Cretaceous Rails combines trains and dinosaurs in one board game. Holy Fish Heads! That may or may not be a direct quote from the Cretaceous Rails game designer. Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. I’m doing something a little different with today’s board game review. As you might be able to tell, I know Cretaceous Rails’ game designer, Ann Journey, and the publisher Spielcraft Games. I’ll attempt to stay unbiased, but I wanted to be upfront about that relationship. In Cretaceous Rails, people have learned that dinosaur parks built in the modern world are too deadly. Instead, they send people back in time to witness dinosaurs in their natural habitat. Players compete to create the best dino safari resort experience. We’ll get to the game, but first, let’s discuss some disclaimers.

The Fiddly Bits

Designer: Ann Journey
Publisher: Spielcraft Games
Date Released: 2025
Number of Players: 1-4
Age Range: 14 and up
Setup Time: 10-15 minutes
Play Time: 45-120 minutes (depending on the number of players)

Game Mechanisms

Modular Board
Network and Route Building
Pick-up and Deliver
Worker Placement

Game Setup

Cretaceous Rails’ rulebook has a streamlined setup section, so I’ll be using the rulebook as the basis for this section.

Action Tiles

* Shuffle all 16 action tiles and randomly place them face up in a 4×4 grid within reach of all players to create the action grid.

* Place the first player marker on the Draw Cards action tile with the first player marker icon (shaped like a raptor claw).

Resort Card Display

* Place the resort card display board within reach of all players.

* Shuffle all 84 resort cards and place them face down in the resort card deck space near the resort card display board.

* Deal eight cards from the deck face up onto the eight spaces of the resort card display board.

* Place the round tracker on the dinosaur footprint labeled “1.”

Player Setup

Each player chooses a company. The only difference among the companies is the starting dinosaur, the beginning point value of dinosaurs, and aesthetics. None of these differences significantly affect the gameplay, so pick the company that looks cool or begins the game with your favorite dinosaur.

Each company gets:
* 1 Player board (all other items must match your company’s color and design)
* 4 Executives
* 30 Rails
* 1 Train Engine Tile
* 8 Train Car Tiles

* Place your Train Engine in front of your player board. This begins your train, but doesn’t count as storage.

* Place 2 Train Car Tiles behind your Train Engine Tile to form your starting train.

* Draw 1 card at random from the resort card deck and add it to your hand.

* Place the remaining Train Car Tiles, 30 Rails, and 4 Executives off to one side within reach.

* Take the tourist, dinosaur, and jungle token indicated by the icons on your player board and place them on their respective icons on your player board.

* Place the remaining tourists in the tourist sack.

Map Setup

* Place the starting map tile for the appropriate player count in the center of the table within reach of all players.

* Place 1 randomly-selected jungle map tile per player beside the starting map tile to form the map.

* Place one jungle token on each hex marked with a jungle token icon.

* Place a matching dinosaur miniature on each hex marked with a dinosaur icon. Each tile has two of Tyrannosaurus Rex, Triceratops, Titanosaurus, and Parasaurolophus.

* Randomly place 4 tourists from the Tourist Sack on each cabin hex and each player’s home hex.

Starting Positions

* Randomly select who goes first. Play will proceed clockwise from the first player.

* In reverse turn order, starting with the last player, select home hexes on the starting map tile.

* When you select a home hex, place two Rails on the starting map tile. Place the first Rail on the line pointing out of your chosen home hex, and the second Rail on the line going to the left or right in front of the first rail.

HINT: Choose your home hex based on the dinosaurs and volcanoes near it, the tourists on it, and your plans for building your rail network into the jungle.

Game Flow

Cretaceous Rails is played over four rounds. Each player receives four turns per round.

Each turn, players will place an Executive on a vacant action space between two action tiles. Players will take both actions adjacent to the Executive they just placed. You may choose the order in which to take your two actions each turn. You can also forgo one of your actions and unload your Train Cars onto your player board.

Outside of unloading your Train Cars, there are six actions depicted on the Action cards: Lay Rails, Draw Resort Cards, Build Resort Cards, Clear Jungle, Safari, and Capture Dinosaur.

Lay Rails allows players to place two Rails (train minis) on the map, extending their company’s rail network.

Draw Resort Cards lets players draw Resort cards from the Resort Card Display Board.

If you meet any number of Resort Card requirements and take the Build Resort Cards action, you may build any number of Resort Cards in your hand that you can legally place. The third (top) row can only hold as many Resort Cards as the number of Resort Cards in the second row. The second (middle) row can only have as many Resort Cards placed in it as the number of Resort Cards in the first (bottom) row. The bottom row has no restrictions. Go nuts! But most Resort Cards receive bigger boosts in higher rows.

The remaining three actions will add items to your Train Car Tiles that you will then have to unload in your player boards. These actions may cause you to replace one of your adjacent actions with empty Train Cars.

Clear Jungle has the player take a jungle token from any hex adjacent to their rail network. You must place the jungle token on one of your empty Train Cars. Jungle tokens aren’t refilled throughout the game. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. You cannot take the Clear Jungle action if you don’t have at least one empty Train Car.

