Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Review

boardgamequest.com:

In the library world, there’s a guiding concept of a ‘Core Collection’. These are the items that all libraries, if they have the means, should try to have. The Core Collection helps librarians decide which book about French cooking from the 19th century is the most comprehensive, or which author wrote the best biography of Klaus Teuber.

Now, for my own game library, I don’t usually bother myself with how well-rounded my collection is. I already have a dozen games about gardens and flowers, and if I see a new one with interesting art or mechanics, I’ll likely add that one to my horde, too. But if there were a Core Collection for board games, what would be included? If we’re looking at games that best introduce specific game styles, or serve as the best gateways to types of mechanics, which do we choose?

I’m arguing for Railroad Ink: Deep Blue, the train networking game for 1-4 players, to be considered the core gateway game for the Roll and Write genre. Released in 2018, it has become a staple in many game collections and is a perfect modern classic for introducing the joys of rolling dice and squiggling down coordinating symbols to gamers far and wide. But what makes this game so essential?

The goal of Railroad Ink is to earn the most points after seven rounds of creating an efficient transportation network. Each player starts the game with a white board that has a grid printed on it to represent their personal network. For each round of play, the basic dice are rolled. Each dice face represents a different transportation feature that you must draw onto the whiteboard grid to form your network. In order to place a feature, it must connect to a matching exit along the edge of the grid or to a matching feature that you have already added. There are multiple scoring goals to work towards that are tallied at the end of the last round. Who connected the longest network? Who managed to fill in the most center spaces? The point tallying is the most stressful part of the