Base price: $12.1 player.Play time: ~20 minutes.BGG LinkBuy directly!Logged plays: 5
Full disclosure: A review copy of The Royal Limited was provided by Button Shy.
Alright, let’s get back on the review horse with some Button Shy games! We all love Button Shy around here, we being me because I’m a sole proprietor and that’s okay. But the little wallets have come a long way. There are so many that they have their own series and sub-franchises, like the -opolis series and the RPG line and the Simply Solo series. We’re diving into another one of the latter ones today, so let’s check out another game in the Simply Solo line: The Royal Limited!
In The Royal Limited, your goal is to provide passengers and VIPs the luxury experience that they so rightfully deserve. Just one problem: the train isn’t built yet! It does leave in 45 minutes, though, so if you’re going to make it all work, you better be snappy about it. Place cards, add passengers, and make room for VIPs in this challenging solo game of hand management. Can you make sure the train is ready to leave the station?
Contents
Setup
Basically none. Set the Conductor Card out:
Shuffle the double-sided VIPs and keep two; return the rest to the wallet.
Shuffle the Train Cards and draw five!
You’re ready to start!
Gameplay
Not much to tell here, either. Over the course of three rounds you’ll build a train and add passengers and better passengers (VIPs) to it.
To start a round, you’ll draw five cards. Then, you can either play a car, play a passenger, or play a VIP. To play either passenger, you must have an empty car, so let’s start there. To play a car, you choose a card from your hand and play it face-up to the right of the rightmost current car (if any). The number on the card indicates how many cards you have to discard from your hand to play the card. Note that the cars have effects, but they do not activate when played. More on that in a second.
To play either a passenger or a VIP, you must meet their requirements. For passengers, that means you have to play the card vertically behind a train car of the same color or the same number. For VIPs, the color has to match (unless it’s a wild card), but there’s also a VIP-specific condition you have to fulfill to get them placed. Either way, once you place a passenger or VIP, you activate the car and its effect. You must complete the effect if possible, even if you don’t want to! If the effect is a Next effect, you must do that action after you activate the car or the round immediately ends.
Either way, the round ends when you’re out of cards to play or you don’t want to play any more cards. Discard the remaining cards in your hand, rotate the Conductor Card, and draw five more cards. Play three rounds and then the game ends!
Each card that remains in the deck or discard pile (and your VIPs) is worth 1 point. If you get 2 or fewer points, you win!
Player Count Differences
None! Purely a solo game.
Strategy
I waffle on the 0s; they’re cheap to play but their effects might not be particularly beneficial. Honestly, sometimes they’re just useful to have around because they count as even numbers for specific VIP Cards. But if you want more spots available for passengers, you’re going to likely have to play a 0 or two.
Similarly, the 3s will eat through your hand. You just have to discard three cards to play one. You play one, discard three cards, and then place your last card as the passenger and you’re basically done with the round after only doing one thing. You need to have a pretty robust hand economy to in this, so make sure you don’t burn through all your cards too quickly.
Try to get the VIPs played relatively quickly, or at least lean into their requirements. They can become increasingly tricky to place as you’re going through the game. If you don’t place them, well, they’re 2 extra points that might push you over the “lose” threshold and they’re not cards in your hand, so you have some flexibility about when they get placed. Try to use that flexibility to your advantage.
Moving passengers out of cars that let you draw more cards can be a good way to increase your draw power. It’s not always necessary to draw as many cards as possible, but it gives you a lot of flexibility around what you play and what you discard, and both can be pretty important if you want to try and take home a win.
Remember that there’s only one card of each color / number combination. This tripped me up in my first game, but if you’re relying on cards that sum to 3 or certain even-number combinations or something, you don’t have a ton of options. I mean, there are only 12 cards in the entire game, anyways.
Keep in mind what Next effect you’re getting stuck with; you don’t want to have to end the round prematurely. Some might be perfectly fine, or you might be out of cards and don’t care because the round is ending soon anyways. But don’t make the mistake of starting a round off, activating a Next that demands a 1 or 2, and then not having one in hand when you still have other cards. That just wastes a good round.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
I love the luxury of fancy trains. It’s a great theme. I’ve never been on a fancy train; it’s an aspirational goal. Games about fancy trains give me all the luxury I crave without me having to actually do anything, so it’s win-win. I’m hoping to take a semi-fancy train ride this summer, though!
As with a lot of this Simply Solo line, these games are tough. It takes some time to learn a game, granted, but Scott Almes is not messing around. He’s out for blood. This isn’t a brutal game, but I’d be lying if I said it was easy.
I do appreciate the low rules overhead, though. It is easy to play, which is nice. A solo game that’s easy to learn and hard to win is not a bad combination by any stretch.
I love that all of the passengers get a little bit of backstory. Well, the VIPs do. The regular folks don’t, but I enjoy the VIP profiles. It’s something to read.
Very much a “play anywhere” game! I’m excited to see how the expansions change things up. There are a lot of expansions (there’s an entire Expansion Collection already), so there will be much to plumb.
An extremely quick play, once you get the hang of it. 20 minutes might be an overstatement. I think I played my first four games in about 45 minutes, plus the initial learn of the game? It’s very snappy.
The art is pleasant too! Taylor Stone did a good job. It looks like this is the only (credited) game they’ve worked on, but, I mean, nice work! Hopefully we’ll see more Taylor Stone-illustrated games in the future. It’s a very nice style for the theme.
Mehs
It does get progressively more difficult to shuffle fewer and fewer cards, which is a bit funny. It’s kind of the one consequence of Button Shy games, especially as you’re removing cards from the deck: there just aren’t that many cards, so a riffle shuffle always feels slightly muted and the overhand shuffle doesn’t feel like you’re doing anything. Either way, feels bad.
Cons
For some reason, the “rotate this card to keep track of the round” cards always frustrate me, a smidge. I honestly am not sure why, since the game needs a way to keep track of what round you’re in anyways. It feels somewhat disconnected from the game experience even when it’s very thematically in sync (the end of the game is the “Train Departed” side). I’ll unpack this more on my time, I suppose.
Overall: 7.75 / 10
Overall, I thought The Royal Limited was fun! I cannot remember the name for the life of me, I think because it keeps getting mashed up with The Orient Express and something London-y so that I end up with The London Royal or The Orient Limited or the Royale with Cheese or something. This is just my brain slowly melting down; nothing to worry about, friends. I will say that the cute art and pleasant, whimsical vibes belies a challenging solo experience, as is common with the Simply Solo series. I’ve been enjoying all of them, but they are spicy for 18-card solo games, which is nice. Almes is a prolific designer, so always impressive to see how much he consistently has in the tank from a design standpoint. For fans of challenging and tight hand management, this will certainly be up your alley; you have limited cards, limited actions, and limited draw, so every choice you make is going to matter a great deal. And you’ve got trains! I just … enjoy trains. But yeah, it’s quick to play, the art is pleasant, and it’s a good and easy-to-transport challenge for the brain. If you’re into that, you’ll enjoy The Royal Limited! I’ve had fun with it.
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