JKLM Interactive - On the Underground

Introduction

On the Underground is a strategy game of building the London Underground. The game starts with a plan for the yet-to-be-built underground network, which the players build during the course of the game. The player who builds the most valuable lines wins the game.

The game board is the plan of the Underground. This contains a number of stations connected by links. Each station is one of a number of types:

Station Type Colour

Rush hour destination Gold

Standard destination Silver

British Rail connection Blue

Terminus Red

Tourist destination Green

The stations are connected by links. Some connections have multiple links.

Building Track

Each player plays a number of colours - 4 colours each for a two-player game, 3 colours each for a 3 player game, and 2 colours each for a four-player or five-player game. Each colour represents one Underground line within the network. Please note that some of the colours used are slightly different to in the boardgame version of On the Underground, due to the graphical limitations of representing the game on a computer!

On their turn, a player lays four pieces of track. They can all be the same colour, or of different colours in any combination. Each player has a limited number of tracks of each colour.

For each colour of track, the first piece can be laid anywhere in the game. Subsequent pieces of track must be laid to extend from the end of the previously built line. You can not normally create branches (except see Junction Tokens later on in these rules), and you can never build two unconnected lines of the same colour.

Each piece of track built scores for the following:

Connecting to a British Rail (Blue) Station : 1 point
Connecting to a Terminus (Red) Station : 2 points
Connecting two identical tourist (Green) destinations : 3 points

Note that for the tourist destinations, there are four different symbols (cameras, wine glasses, handbags and laptops). You only score three points when your line connects to two identical symbols.

In addition, if you build a circular line, this also scores 1 point for every station inside (but not on) the circular line.

Blue scores 7 for encircling Piccadilly Circus, Totenham Court Road, Leicester Square, Charing Cross, Holborn, Blackfriars and Bank.

Junction Tokens

A player may collect a junction token in one of two ways:

Whenever a line is built to a terminus, the player receives a Junction Token automatically (as well as receiving 2 points).
A player may take a Junction Token instead of building one of his four pieces of track on his turn.

As one of his builds, a player may discard two Junction Tokens in order to be allowed to build a new segment of track from the centre of an existing line - thus creating a branch line.

Blue builds the track segment from Aldgate to Limehouse. As this is from the middle of his track, and therefore creates a branch line, he much pay 2 junction tokens in order to do this.

The Passenger

Four of the Standard or Rush hour destinations will be marked with spinning dobbers (yellow dobbers for Rush Hour stations, and White dobbers for Standard stations). These are the destinations that the passenger (the black spinning dobber) wishes to visit.

The Passenger Rush Hour Destination Standard Destination

After each player has played, the passenger will move to one of the selected rush hour destinations and then to one of the selected standard destinations. His selection of which selected destinations he moves to, and the route he takes to get there, will be determined as follows:

As he is lazy, he will go to the destination which requires the least steps walking (i.e. where there is no rail link available).
As he is lazy, he will go to the destination which requires the least number of changes of train.
If both of these are tied, the player whose turn it is chooses where he goes

As he is moving, each line he uses will earn 1 point for the player who owns the line. Note that this is for each line, not each line segment - so the player will score just 1 point, no matter how far along the line he moves.

Once the passenger has moved, the destinations which he moved to will be deselected, and new destinations selected to replace them.

It will sometimes happen that all the selected destinations are the same colour. When this happens the passenger will only move to one destination.

End of the Game

The marked destinations are selected from a 55 card deck. When this deck is exhausted, the passenger will leave the game. The game is then played until each player has had an equal number of turns. The game then ends, and the player with the highest score is the winner.

Game Controls

The scorebox shows the list of players, in the order they play. For each player, it shows the player's score, their track colours with the number of segments still available, and the number of junction tokens currently held.

This control allows the player to select which colour track to build. Click the colour to select it (the selected track is indicated). Clicking the Junction Token takes a Junction Token.

This control allows the player to select where the passenger moves to, and which tracks the passenger uses to travel there. All legal options are shown, with scroll controls available if there are more than two options. Click anywhere on the option to select it.

The cards remaining is shown. When this reaches 0, the game ends once the players have had an equal number of turns.