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Review

Express Route

Express Route has a tidy cooperative delivery premise and a few real resource decisions. Repetition and an event deck with unfortunate timing leave it with very little pull for a second outing.

EdgyJellyfish · 7 October 2024 Machine translated EL EN Read the original
Express Route

Express Route

Published
2023
Designer
Patrick Marino
Publisher
The Op Games
Players
1–4
Playing time
60 min

The premise is neat: lorries, planes, and a team scrambling to finish objectives before time runs out. The execution, unfortunately, feels like a delivery schedule that forgot to include anything worth seeing on the way.

Each round has you spending actions to collect and deliver goods across America, combining lorry and air transport as required. The work feeds into a string of achievements that must be completed before the clock expires.

Then the event deck can close the one route you need at precisely the wrong moment and decide that your game is having a bad day.
EdgyJellyfish

The cooperative part lies in balancing the parcels: how many the team preserves for objectives, and how many it burns for upgrades, which are necessary if you intend to win. Then the event deck can close the one route you need at precisely the wrong moment and decide that your game is having a bad day.

That randomness might be easier to forgive if the rest of the design did not become repetitive and dull so quickly. Express Route has a few sound parts, but after one game I had no desire at all to set it up again. There are dozens of better options in this genre.

There are dozens of better options in this genre.
EdgyJellyfish

Source: BoardGameGeek

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