Depending on the numbers of players, each player has 2-4 underground lines to care for. A player's turn consists of four actions in which he can place new track tokens on the board and by this build the underground lines. Each line (colour) of the player represents a different underground line. Knowing this, you will understand that – after placing the first track token of each colour – you may only extent the lines at either of their ends. Moreover it is not allowed to make a branch without playing two branch tiles that can be taken as another action.

There are some more important stations. Connecting one line to these stations gives the player victory points and additional branch tiles, so it's a good idea to do this. But the available connections to those stations are limited as explained before. Therefore it's important to strategically plan and place your track tokens. I still remember my first try-out. I ignored all those stations and ended up with a total loss.

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But there are also other ways to score victory points. Both city maps have their special rules: in London you will score for connections between two stations with the same symbol (those symbols are randomly placed at set-up) and for building loops with your line. In Berlin on the other hand there are more special stations and landmarks that can be collected and be exchanged for victory points later.

Gradually the underground net develops and more and more stations are connected to the lines. But what for? Why do we do this? It's nice to build up these lines, but there must be a deeper meaning behind that, or? Completely right: passengers want to use the underground, what else. Strictly speaking, there is only one passenger in On the Underground, but that is already enough for us.

At the beginning of each player's turn, 4 destination cards must be facing up next to the board. If there are not enough cards left, new cards are drawn. These are the destinations where our passenger, represented by a passenger token, wants to travel. So we already know the next destinations of our passenger. At the end of each player's turn, the passenger will move to her next destination, following some passenger movement rules. The most important rule is that it's a lazy passenger, so he prevents walking and changing trains.

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But often he will nevertheless use several underground lines and a player gains victory points for every line the passenger is using. As a result, not only the active player can score in an opponent's turn, but also all other players.

As said, although not much has changed compared to the original game, On the Underground is still a modern game. It is straight-forward and the player's turns are fast carried out. In fact although it is sometime wise to calculate the best strategy, there are seldom really long turns of the players. One of my fellow players concluded the game with the words: “It's similar to Ticket to Ride, only in better”. I would agree to that.

Both maps, the Berlin and the London map, have their own special rules that change the gameplay. I found it to be an interesting idea to build up a underground net by following the randomly drawn “wishes” of just one passenger. But the result is amazing: A lot of maps end up with a similar underground net as the real net of the city. Of course that's a little bit predefined due to the possible connections and the special scoring points, for example for building up loops. But it still feels great! Thanks to LUDI CREATIONS for bringing us back this interesting railroad game.