Rail Slide

How Rail Slide scoring actually works

Four bands, and a hanger worth the most

The board is 900 by 500 units. Nothing before the two-thirds mark scores at all; past it, four bands are worth one, two, three, and four points as you get further down the board. The four-point band is the hanger — a puck overhanging the very end of the board without falling off it.

A puck that slides off any edge is dead for the round. That includes overshooting the end: the hanger is worth the most precisely because it sits a puck-width away from being worth nothing.

Pucks collide with each other, so a slide can push an opponent’s puck out of a band, off the board entirely, or accidentally deeper into a better one. All movement runs on a fixed simulation step and pucks decelerate under friction until they come to rest.

Being second-furthest is worth nothing

This is the rule everything else follows from. At the end of a round the game finds the single furthest scoring puck, and only that player scores. They then score every puck of theirs that sits beyond the opponent’s best puck. If your opponent has one puck in the two-point band and you have three pucks behind it, you score zero — not six.

So a slide is worth not what it scores on its own, but whether it changes who is furthest. Knocking the opponent’s lead puck backward can swing a round by everything they had banked. Sliding last is a large advantage for the same reason: you can see exactly what you need to beat.

• When behind, aim at the opponent’s lead puck rather than at an empty band — removing their best puck can promote all of yours at once.
• When ahead, leave guards short of your scoring pucks so the opponent has to go through traffic to reach them.
• Only reach for the hanger when the round is already decided against you; the risk of sliding off is rarely worth one extra point.

What each band is worth

Band value rises with distance, but the number only pays out if you own the furthest puck on the board. A single one-point puck sitting beyond everything the opponent has will score; three four-point pucks sitting behind their lead will not.

Nothing before the two-thirds mark of the board scores at all, which makes the short end of the table useful only for guards. A guard has no value of its own but can force the opponent to come through traffic to reach your scoring pucks, and pucks that collide transfer real momentum, so a well-placed blocker changes what shots are even available to them.

Common mistakes

Nearly all of these come from scoring each puck in your head as if it paid independently.

• Stacking pucks behind the opponent’s lead. They are worth nothing at all while that puck stands, however good the bands they occupy look.
• Chasing the hanger early. It is one point more than the deep band and a whole puck-width from being off the board — a poor trade while the round is still open.
• Ignoring the opponent’s lead puck. Removing it is often worth more than any placement, because it can promote every puck you already have.
• Sliding hard by default. Excess speed carries pucks off the end, and a puck that leaves the board cannot be recovered for the rest of the round.

What is different about this version

The physics run on a fixed step with real puck-on-puck collisions, so a slide that clips another puck transfers momentum properly instead of resolving by lookup. The same launch always produces the same result, which is what makes clearing shots learnable rather than lucky.

The computer opponent evaluates candidate slides on more than the points they would score. It weighs removing your pucks, the value of blocking, whether the shot is the last of the round, and how much speed it is carrying — and the harder setting weights removal and final-shot swings considerably more heavily. It is playing the only-one-side-scores rule, not just aiming at bands.

Written by the Silverweb Games team from this game’s own implementation. Last reviewed July 31, 2026.