I think that’s a lot of fun; I thrive in variability (in games, at least), so I’m always excited to tackle this from a different angle. Going too far in the other direction, hitting lots of stations in a small area, will punish you the other way.

If you select this option when starting a solo game, and have enabled "Share data with Blue Orange" in the game's settings, you will be dealt a solo game with a pre-shuffled deck of cards for the day. The game lasts four rounds and in each round players will be drawing networks from their starting departure station to another station.Planning a new tube network offers entertainment and strategic finesse, all in a small package and with a lean set of rules. The maps are not the most attractive thing you will set your eyes upon, but it’s beauty comes from its functionality and very clever layout. The challenge is that you cannot connect the same two Stations more than once (with one line, at least), so you need to make sure that also doesn’t push you into a corner. The Railroad Switch card and the two “Joker” cards (which give players the right to use any of the four station symbols) are easily the most important ones in the game to provide flexibility, so if they show up, scoring bonanzas may occur. In there somewhere, however, is also a handy switch symbol that lets you split off from any station on your current line to the symbol shown on the next flipped card.

These powers will move around with the specific coloured pencil but can only be used once per round.The station cards come in two colors, blue and pink, representing the street-level stations and the underground stations. Your aim is to score as many points as you can by optimising the routes of the four underground lines on your map of London. It must also be noted that the final interchange scoring can be unnecessarily difficult as you scan through the map to find them. One other way you can draw your network: if you draw the Railroad Switch card after the first or second turn of the round.

Add either Shared Objective cards or Pencil Power cards into the mix, or even play with both sets of cards! When playing with my seven year old Max, we tend to leave out scoring the connections so there is less complexity. Although the box caters for one to four players, you can easily combine two games to make it up to an eight player game and it takes no longer to play. On each turn draw a line to complete a section of their line with their coloured pencil – making sure they are following the construction rules.

The next card in the stack is flipped over, and you can draw a line from any station on your existing line to the type of station indicated on the second card. Scoring in Next Station London is tight at both two and three players and the solo challenge has been a treat. Each player is trying to achieve these objectives throughout the game and will grant the players ten additional points. One card is a Railroad Switch symbol: when this card is turned over, turn over another symbol card, but you may start your straight line segment from any station on your current line (creating a fork in your track).