Review: USPS: The Great American Mail Race

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" Do you have what it takes to operate the highest rated public agency in the United States? Get in you mail truck, motorcycle, or rocket. YES ROCKET. USPS: The Great American Mail Race designed by Ed Naujokas uses historical methods of mail deliver in this fun and easy to learn game family friendly game.

In USPS: The Great American Mail Race each player will set out to deliver the mail. As you pickup and deliver the mail through various methods of transportation you will use the mailbox shaped stamper to mark off the tasks you have competed on your delivery slip. The player with the most points at the end is the Mail Carrier of the Century.

The First thing players do is pick out their mail trucks. The color of your mail truck will be associated to what your hometown is. This only comes into play when you want the 2 extra points for delivering mail from your home town. The main source of points will come from delivering parcels and mail. Players will score between 3 and 105 points. The player's delivery slip makes keeping track of points a breeze.

All of the methods have been or are being used by the USPS (even the rocket card).

USPS: The Great American Mail Race is the essence of pick up and deliver games. If this theme wasn't at least a little bit pick up and deliver I would be worried. There are 3 levels of transportation that players will get to use as they pick up and deliver the parcels, mail and post cards. As you progress through the levels you get more modern methods to transport the mail. All of the methods have been or are being used by the USPS (even the rocket card). The USPS delivered the mail by rocket exactly one time in 1959 from a submarine to a naval base. For the start of the game players will only have on bicycle card that they can use 2 times a turn and never discard.

The boss battles in the game have some unique surprises in store for players

The three stack of transport cards will be layered together to form one stack with level one on top and level 3 on the bottom. Three cards will be turned face up for players to choose from. Each of the 4 regions will have a delivery to be made and finally a post card will be placed on the board (from the post card deck). On a players turn they will either play a card or draw a card. They will do this three times for example draw one card and play 2. The idea is to land exactly on the space a player wants either to pick up or deliver. Players will have to move the exact number of spaces in the exact way described on the card. For example boats can only use routes that are water and pack mules can only use the trails.

The game is pretty straight forward pickup something from the regional depot and bring it to the destination. There are a couple of special things in the game for example the fragile packages players can score bonus points if a player does not use air transportation during the delivery. There is one fun aspect that happens during the game, if a player happens to pass through the space another player is in they can help out and either take a package or leave one for the other player to deliver. In playing the game with 2 players I found that the player interaction is really low and scoring ended up in a tie. I would recommend playing at the 3 or 4 player count to get some more interaction.

USPS: The Great American Mail Race is a great family game where you might actually learn something about the mail system. The game is light and easy to learn and moves quickly. The game is dripping in theme right down to the instructions that are in an envelope and tri-folded. For this one you will have to skip your Friendly local Game Store (FLGS) and head over to target.

Players: 2-4

Year Published: 2022

Recommended Ages: 10+

Time to Play: 45 minutes

A prototype copy of USPS: The Great American Mail Race was provided to Bert's Tabletop Games for review purposes by Big Potato.