In the multiple award-winning board game Metro, two to six players jointly expand the Parisian subway system. It’s a reasonably straightforward game of tactics, construction, and a little luck.
Board layout
The game board consists of eight by eight squares, all showing arrows. Four metro stations form the centre of the game, with 32 numbered stations on the boundaries, each of them containing 'arrival' and 'departure'. Around the board lies a clever score track.
Carriages and tracks
The game pieces are made of wood and represent little metro carriages. According to various clear rules (dependent on the number of participants) the players divide their carriages over the 32 stations. The 60 railway cards show one of the four different track types, straight or curved. The arrows on the cards in combination with the arrows on the game squares make that the tracks can only be laid in one way on the board.
Connect your stations
The goal is to supply a long track for your carriages between departure and arrival on two different stations. The longer the route, the more points are scored. Each player has two railway cards in his hand, placing one on the board each turn (and picking a new one from the stack after that). Every newly placed track should be either on the edge of the board, or connecting to another piece of track.
Points for your lines
As noted above, players score points by connecting metro stations. If a line ends on one of the central stations, the points are doubled. Since you can expand on every track on the board, the choice each time is to invest in your own connections, or to obstruct the opponents’ valuable tracks.
Prizes for ingenuity
The luminous thing about this game – apart from the playing pleasure – is that the track cards are designed in such a mysterious way that each departure station of a player is guaranteed to connect to an arrival point at the end of the game. Metro is a game of tactics and will last for about three-quarters of an hour. Publisher Queen Games issued the construction game in 2000, resulting in German and American marks of honour (Spiel des Jahres nomination, Mensa's Top Five Best Games).