Railroad Ink: Eldritch Expansion Pack Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Ritual Die
• Portal Die
• Tentacle Die
• Investigation Die

Ritual Die

Difficulty: hard. 6 rounds.

Cultists are trying to create a Madness Network, a set of Ritual Sites connected to an evil dimension through Portals. Try to create the biggest Madness Network while separating it from the ordinary people of your cities. Each Round, you will have the option to open new Portals at the edges of your board and add a Ritual to your Madness Network. At the end of the game, you will gain points for your connected Rituals and Portals, but any Exit that is connected to either of those will not count when scoring regular Networks.

When playing with the Ritual Expansion, apply these changes to the regular game rules:

• The game only lasts 6 rounds.
• When you draw Routes, you must draw the result of the Ritual die, but it doesn't need to be connected to preexisting Routes.
• At the end of each round, you may draw 1 Portal next to one of your "Country Routes" (i.e., Routes with an open end connected to the outer edge of your board in a space without an Exit). Draw the Portal as an arc outside of the grid (fig. 1a).
• At the end of the game, you gain points for each Madness Network, i.e., each set of Rituals and Portals connected to each other. Use the Network Values track to determine your score (Rituals and Portals count as Exits when scoring your Madness Networks).
• When scoring regular networks, ignore any Exits that are connected to at least 1 Ritual and/or Portal.

Fig. 1a (printed caption: "Fig. 1a", labelled PORTAL and RITUAL).

Example: Lavinia has 2 Madness Networks: one connects 3 Portals and 3 Rituals (size 6, 20 points, marked in green); the other only connects 2 Rituals (size 2, 4 points, marked in purple). The "green" Madness Network also has 2 regular Exits connected to it; even if they are connected to each other, these Exits are part of a Madness Network, so they will not count when scoring regular Networks. Lavinia gains a total of 24 points for the Ritual Expansion.

Portal Die

Difficulty: easy. 7 rounds.

Reality is tearing itself apart and immense holes are opening, showing glimpses of the unthinkable. But not all that is supernatural will hurt or scare. You can safely travel to work by going through these portals of doom. Open Portals to connect distant areas of your Network as if they were next to each other. However, not all Portals are the same: there are three kinds of Portals (marked with the letters A, B, and C) and only two Portals of the same kind (same letter) are connected to each other. There can never be more than 2 Portals of the same kind on your board.

When playing with the Portal Expansion, apply these changes to the regular game rules:

• When you draw Routes, you may draw the result of the Portal die, following the normal placement rules.
• If you have already drawn two Portals with the same letter, you cannot draw a third one.
• Networks connected to Portals with the same letter are also connected to each other (even if you have Highway on one side and Railway on the other).
• Portals do not interrupt your Longest Highway and Railway (i.e., you are allowed to go through Portals when calculating your Longest Highway/Railway).

Example: In the figure above, Lavinia has a Longest Railway with 10 spaces, a Longest Highway with 4 spaces, and 5 Exits connected to the same Network.

Tentacle Die

Difficulty: medium. 7 rounds.

Tentacles are entering your little safe oasis of sanity, but a little madness is ok. Try to have as many Tentacles as possible in your territory and make people lose their minds while driving next to them. Each round, the Tentacle die will tell you the length of the Tentacle to draw that Round; at the end of the round, you may add it to your board. If you do, you will choose its starting position and its shape. Tentacles can share spaces with Railways and Highways. At the end of the game, you will gain points for each Tentacle you drew, plus bonus points for each space occupied by both a Tentacle and a Highway or Railway.

When playing with the Tentacle Expansion, apply these changes to the regular game rules:

• At the end of each round, after drawing your Routes, you may draw 1 Tentacle.
• When drawing a Tentacle, you must start from a space on the outer edge of your board that does not contain an Exit. The Tentacle must also have a length equal to the number shown on the Tentacle die (3, 4, or 5), it cannot be drawn partially.
• A Tentacle can be drawn with straight and/or curved stretches, mixed as you like. Tentacle stretches can only be drawn into:
  1. Empty spaces; these can be drawn as either a straight Tentacle or a curved Tentacle.
  2. Spaces that contain a straight Route (or Tentacle); these must be drawn as an "underpass" that crosses the preexisting Route/Tentacle perpendicularly (fig. 1b).
  3. Spaces that contain a curved Route (or Tentacle); these must be drawn as a "curved Tentacle" that goes through the two unoccupied sides of the space (fig. 2b).
• When you are drawing the final space of a Tentacle, close it by drawing an "ending tip" (as seen in fig. 3b).
• When you draw Routes, on the other hand, you can't draw them in a space that contains a preexisting Tentacle.
• At the end of the game, you will get 2 points for each Tentacle you drew (regardless of its length), plus 1 point for each space that contains both a Tentacle and a Route.

Fig. 1b (underpass across a straight Route) and Fig. 2b (curved Tentacle through a curved Route) are shown on the printed page.

Example: These 4 Tentacles will be worth 8 points (2 points each). There are also 7 spaces that contain both regular Routes and Tentacles (an additional 7 points). This brings the total to 15 points!

Fig. 3b: At the end of the game, this Tentacle will be worth 2 points + 3 additional because it goes through 3 spaces that also contain regular Routes.

Investigation Die

Difficulty: medium. 6 rounds.

Mysterious things are happening in your county. Send your Investigator to collect Clues that are appearing on your board and solve the case. Move your Investigator on top of a Clue to collect it. If you collect them all, you will solve the mystery (and get points).

When playing with the Investigation Expansion, apply these changes to the regular game rules:

• The game only lasts 6 rounds.
• Before rolling the dice for the first round of the game, choose an Exit and draw your Investigator next to it (fig. 1c).
• When you draw Routes, you may draw the Investigation die result, following the normal placement rules (remember to also draw the magnifying glass, but do not draw the footsteps).
• At the end of the round, you may spend a number of Movement points equal to the footsteps shown on the Investigation die. Each Movement point can be spent to perform one of the following actions:
  1. Move your Investigator to an adjacent space connected to their starting space with a Highway Route.
  2. Move your Investigator from a space with a Station (or from a Railway Exit) to a space with a Station connected to their starting space by 1 or more Railway Routes. When doing so, you have to stop at the first Station you encounter along your path (you cannot skip Stations).
• When you move your Investigator, erase them from their current position and redraw them on their destination space (you don't have to do this for every step, you can just draw their position at the end of their movement, after you spent all of the Movement points).
• If after spending a Movement point, your Investigator lands on a space that contains a Clue (magnifying glass), draw a circle around it to remember that you collected that Clue. You can collect more than 1 Clue in a single round.
• At the end of the game, you will gain 1 point for each Clue that you collected, plus 4 points if you collected all clues.

Fig. 1c: At the start of the game, draw your Investigator next to one of your Exits.

Example: Lavinia's Investigator starts from a Railway Exit. From there, she spends 1 Movement point to move the Investigator to a Station, then she spends a second Movement point to move to another Station (as she could not skip the first one). Finally, she spends the third point to move to an adjacent space following a Highway route, collecting a Clue.