Cretaceous Rails: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Engine Builder, Resource Management, Worker Placement, Route Builder
Player Age: 14+
Player Count: 1 - 4 Players
Time to Play: 30 Minutes Per Player
Game Designer: Ann Journey
Game Artist: Tyler Crook
Publisher: Spielcraft Games
Year Published: 2025
BGG Weight: 2.88
Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.
Player Age: 14+
Player Count: 1 - 4 Players
Time to Play: 30 Minutes Per Player
Game Designer: Ann Journey
Game Artist: Tyler Crook
Publisher: Spielcraft Games
Year Published: 2025
BGG Weight: 2.88
Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.
Rundown:
Cretaceous Rails is an interesting combination of route building, worker placement, engine building and variable scoring that is all mixed into the vibrant theme of a dinosaur park. Ultimately, players are trying to create a train network that allows them to clear jungles, help tourists go on safari, and capture dinosaurs. These resources (jungles/tourists/dinosaurs) will be used once they are unloaded from the train to pay for resort cards. The resort cards will amplify actions, add train carts, and reduce overall limitations.
Cretaceous Rails is played over four rounds, each consisting of four turns per player. On a turn, the active player will place their executive marker between two action tiles. This shared space between action tiles cannot already be used by another player. The player will then resolve the two actions.
When the round ends everyone will unload their train carts for free, all executives are returned to players, all resort cards in the display are discarded and refilled, and lastly, the action tiles are shuffled and re-dealt into a 4x4 grid. The player who used the draw resort action with the starting player piece will now be the first player in the new round. If this piece has not been claimed then the first player does not change.
Actions:
There are two consistent elements that players need to be aware of when performing actions. Firstly, when taking a tourist, dinosaur, or jungle token, it needs to be placed on an empty train cart and cannot be used until the carts have been unloaded. Secondly, jungles, tourists, and dinosaurs will not be refreshed during the game and are therefore a limited resource.
Laying Rails:
This action allows the player to place two new rails. These have to be connected to that player's existing rail network and the edge of any location can only contain two rails. If the player has used all their rails, they can still add new rails by moving previously placed rails. Rails can only be removed if they don't split the rail network.
Clear Jungle:
This action allows the player to clear one jungle piece connected to their network (adjacent to an existing rail).
Safari:
This action allows the player to take one tourist from a location connected to their train network. When taking a tourist, each dinosaur they can see (no jungle present on that dinosaur location) of the tourist's colour will increase the rating for that dinosaur (the points that dinosaur type is worth at the end of the game). Any volcano location connected to the player's train network will count as a matching tourist as volcanoes are exciting for everyone to see.
Capture Dinosaur:
Any one dinosaur can be captured that is connected to the player's network. The dinosaur’s location must not contain a jungle token upon capture.
Draw Resort Cards:
One at a time with the display refreshing as a card is taken, the active player can take two resort cards. If the player chooses, they can spend any tourist they have, moving them to the study group, to refresh one of the two card rows first.
Build Resort Cards:
Cards both work towards the player's engine and endgame scoring during the game. The build action allows the active player to build any number of resort cards on the same level by paying the tourist/dinosaur/jungle cost found at the top of the card. Three levels can be built during the game. For a card to be placed on a higher level, it will need one card underneath it to hold it up. The higher the level is, the better the resort cards are, and the lower the cost to perform the card action.
Unload Train Carts:
By skipping any one action the player can unload all of their train carts, allowing the dinosaurs, jungle, or tourist to be used as a resource in future actions.
Production:
The game is a big box game, which is great for shelf presence but not for fitting the game on your shelf. This is a game that has a proportionate box size as each dinosaur type is represented by a large miniature that creates the right atmosphere and presence for the game. The quality of the whole game is amazing and each miniature is colour-coded in a way that matches gameplay. It is worth noting that for any player who would prefer a more standard edition, there is a relaunch coming up through crowdfunding that will have meeples instead of miniatures to create a smaller box.
Intricacies:
Cards:
Each resort card can be broken down into three sections. The top is the resources that must be placed on the card to pay. The two images below are cards paid for using any dinosaurs and any tourists.
The middle of the resort card is the engine building element which will add to the player's resort. Some are not dependent on the level they are played into, as shown below.
Other cards gain stronger benefits the higher the level they are. Some also have a cost of reducing a dinosaur rating to use it, however, this cost will become cheaper the higher the card is built.
The bottom section of the card is a score multiplier if the card is played in the resort. At the end of the game, each score multiplier will be totalled and multiplied by the amount of that item that the player has. This could be tourists, jungle tokens, carts, rails, and adjacency to volcanoes/huts. These resources are included in the calculations if they are spent on anything during the game or remain unspent. The below example would be 3 points per each of the four forest (12 points total).
Dinosaur Scoring:
During the game, safari actions will cause an increase in dinosaur ratings. This will determine what each dinosaur of that colour is worth for end-game scoring. A dinosaur that has been used in the cost for a resort card will maintain the full value of its rating, whereas any dinosaur that was not spent didn't help develop the resort and will only be worth half of those points (rounded down). The below image would be 25 points plus 12.
Determination:
- The worker actions remain the same throughout the game which makes it easy to learn. The way the tiles line up is frequently changed for each round which makes the game feel like new worker placement spots occur every round.
- Production is stunning and very vibrant with the colours of engaging and functional miniatures.
- Lots of decisions on when to empty carts, when to score tourist/dinosaurs, and when to improve the engine through resort cards.
Cretaceous Rails will most likely be one of my five favourite games released this year and is easily receiving a Go-To Golden Seal. This is the kind of game that is going to relate to both Euro and thematic gamers. The resource management that comes from the shared board and depleting resources will appeal to Euro gamers. The vibrant theme, production, and built-in variability will appeal to the more thematic gamers. One of my favourite elements of the game is the resort cards. It would be one thing to enjoy these cards purely for their abilities and the decision that comes from which level to place them on, however, another thing to take into account is the end-game scoring capabilities. These include the cards themselves and the dinosaurs that will receive full points for paying the cost of the cards. One thing I'm always conscious of, but haven't played as the pure focus yet, is when playing the resort cards, to have a larger focus on building up score multipliers of the same type. An example of this would be creating a situation where I gain 7 points per jungle token and purely focusing on clearing jungles throughout the game. Cretaceous Rails is a very fun and vibrant game with plenty of variability, while also being a clever and challenging resource management puzzle. It is an easy recommendation to make to board gamers and I am already looking forward to their relaunch/expansion on Kickstarter this year.
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