Whistle Stop

Whistle Stop won me over immediately as a nice, tight pick-up-and-deliver game, with enough complexity to keep me engaged without becoming heavy. At the table it goes like a train—literally and figuratively—and my first impression is love on the level of Suburbia.

Its core is pick-up-and-deliver: you collect things and try to transport them where they are needed. The impression it left me with is one of tightness, with decisions that pressure you enough to stop you from drifting, but without weighing down the pace of the game.

Player interaction, at least as we understood it on our first attempt, mainly comes through that squeeze on your options and through how the shared situation on the table develops. But that is also where the problem appeared: as usual, we probably played a different game from the one the designer had in mind.

Perhaps I would like a little more game here, although I am not sure it needs it. What it definitely needs is an FAQ or a revised manual, so the designer does not have to keep answering the same question with a different variation each time. I will return with a proper review once I have played it again using the correct rules.