A 2-4 player card game of trains, tracks, and tricky decisions designed by the award-winning design duo Brett J. Gilbert and Matthew Dunstan.

In the sleepy English countryside, life continues undisturbed as it has for centuries. It is up to you to travel to every corner of this land, bearing the promise of modernisation, accommodating the oddly specific demands of the locals, and ushering in the age of steam.

In Village Rails, you will be criss-crossing the fields of England with railway lines, connecting villages together, and navigating the complex and ever-changing demands of rural communities. Connect stations and farmsteads to your local network while placing your railway signals and sidings ever so carefully. Meet the exacting standards of cantankerous locals planning strangely specific trips, and weigh their demands against your limited funding. There is much to balance in this tricky tableau-building card game of locomotives and local motives.

Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 45 mins
Age: 14+
Contents: 122 mini cards, 50+ tokens, 4 scoring dials

Brett J. Gilbert studied Materials Science and Metallurgy at Cambridge University, and has worked in design management roles within both educational publishing and the online retail industry. After discovering modern board games and the vibrant UK design community, Brett became a professional board game designer, and now has a large catalogue of published games, including Divinare and Elysium, both recognised by the Spiel des Jahres jury.

Matthew Dunstan is an Australian materials chemist and board game designer, currently living in Prague, Czech Republic. Matthew completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2015, where he still works as a researcher in renewable energy technologies, including lithium ion batteries and carbon capture. To date he has more than 25 published games, including Elysium (co-designed with Brett Gilbert and nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2015), Relic Runners (Australian Game of the Year 2014) and the Adventure Games series (co-designed with Phil Walker-Harding) which have sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide.

Joanna Rosa is a self-taught Polish artist who has been passionate about watercolours since the first time she picked up a brush. When not illustrating, she tries out new recipes, reads optimistic books and works as a pathologist at the clinical hospital in Szczecin.