Euro Game Influencer?
I am not really up on the history of boardgame genres, so I'm making this statement from a position of little knowledge, but Splotter's 1999 effort Bus seems to be ahead of its time. Especially when you compare it with what has come since, games such as Caylus, Agricola, and Age of Steam/Steam. It is a worker placement, strategic planning, puzzle of a game that is the equal of the 'greats' that have come in the 21st century.
Action Cubes and Building Routes
Each player starts the game with 20 available actions cubes (plus one pre-placed action which gives each player a bus, you need at least one bus in a game called Bus, right?). These action cubes are it. Once used there is no way to get them back, and no way to 'generate' new ones. So use them wisely. Each turn you must use two, but after that you can use as many as you wish. Picking the right moment to commit using more cubes, to give you more actions will be the difference between winning and losing.
With these cubes you will need to build a bus route and transport passengers to their desired destination. For each passenger you move to a destination then one point is yours. There are plenty of ways to spend you action cubes to help get more passengers to more destination on more buses, thereby ramping up your points. You'll read more about effective use of your actions cubes throughout this review.
Notice that despite this being a tranport themed game I didn't mention route optimization yet. I've done that for a reason. The game isn't about getting passengers to their destination in the shortest distance possible. Indeed it is the opposite, it's about getting your bus line to meander around the board as much as possible, taking in a many possible destination buildings as it can (just like real-life). Having a lot of destinations on your route, with a good variety of types (home, work, or pub), is key to a good route and a high score. Like any good Euro game though that isn't the only thing that is key.
Before we leave bus lines as a topic there is another interesting mechanic in the laying of your route. As with roads in Settlers of Catan your bus line is made up of wooden blocks, each being a segment of your line, with the segments running from one junction to another. 118
However, unlike Settlers, your line must extend from either or both ends. You can't branch from middle of your line. So your bus route ends up as one long line snaking across the board. This makes extending your line a tad more difficult, requiring a little bit more planning. If you're not careful you can block yourself off from a part of the board you are desperate to get to, or not be able to access the passengers you need. Even in a three player game on a map designed to support five players the nature of the game forces a close 'intertwining' of routes rather than players just controlling a corner all to themselves.
Placing line extensions is an action the player can select on their turn. There are other action types available too, such as adding passengers, adding buses, adding destinations, running your buses, and the ever present Euro game action of '1st Player Next Turn'. There is also the very gamey 'freeze time' action, but more on that later.
Select Actions, Execute Actions
Each round in the game is played like any good worker placement game, such as Caylus. First each player selects actions one at a time (starting with the 1st player). When all players have passed you then execute the actions that have been selected. This is where the most fun is to be had. Making sure you do all the actions you need to run your strategy, and second guessing your opponents is where lips start getting bitten and foreheads mopped. You need to plan ahead, not just in the turn to see what actions other players will be doing, but working out what will help you future turns.
Action selection and execution is not quite so straightforward though, and to be honest pretty hard to describe, so please bear with me on this. Most of the actions (extending lines, adding passengers, placing new buildings, and running buses) allow more that one player to select them (unlike Agricola or Le Havre). The action cubes (of the wooden variety) are placed in the action boxed in order ('a', then 'b', then 'c' etc.). However during action execution phase the line extending and building adding actions are performed in reverse order ('f', then 'e', then 'd' etc.), meaning the last player to select the action, not the first gets to execute first. It's such a clever little mechanism that if this was a <PERSON> game the fans would be screaming 'genius'. 349