Among the descriptions I’m well aware many gamers are tired of seeing for new titles, roguelike deckbuilder is probably somewhere near the top. Having taken the strategy genre by storm, an unfortunate side effect is that we’ve been inundated with far too many of them, and being honest, a fair number of them simply haven’t been very good. All that said, the good news is that despite having the same common subgenre distinction, there has been a fair amount of variety in the space, leading to some wonderful surprises… and Battle Train is one of them.

Even if you’ve played some deckbuilders before, you’ll quickly find that this is a very different sort of beast. As you may have gathered from the game’s name, here your deck will mostly consist of pieces of train tracks that you’ll need to use to do head-to-head battle with a variety of odd opponents. Your ultimate goal will be to destroy their depots before they’re able to do the same to yours, but the road to success can have just as many twists and turns as the tracks you’ll lay in each round. While laying down track to your enemy’s depots is what will ultimately be required to win each battle, you’ll have other concerns to consider as well. For one, you’ll want to try to run your track through resource tiles scattered around the board, allowing you to play more cards per turn. Another thing you’ll need to do the further you go will be to try to do all you can to slow down or thwart your enemy, whether blowing up sections of their tracks or some blockades. While even early on there will be challenges, your initial foes won’t tend to be too hard to take out.

Once you get far enough though, everything will change, and you’ll need to start thinking more carefully about every move you make, because your foes will begin using your own tracks against you. Once you’re able to connect your tracks to theirs, there’s a tendency for everything to get just a bit more tense, as you’ll need to start considering defensive moves near the end of your turns to help keep them at bay. Of course, since you’re able to do the same thing with their tracks, some battles can get quite contentious, and sometimes your goal will need to simply be to outlast your enemies rather than dominating them in any way. Once you throw in the special cards and decks many of your tougher enemies will have, often including cards that will absolutely devastate you if you’re not prepared with a plan to counter them, the further you go, the deeper the challenge will tend to be.

Pulling all of this together, the game’s challenges tend to be quite fresh, but the nature of its strategy may be a lot for genre novices. More than once I got locked into some close battle, with each move absolutely counting, and while I was able to pull out wins in many cases, sometimes I’d come up slightly short. For challenge hounds and genre vets, this should be an indicator that it will be a worthwhile experience, pushing you out of your comfort zone and making you think very carefully about both your own infrastructure and that of your opponent. For everyone else, it may have some appeal, but it’s possible it may be just a little too hard to wrap your arms around to make for an easy suggestion for checking it out.