Cube Express is an engaging tile-laying, engine-building economic and train game for 2-4 players. It's designed by Orlando Sá, with art by Harald Lieske, and it's published by Spielefaible. It was one of the new games we brought back from last year's Spiel Essen and we've hugely enjoyed our many plays since, and at all player counts.
The setting for the game is the early days of the railroad in the 19th Century. Players are laying out tiles to extend their rail networks and to benefit from their effects but, unlike most other titles in this genre, there is no specific geographic setting. Players all start off on identical tiles adjacent to a shared crossroads and the only limitation on tile placement is that rails have to match up: you can't place a line adjacent to a tile that doesn't have a line to which it can connect.
Players have train stations to lay out and they each have two trains, tho' you only have access to one each at the start. The number of stations you have on the board determines the total number of resources you can hold in store as well as the distance your trains can move. As the name of the game suggests, however, it's cubes that are the central resource, used to represent almost everything depending on where they are placed; reminiscent in that sense to the way cubes are used in Terraforming Mars (FryxGames). On players' individual boards, cubes can represent coal, wood, iron or share dividends, and you can manipulate the cubes to convert resources. Placed out on track tiles, the cubes can represent passengers, factory deliveries and ownership of production facilities. Cubes are also used to claim objectives from those displayed on cards; these are randomised at the start of every game so they are likely to differ every time. Deliveries to a factory earn you end-game points but also increase your stock value, giving you access to more dividends that you can spend to place out more stations...
Cube Express is certainly competitive but it's the very opposite of a 'take that' game. Players can make use of each other's stations and production facilities but the player who owns the facility also gains a benefit. If another player has a passenger at one of your stations, you can utilise them to claim a dividend, but the player whose passenger is displaced in this way also gains a dividend. Particularly with four players, games are highly interactive but the interactions always feel positive. For many players, that is a big plus - making Cube Express a family-friendly game.
With just two players there's likely to be much less interaction, so the dynamics of the game are different. At this player count it feels more like a 'pick up and deliver' game, but it's enjoyable nonetheless. The number of track tiles available to players is varied with the player count, and exhausting the supply of tiles is one of the end-game triggers (in our plays, it's proven to be the most common trigger), so most of our plays of Cube Express have come in at under 60 minutes. We've seen plenty of train games over the years and there's sometimes a sameyness about them; not so with this game, which gives a fresh take on the economic rail game.