Disney Big Thunder Mountain Railroad Board Game Review

You don’t have to travel to a Disney theme park to ride the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Play the game version with Funko’s Disney Big Thunder Mountain Railroad Game. In this game, you’ve got to move your mine cart through the mine shafts to pick or pan for gold. Sell the gold in town to upgrade your mining operations or earn points. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

This game has 11 pages of instructions, and the first three tell you how to set everything up. You’ve got to set up the mine; give each player their mat, cards, cart, and locomotive; and then shuffle and place the Town Shares, Fate, and Supplies card. Upgrade tiles and town tokens get placed next to the board, too.

Now players can take turns running marbles. So when it’s your turn, you’ll run three marbles by turning the Mountain Peak so the opening faces the basin and a marble drops in. Keep turning so the opening faces the mine and the marble runs into one of the seven mine shafts. The colors of the marbles mean different things. A blue marble represents water, a gold marble is a gold nugget, a brown marble is raw ore, and a red marble makes you draw a Fate card – which could be good or bad.

After running marbles, you play cards from your hand one at a time. Play as many cards as you like and perform the action shown on the card. Card actions include move your mine cart, pick for gold, pan for gold, bail water, resupply, crosscut tunnel, and discard to move. Make sure to pay attention to specifics of each action because some you can’t do with certain marble colors in the mine shaft. For instance, you can’t pick for gold if there’s a water marble in the mine shaft.

The last step of your turn is to draw cards so that you have four in your hand. Now it’s the next player’s turn.

Whenever a mine cart moves into town, place it on its matching town space. Whenever you’re in town on your turn, you can take each town action one time and in any order. Sell the gold in your mine cart and/or buy one upgrade or one town share. Then you get to continue your turn. If you buy upgrades, pay the cost shown on the tile and place the tile on your mat. You can only have three upgrades at a time.

When a player’s locomotive reaches or passes the star space (20 points), the game is almost over. That player gets a bonus Town Shares token and finishes their turn. Every other player takes one final turn, and then the game is over. Sell any gold that’s left, reveal your town shares, and the player with the most points wins.