Maglev Metro

My number 4 favorite game of all time is Maglev Metro. Maglev Metro is a pick-up and deliver route building game.

Thematically, these rails are magnetic monorails of the future. There are seven kinds of passengers to pick-up and to deliver. There are silver, copper and gold meeples, representing robots of different utility, and pink, lilac, coral, and purple colored meeples, representing peoples from different walks of life.

Every player has a train in their player color and a set of hex tiles showing rails in their player color. These tiles are transparent, except where they show your track, and the arrangement of tracks is offset slightly from player to player. This is so track tiles can be stacked on top of each other allowing train routes to run parallel. It also looks really cool on the table.

The actions that you can perform are simple and defined on your player board. Your player board is double layered and has places for your meeples to be laid down into them. This is because as you deliver passengers, they go onto your player board. Robot meeples cover action spots on your player board making your actions stronger. People meeples cover spots that can unlock benefits allowing you to go to more locations or gain bonus actions, and they can cover spots to give you victory points.

Placing your delivered meeples on your player board is key to success, and the primary puzzle presented by Maglev Metro. The layered boards, transparent tiles, and extra thick destination tiles are fun to play with and make Maglev Metro a very satisfying tactile experience. Everything also looks awesome on the table. The meeples even sit inside your trains, much like they do in Explorers of the North Sea, and you know what a sucker I am for that!

The puzzle is thinky but intuitive. The presentation is stellar, and the theme and game play are perfectly integrated. These things blend flawlessly in Maglev Metro making it my number 4 favorite board game of all time!