2 – 4 players.
Play time: ~15 minutes.
BGG Link
Logged plays: 2
Decently good start on reviews this week! I’ve been behind the power curve pretty severely between Life Things and New Job and a whole other litany of things that I won’t expound upon here in this review. Suffice it to say I’ve been swamped and if I owe you an email, it’s on my to-do list and I apologize. I was having some pretty bad sleep issues for the last two weeks so half of February was a blur to boot. Poor sleep kind of shuts everything down, being real. It’s not amazing. But I digress. What has been good has been the games I’ve been able to try out recently! We’ve got some fun card games for y’all this week, so let’s get started with another Saashi & Saashi title, Bus & Stop!
In Bus & Stop, players once again take on the role of rival bus drivers transporting folks around town. Here, however, you’re not as concerned about the route; you just want to pick people up and drop them off where they want to go. Efficiency is always nice, however, so ideally you’d be taking large groups of people to the same places. Tennis players to the courts, students to the schools, businesspeople to the business factory; things like that. You’re not the only bus game in town, however, so you need to prove your mettle by earning the most points for your efficient use of bus time. Will you be able to become the best bus driver in town, or will this end up being your last stop?
Contents
Setup
Not a ton here; this one’s pretty simple. Set out the Destination Cards, but stagger them so all players can see how many are in each stack.
Then, shuffle up the cards and make a row of five below the Station Cards. This will be the Bus Stop. If all five cards are the same color, reshuffle them into the deck until you draw five that are not all the same color.
You should be ready to start!
Gameplay
This one’s not too tough. Your goal is to collect Destination Cards, each worth points! The more people you drop off at the appropriate Destination, the more points you get! It all works out pretty nicely.
On your turn, you can either Pick Up or Drop Off. If you’re picking up, choose all the cards of one color at the Bus Stop and add them to your bus, a 2 x 5 area of cards that’s your personal tableau. If you can’t fit all the cards of one color on your bus, you must choose a different color or Drop Off instead. Senior Citizens are a special case; instead of adding them to your bus, flip them face-down next to your bus. They just like to ride around and aren’t going anywhere in particular. That’s nice.
To Drop Off, pick a Destination and the appropriate riders:
- School: Students
- Ferris Wheel: Parents
- Office: Businessmen
- Tennis Courts: Tennis Players
- Station: 3 / 4 / 5 cards of different colors
Discard the appropriate number of cards of that type from your bus to take the Destination Card and rotate it to the side corresponding to the number of passengers you dropped off. Other players can now perform a Skedaddle Action, where one card of the same type (or same color, if the Station is used) can be removed from their bus and placed in the Senior Citizen pile face-down. This, as the rules note, represents the spontaneous joy of getting off the bus at an unplanned location. Embrace that.
If you cannot perform a Pick Up or Drop Off action on your turn, you may discard as many passengers as you want face-up next to your Senior Citizen pile. They’re angry now, and those will be worth -1 point each at the end of the game, so don’t do that.
The game ends when either the deck can no longer refill the Bus Stop or there are only six Destination Cards left. Each player gets one more turn where they can only take the Drop Off action or pass. After that, the game is over! Total your points (each card in the Senior Citizen pile is worth 1 point, and each Angry Passenger is worth -1 point) and the player with the most points wins!
Player Count Differences
Mostly the standard difference with player counts where you’re pulling from a central area. There’s going to be more entropy (as more players pulling cards will cause new things to shuffle in) and that might help or hurt you. If you see a great group of cards and it’s not your turn, the players in front of you are going to take those cards. That said, they will reveal new cards and then, who knows? For a game with a drafting element, I was surprised and impressed that it plays so well at two, however, so that’s something. No strong player count preference, here.
Strategy
- Don’t score too quickly. If you’re not holding on to cards you’re not getting as many points per card, and that sort of thing really adds up over time! The more you spend at once, the more you get.
- One specific counterpoint: if you see your opponent has a lot of a certain type, it’s kind of awesome to score the last card of that Destination so that they’re just stuck with a ton of junk. I’ve never seen it pulled off before but the sheer possibility of such an absolute asshole move is kind of thrilling, to me? I’d probably never have the guts.
- Skedaddling is usually a good idea. It’s only not a good idea if you’re planning to score that group imminently, otherwise it’s a free point to free up space on your bus, and that’s pretty great.
