There are also race missions, where all players must visit a number of cities before other players. In these missions, there is no combat but the tension is still high as players roll and move, trying to figure out the fastest routes, to beat everybody else. Action cards that provide special movement and the dreaded “Mixed Signals” card that prevents a train from taking an action come into play fast and furious as the engineers jockey to get into the winner’s circle. There are points for second place and the rest of the losing field, but winning feels like a well-deserved feat in itself.

And then there are the scramble missions, which I think is one of the greatest gaming ideas I have ever seen in my life. Seriously. The mission names some person, like a political figure or character that’s probably in whatever manga or anime the game is probably based on, and the players have to race their combat trains to go pick him or her up from whatever city they’re located. Once a player reaches the “football”, so to speak, they’re tasked with taking them to a destination city- while the other players attack and try to steal the passenger! What happens is this crazy, dramatic, and suspenseful series of insane interception attempts, shocking combat victories, and alliances of convenience as players plot together to stop the scrambler from completing the mission. It’s an absolute riot, and frankly I think the game could have been all about the scramble missions and it would have been just as successful as it is with the variety of objectives.

The missions are tremendously fun. When you actually complete one- despite repeated interceptions, attacks, and tough odds- it’s incredibly satisfying. Watching your train head down a track and needing a certain die roll to either blow past on oncoming assailant or to beat somebody to a valuable delivery. There’s actually quite a lot of strategy in the mission-based structure the game offers, as it becomes important to choose missions that you have a better chance of succeeding at and it pays to focus building efforts toward completing specific missions. Since everyone participates in every mission, combat is always a viable option and if you’ve built your trains to be combat effective, there’s lots of honor points to be had- every wreck that you’re at fault for gives you a destruction point and some honor, and if you have the most destruction points at the end of the game there’s a big bonus that in our game, made a winner out of the second place player..

In our game, I was coming in dead last toward the final rounds. I had done well in the first half of the game, but in the second I just couldn’t get any honor. My company was floundering in ill repute. My turn to select a mission came up, and there was one that was definitely to my advantage- a delivery between two cities where I had a complete, unbroken chain of my rails. There’s no way that making the delivery would have given me enough points to even make it to third or second place. But then I remembered one of the coolest rules ever in the history of games.

If, at any point during the game, you feel like you’ve lost all hope of winning you can stake your company’s entire reputation on a single mission. It’s basically an all-or-nothing thing- succeed and you get the mission’s honor points plus the difference between your current points and the leader’s. Fail, and you’re eliminated from the game, period. I decided to stake everything on this one delivery and the third place player followed my lead. I made it, and catapulted into first place while the third place player was unceremoniously put out of the game. It’s the best “rubber banding” mechanic I’ve ever seen- it’s totall1y thematic, and it sets the risk so high that it doesn’t feel cheap, gamey, or fluffy at all. It takes some balls, particularly at the end of a four hour game.

I didn’t win in the end, but I couldn’t have cared less because TRAIN RAIDER was such a joy to play that I felt like a champion just for having been able to experience it. Despite actively wanting to hate it, I adored it. I fell completely, stupidly in love with it. I think it’s easily the best game I’ve played since BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and even after a single game I feel confident in calling it the best train game I’ve ever played. There’s such an extraordinary and rarified mixture of things going on with the pure train game mechanics coupled with a crazy theme and action-filled gameplay that there is really nothing else that compares to it on the market today.

Which is really a damn shame. TRAIN RAIDER is a better, more innovative and boldly unique game than anything we’ll likely see released by any of the majors this year, unless all my gaming dreams come true and some insightful publisher buys the rights for the game from the Japanese publisher and announces an English language edition of it. It’s also a shame because there’s a lot of potential in TRAIN RAIDER for even more greatness. There was a Europe expansion released in Japan at some point, but it’s even rarer than the base game. It adds a new map, new action cards, and some extra rules. But I could see the game incorporating an RPG element, giving players engineers that level-up for extra bonuses or special abilities. I could see new maps, more story elements to flesh out the novel and very interesting setting, and more variety in what the action cards do.

I think the game could use a little more executive theme, for a change. I don’t want to just get +1 to my combat roll, I want to know what kind of new gun I’ve got bolted onto the engine. The card text has some executive theme, but it could go further than it does. For example, there’s one card that turns one square on the map into a luminous coal deposit. We didn’t know what it was through the game since it wasn’t labeled, but I sure was glad that my line went through it. Story elements like that would go a long way to making TRAIN RAIDER even better. I also think that the game processes could be tightened up a shade to get the game under four hours with any range of players.

But who am I to complain when the total package is so awesome? TRAIN RAIDER is simply a game that needs to be played and loved by more than just a Japanese audience and a handful of international enthusiasts. I do think that the playtime could be tightened up a bit and there could be more variety in the action cards, but by and large I think it is almost perfect and it’s a game that I believe that could win a lot of fans from both sides of the Ameritrash/Eurogame divide. I want to be able to play this game, in English, with all my friends. I want you to be able to do the same.

Previous Cracked LCDs: Version 1.0 Version 1.1 Version 1.2 Version 1.3 Version 1.4 Version 1.5 Version 1.6 Version 1.7 Version 1.8 Version 1.9 Version 2.0 Version 2.1 Version 2.2 Version 2.3 Version 2.4 Version 2.5 Version 2.6 Version 2.7 Version 2.8 Version 2.9 Version 3.0 Version 3.1 Version 3.2 Version 3.3 Version 3.4 Version 3.5 Version 3.6 Version 3.7 Version 3.8 Version 3.9 Version 4.0 Version 4.1 Version 4.2 Version 4.3 Version 4.4 Version 4.5 Version 4.6 Version 4.7 Version 4.8 Version 4.9 Version 5.0 Version 5.1 Version 5.2 Version 5.3 Version 5.4 Version 5.5 Version 5.6 Version 5.7 Version 5.8 Version 5.9 Version 6.0 Version 6.1 Version 6.2 Version 6.3 Version 6.4 Version 6.5 Version 6.6 Version 6.7 Version 6.8 Version 6.9 Version 7.0 Version 7.1 Version 7.2 Version 7.3 Version 7.4 Version 7.5 Version 7.6 Version 7.7 Version 7.8 Version 7.9 Version 8.0 Version 8.1 Version 8.2 Version 8.3 Version 8.4 Version 8.5 Version 8.6 Version 8.7 Version 8.8 Version 8.9 Version 9.0 Version 9.1 Version 9.2 Version 9.3 Version 9.4 Version 9.5 Version 9.6 Version 9.7 Version 9.8 Version 9.9 Version 10.0 Version 10.1 Version 10.2