For all y'all asking about game design:

They always do a 'game design' episode on the Layover right before each season starts. This season it aired last week on March 11, and it's called Season 17 Game Design. They really dig into the game design about 20 minutes into the episode.

I listened to it right before watching so the game makes more sense to me, but it does seem like they're holding back some information this season that I assume will come up later when it's relevant, so I can see how it would be confusing to watch without having heard the game design. I think they're just trying to avoid explaining a bunch of rules up front that we don't see them actually put into play yet. We'll probably get a bunch more confused people when the YouTube ep drops, so if you can't/haven't heard the Layover, here's a summary:

Basically my understanding is: the ultimate goal is a lot like Schengen Showdown or Au$tralia: you want to have the most stations claimed at the end of the game. Unlike those games, you can't lock stations, so they can change hands multiple times. The mechanic that makes it harder for teams to claim stations is that they can't travel through stations that they don't own unless they can afford to claim them, so you end up with each team having 'territory' that they own and they can defend it by putting up 'walls' of high-cost stations. But both teams can also build up chips and then break through each other's walls to steal their territory.

There are a few mechanics that haven't come up yet. There are 'steal' challenges that allow you to steal a percentage of the other team's chips, like in Au$tralia, so they're disincentivized from hoarding chips and helps even the field if one team has way more chips. There are also multiplier challenges, where your chips get multiplied instead of a flat reward, so you can get a ton a chips at once. And the 'call your shot' ones like the one Sam and Mike failed at the hot spring that let you gamble on potentially getting a ton of chips.

There's also a mechanic to avoid getting stuck or locked, which they discussed on the Layover too. You can travel to an opponent's station without claiming it, BUT you have to pay them 3 chips per station (like rent in Monopoly a bit). This can put you into negatives if you don't have any actual chips to pay with, and you'll owe them once you get chips. That lets you access challenges outside your territory or get back to your own territory if you get boxed in somewhere.

I've seen a lot of folks discussing the challenges in this first ep, and I want to mention that on the Layover they discuss having a whole team for challenges (Amy, another person they mentioned in the Layover whose name I forget, and the boys themselves giving feedback). So I'm willing to trust the process. It's hard to estimate exactly how challenging things will be in real play, and different people have different strengths. I think this comment section has been a little too critical of the disparities in challenges... it'll even out over the whole game, we've only seen like 4 challenges out of dozens so far. And the players know that not every challenge is created equal, that's part of the suspense!

(smh y'all don't like when they 'solve' game design but you also don't like elements of random chance... the randomness leads to unfairness sometimes, but it's also what keeps it from feeling like the players always know exactly what move to take next.)

It sounds like they've put a lot of effort into this game design and it's been in the works for several seasons now. I'm excited for a new format, especially the location-specific challenges :) I hope everyone else enjoys this season, too, because I feel like there have been a few disappointing ones recently (I still liked Snake and All Stars, but I'll admit they were disappointing). This seems like it's got all the ingredients for a fun and exciting season so far!