Station Manager

By Michael Schacht

A game for 2-4 players aged 8+.

Time: 45 mins.

English translation by Garry Lloyd – Draft 1 (corrections please to garry@trickylight.co.uk )

Business is thriving in the switching yard. Players load freight from around the world onto their trains to fulfil certain orders from businessmen. If you are successful you gain profit, but beware. If someone fulfils the same order later in the game, they can steal away your profit. As more and more trains leave the switching yard, the closer you get to the end of the game.

104 Freight Cards in 4 colours (carrying 13 different types of merchandise)

8 Order Cards

1 Scorepad

Rules

Preparation

The scorepad and a pen are laid to one side.

The Order Cards are laid out in the middle of the table.

The Freight Cards are well shuffled and 3 cards are dealt to each player. The remainder form a draw pile and the top card is turned over and placed next to the draw pile to begin the discard pile.

A start player is chosen.

The Course of the Game

The start player takes the first turn and play then proceeds clockwise round the table.

On his turn, a player:

Takes 2 cards from the draw pile or the last card placed on the discard pile.
Discards one card or lays out in front of him a series of Freight Cards.

Discarding a card

When you discard, you overlap it with any cards already in the discard pile so that everyone can see how many cards there are in the discard pile.

Laying out cards

A player can only lay down a series of cards if he is able to fulfil an Order Card exactly. The types of order card are as follows:

Green two pairs of the same type of merchandise
Blue three of the same type of merchandise
Purple four of the same type of merchandise
Beige five of the same type of merchandise
Yellow three of one kind and a pair of a different kind of merchandise
Grey any five cards of the same colour

For the first five Order Cards, it doesn’t matter what colour the cards are. The symbols in the corners of the cards help to easily distinguish the different types of merchandise.

The Order Card also shows how many bonus points are received by the player holding that Order Card at the end of the round.

If a player can fulfil an Order Card, he lays down the appropriate Freight Cards in front of him in a row, with each card overlapping so players can see how many cards each person has in front of them.

In addition, the player may take all the cards in the discard pile and place these in front of him, again with each card overlapping.

The player then takes the Order Card he fulfilled and places this in front of him, separately from the Freight Cards. If the Order Card is already held by another player, then the card is taken away from this player and placed in front of the player currently completing the order. If there is more than one of the same type of Order Card (green and blue orders), then the player fulfilling the order can choose which to take.

A player can only fulfil one order per turn, even if he has the cards in his hand to fulfil more than one.

Game End

The game ends immediately when

a player obtains his third differently coloured Order Card, or
the draw pile runs out and a player cannot draw a card, or
a player has 25 or more Freight Cards laid out in front of him.

Players then receive points as follows:

For each Train Card laid out, a player receives 1 point.
For each Order Card, a player receives the bonus points shown on the card.

The game may be played over a number of rounds.

Hints:

To better see how many Freight Cards a player has, it may be helpful to group cards into sets of 5 or 10.