We then tried this little card game from Gunter Burkhardt, which has been receiving some good reviews elsewhere. Players bid to obtain landscape cards across which they try to steer their trains. First player to cross 8 landscape cards reaches Cairo and wins. Each round is played in two phases. In the first, each player bids for one of the available landscape cards, different landscapes requiring different amounts of railway track to cross. The cards won are put in front of each train and in the second phase players attempt to cross the terrain by drawing cards with sufficient track to enable this. This continues until one player has crossed all of the terrain cards they have in front of their train, at which point the next round begins.

The crux of the game comes down to the bidding, trying to get decent terrain cards without wasting your limited capital. Once you’re poor, you have little option other than to take what’s left after those outbidding you have had their pick of the decent cards. I quite liked it as a quick, light bidding game, which is all it’s meant to be. Nige and Mark K were less keen. The final auction in our game was critical and although I only needed to cross just one final terrain, I was too poor to be able to bid enough for the best cards. Mark G bid highest enabling him to pick a nice Savannah card with 3 tracks on it. This enabled him to cross his last 3 terrain cards and claim the win.