The Safari action has a couple of steps. Take a tourist from any hex adjacent to your network and place it in one of your empty Train Cars. Again, if you don’t have at least one empty Train Car, you cannot take the Safari action. You may not take a tourist from another player’s home hex. When you take a tourist, add up the number of dinosaurs adjacent to your rail network of the color and type that corresponds to the tourist you picked. Only count dinosaurs in hexes with no jungle tokens (your tourists can’t see through dense jungle). Each volcano adjacent to your rail network counts as a dinosaur of that type. Move the rating marker on your player board for that dinosaur color/type up the rating track that number of spaces. This number determines the value of each dinosaur in your resort.

Capture Dinosaur allows players to take a dinosaur from any hex adjacent to their rail network with no jungle token and place it in one of their empty Train Cars. Again, you cannot take the Capture Dinosaur action if you don’t have at least one empty Train Car.

End of Round

A round ends after all players have taken four turns each.

At the end of each round, perform these steps, in this order (skip these steps in the final round):
* Each player performs the Unload Train Cars action.

* Each player takes back all four of their Executives.

* Discard all eight Resort Cards in the display.
* Refill the display with eight new Resort Cards from the deck.
* Pick up all of the Action Tiles, shuffle them, and randomly distribute them into a new action grid.
* The player who took the First Player Marker this round places it back on its draw cards Action Tile. That player will go first next round.

End of Game

Each player performs the Unload Train Cars action one final time. Then, each player tallies their score. There are two sources of victory points: Captured Dinosaurs and Resort Card Scoring Multipliers. Players can use the scoring guide and pad to keep track of each player’s victory points. Whoever has the most victory points at the end of the game wins.

Review

Cretaceous Rails has two standout elements: the Action Grid and Resort Cards. Ann Journey says that she got the idea of the Action Grid from another game, but I haven’t seen this version of worker placement. It’s quick. The Action Grid gets shuffled and reformed, resulting in varied gameplay from round to round. What may be a good tactic in an early round may not be that good of a tactic in later rounds. The actions themselves are balanced and provide a lot of strategic possibilities. I can lessen someone’s safari bonus by capturing dinosaurs. I can play keep away by taking resources from the main map, while reserving my home hex’s tourists. And all of these actions work well with the Resort Card system.

I love how Resort Cards are placed. The bottom rows needing to be larger than the ones above them makes thematic sense if one thinks of the player board as one’s resort, which it is. You can’t have a top-heavy structure. The Resort Cards themselves are multi-use, and that’s one of my favorite game mechanisms, and a trend I like continued in more board games. Each Resort Card has three rows. The top shows what the player needs to place on the Resort Card to construct it. Any Dinosaurs placed on Resort Cards are worth their full value, while Dinos left on Player Boards are worth half points, rounded down. This does enough to entice players to build Resort Cards, even if they don’t stand to gain as much from the Resort Card’s effect.

The Resort Card’s effect is indicated in the middle row of each card. Many of these effects have levels that are determined based on which row you build the card. This adds even more tactical choices to each game of Cretaceous Rails. I don’t know how many times I took a penalty (like lowering a dinosaur’s rating) because I needed the effect of a Resort Card. And each Resort Card has endgame scoring modifiers at the bottom. Again, I’ve spent plenty of Cretaceous Rails games building Resort Cards that I only wanted for the endgame scoring. Players only score the Resort Cards they managed to build. This is the magic of multi-use cards. Love, love, love.

My main critique of Cretaceous Rails is that the game can run a little long. While individual player turns don’t take long, analysis paralysis can be an issue. I tend to plan my turns in advance and then adapt if someone takes the set of actions I want, but other players don’t play that way, and certain players—you know the type—can take extremely long turns. Cretaceous Rails is one of those games (specifically at higher player counts) where the board state can change a lot before you receive another turn, and I have second-guessed my decision on several turns.

The Cretaceous Rails box lists the game’s runtime as 30 minutes per player. However, it’s more like 45 minutes at the lowest player count and 30 minutes for each additional player after the first. Upkeep between rounds can take a hot minute. Typically, I have one player handle one part of the setup (like shuffling Action Tiles and resetting the Action Grid), while another player handles another part of the in-between round setup (like wiping the Resort Card Board and setting up the new round’s Resort Card Board). While Cretaceous Rails doesn’t have a lot of setup between rounds, it does slow down gameplay.

Despite the occasional gameplay slowdown, Cretaceous Rails does a wonderful job combining trains and dinosaurs, and that’s what the game sets out to do. Trains and dinosaurs together at last! The Rails (train minis) play out like a fusion of Ticket to Ride and Catan. Experienced gamers will have an idea of how they work; players new to the board game hobby may struggle. I also like how the trains are two-fold. While the network plays like Ticket to Ride, the Train Car Tiles provide a tasty dollop of resource management. Since every player unloads their Cars at the end of each round (even the last one), you’ll want to time when you unload your Train Cars in the middle of each round. So, time is a hidden secondary resource one must manage. I love it.

One final note: Cretaceous Rails’ production value is phenomenal. That’s something you can expect from Spielcraft Games. I know. I have a relationship with Spielcraft Games’ owner, but it’s true. Alex Wolf puts in a lot of work to ensure his games look top-notch. Getting back to Cretaceous Rails, if you’ve ever wanted to play a combination of trains and dinosaurs, Cretaceous Rails is your game.

Too Long; Didn’t Read

Cretaceous Rails captures its theme of gamers running a dino safari resort experience. While the game mechanisms interestingly converge, the multi-use Resort Cards and the Action Grid stand out. Cretaceous Rails offers plenty of ways to win, but that can also cause analysis paralysis and may not be the best for gamers who are new to the board game hobby.