Review: Express Route (The OP)

It’s 1959 in the alternate reality of Express Route from The OP, and catalog shopping is exploding throughout the US! Thanks to its advanced technology and skilled employees, the Express Route Delivery Service is ready to keep those packages moving on time.

Packages have different levels of urgency, so the players need to cooperate while planning and prioritizing choices, and do it quickly because if they don’t, the whole company will crash and burn in the raging fires of customer disappointment. And nobody wants that.

To make sure everyone gets their stuff on time, let’s look at the top five things you need to know about Express Route.

What Makes It Tick

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In Express Route, one to four players take the roles of logistics employees tasked with directing a shared fleet of three trucks and an airplane to pick up and deliver packages. The classic pickup and delivery mechanic sits at the heart of the game.

Wrapped around that core are a cooperative decision-making system and a ton of customizable options. Some of the customizations happen randomly during setup, but the most important ones are driven by player choices during the game.

Preparing to Play

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Because this is a cooperative game, players share control of the trucks and the airplane. Players get their own control board plus a specialist whose talent gives you a much-needed boost in the middle of gameplay.

But, that’s the end of it. From that point on, everything is collective. You do your best for the company and to support your fellow team members. But mostly, you do it for the company.

The game begins with the trucks and the plane strategically positioned around the board. Five semi-randomly selected packages go onto the board in their shipment origin locations, and the all-important demand track is set to 15, right in the middle of the “green” zone.

Don’t worry… it won’t stay there long once the news about your stellar work starts getting around.

The Packages Keep Coming

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Every turn, the current player checks the demand track and adds one or two packages to the board.

In the beginning of the game, they’re low demand packages that move the demand counter by just one, two, or three spaces. Later in the game, the customers get more demanding and the numbers go up to four, five, or even six.

Each package has a starting city and a destination city. As you keep adding packages to the board, they can begin stacking up in busy starting cities around the map.

Because the game works on a “last in, first out” model, you have to take care of the last package that arrived in a city, even if a higher priority package is next in the stack.

Upgrades Help Manage the Madness

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One of our favorite parts of Express Route is the upgrade system. The game offers you 21 upgrade cards that let you change almost everything.

You can increase the speed or capacity of the trucks, load more packages at one time, add more space to the “phone bank” that brings new packages into the game, and even give yourself more actions on a turn. Best of all, you can buy as many upgrades every turn as you want.

Of course, there’s a catch: to buy an upgrade, you discard one of your successfully delivered packages — you know, the ones that help you win the game.

Solo Play and Scenario Options

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Even though the designers imbued the game with a wonderful level of replayability, they went a step further by building in a very functional solo play option and 20 challenging scenarios, each with unique game setups.

For solo play, you can play the game with one or more control boards and specialists, essentially creating a group of mock players with unique abilities. On the scenario side of things, the rules include instructions for varying the mix of event cards and packages, possible specialists, and available upgrades. And every scenario works for any number of players.

Verdict

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There’s a lot to love about Express Route, from the tension of deciding how to upgrade your systems to the ever-growing tension of watching the demand tracker stutter and jump from green to yellow to red.

We probably should’ve mentioned this earlier, but you will lose this game the first few times you play. Maybe you’ll lose more than that. Perhaps the logistical gods will smile on you for an occasional win. There’s a good mix of luck and skill in Express Route, which makes us love the game even more.

Still, there are a couple of rough spots in the instructions. For one, the QR code leading to video instructions doesn’t work. (To find the video instructions, search YouTube for “Express Route - How To Play.”) There’s also a rule missing from step 1 Add Packages in the Detailed Turn Rules section. It should say that if the demand pawn moves into a new color band during a turn, you ignore the new color and finish the turn with the original color’s settings.

Regardless, we still give Express Route a solid recommendation. If you want tons of player choice wrapped in a cooperative package, this game delivers.