- Keep an eye on everyone else’s buses. Knowing what they want can help you figure out what you’re most likely to be able to get. Course, it could just be a reflection of what cards are coming up, but don’t worry about that.
- Senior Citizens are just a bonus! Always take them if you can! They may not be particularly valuable on their own, but they don’t take up space on your bus, so you can always collect them. It’s (mostly) free points!
- Generally, don’t go for the “several different color cards” Destination Card unless you’re in a bind. It’s not worth that much! Decent end-game move if you’ve got nothing else, though.
- It’s difficult, but the extra 3 points you get for an empty bus at the end of the game are worth going for. It’s just a nice additional bonus, and we love that kind of thing.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- The art style, as usual, is pleasant and whimsical. I really like how that has kind of been a mainstay of the Saashi & Saashi brand for as long as I’ve been playing their games. They’re pleasant, a little silly, and very welcoming, and I think the art goes a long way to making the case for that visually to complement the gameplay.
- I like that this seems to be another extension of the Let’s Make a Bus Route universe of games. They’ve really got a thing for buses. Couldn’t be me as an American with our largely-garbage public transit networks, but I respect it for them. Let’s Make a Bus Route was huge in getting me into cozier board games (and video games!), so I’ll always have a soft spot for it.
- A very quick and clever card game. My friend Antoine and I played it and we both had that moment after you finish a good game where you’re like, “oh, that was fun“, and that was very satisfying to experience. It takes an elegant eye to make a game that is simple and compelling, and mastering that balance is again, core to the Saashi & Saashi brand.
- While I don’t love square cards, I do love that you rotate the Destination Cards to indicate how many points you have. It’s a clever way to use cards without requiring something clunky.
- It’s not too hard to have a “Big Play”, and big plays feel great in this game. A Big Play here is usually getting 20 points in one move. It feels good and it’s nice that the game makes that easy enough to pull off. It’s a very player-fun-focused design.
- I appreciate that skedaddling both uses that term and specifically in the rules rewards and celebrates it as an idea. It’s an extra layer of charm that Saashi games never fail to bring. Why wouldn’t someone just enjoy the whimsy of getting off their bus ahead of their destination? Why shouldn’t we reward that?
Mehs
- Would be nice to have had some kind of insert in the box for keeping things organized. I generally only make this complaint when there’s more than just one type of cards in the box. Since the Station Cards are a different size, it would be nice to have something more than a plastic bag-kind-of-thing to keep them separate, especially because it’s the kind of thing my friends would accidentally throw away or destroy if I loan the game out.
Cons
- You can definitely fall behind in this game; if you do, you’re kind of stuck. It’s tough, but if you’re only scoring three or four cards per Destination Card, you’re not going to beat a player who’s scoring seven cards at once. The cards get more valuable as you collect more of the same type, so it’s generally worth saving if you can. It can just be frustrating if you’re at the halfway point and other players have Destination Cards worth 20 points each and you got two for a total of 7.
Overall: 8.75 / 10
Overall, I like Bus & Stop quite a bit! I’m usually a fan of Saashi & Saashi stuff, but this just hits in a good way for a quick set collection card game. It’s simple enough to explain in seconds, but there’s planning and allocation and execution elements that are all pretty critical to success. Yes, there’s also a significant luck component, but it’s a game that takes about 15 minutes to play; you can calm down. Granted, bad luck can strike and knock you out of the game early, but that largely comes down to making mediocre choices and scoring too early or getting stuck with a full bus. Neither are good plans, so … don’t do that. Saashi & Saashi continue to have a very pleasant through-line with their games both in terms of play and theme, though at a certain point I do start to wonder if they just really love buses or where it’s coming from. I don’t mind; I’m just legitimately curious. Bus & Stop just really makes the grade for me on a number of factors, from theme to art to general approachability, and it’s a game that I’ll probably add to my travel kit, assuming I start bringing games I’ve already played before with me on trips again. It could happen. But in the meantime, if you’re looking for a quick and entertaining card game, you’re a fellow Saashi & Saashi fan, or you just love public transit, I’d highly recommend trying out Bus & Stop! It’s quite a fun time.
If you enjoyed this review and would like to support What’s Eric Playing? in the future, please check out my Patreon. Thanks for reading!