Here’s the next installment in the ongoing strategic collaboration between GMT and Victory Point Games. In this, one of their most popular Family/Euro games, we bring you a cross between a “pick up and deliver” and “resource management” game, with a lot of backstabbing mixed in! Component-wise, we are going for the same type of quality you saw in our first VPG project, No Retreat, Deluxe Edition (mounted gameboard, thick counters, etc). We hope you’ll like this game as much as we do, and will continue to support our ongoing strategic friendship/partnership with Victory Point Games.
In Circus Train you are the owner and operator of a small circus train in Prohibition-era America. Through clever card hand management, you control the movement of your train around the American Northeast, making strategic business decisions about talent, performances and payroll in this fast-paced strategy game.
Circus Train includes a wonderfully competitive 2-5 player standard game, and a tense solitaire version where money is a very tight resource indeed. Optional rules build upon the game’s rich narrative, providing greater management challenges and plenty more opportunities for competitive backstabbing.
• Perform shows where demand emerges!
• Add talent to your trains such as clowns, acrobats, freak shows, big cats, and elephants!
• Carefully manage monthly payroll and make your circus profitable!
Inspired by Sara Gruen’s novel “Water for Elephants,” Circus Train includes thematic elements such as improving your show’s reputation, the high costs of supplying big cats and elephants, and the ability to “red light” (firing by throwing off the train) disgruntled talent or talent that has simply become too expensive to maintain. These elements are blended into the game’s mechanics, keeping it all simple while adding layers of depth and strategy.
Each turn represents one week of real time, and after six months, the circus season closes for the year and the game ends with one player declared as having The Greatest Show on Earth.
Swing on over and listen to our review of the VPG edition.
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Just checked, and on the first day a very respectable 147 pre-orders for this title.
Very nice! Now let’s see if Gene and the gang at GMT might look at Nemo’s War too. 🙂
Oh, Jeff, they LOOK at everything we have. But while ALL our games are called, few are chosen…
Look at the odds. If we make about 26-30 new releases per year, and 2 or 3 maybe get P-500’d (including all those from our back catalog), the odds are very long indeed. However, there are games that it’s safe to predict GMT will likely not select (STRIKE FORCE ONE and HERO OF WEEHAWKEN leap to mind) and others that seem far more likely.
This is all GMT’s call and their decision. But if the game’s not a hit with VPG customers, it likely won’t have sufficient appeal to the great guys at GMT. Ironically, if people stop buying VPG games because they “want to wait for the GMT Edition,” that GMT Edition will never happen!
Alan Emrich