain points and end-game bonuses; can affect other players by sharing cargo.
- Dual-action turn from a four-action set — Each turn you select two actions from: take cards, build from hand, load onto trains, or deliver to locations.
- Loading cargo onto trains using matching icons — Cargo icons on cards must match to load onto a train, respecting capacity limits.
- Passengers and ticket tiles — Passengers provide rewards; ticket tiles offer additional bonuses and end-game scoring possibilities.
- Solo mode with scenarios — A solo mode with scenario-based goals to provide a focused challenge separate from multiplayer.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Isle of Trains is just a really solid package
- This game feels very Snappy
- I’m giving this a 9 out of 10