Railroad Tycoon was originally a video game, but a good train game is a good train game, and Eagle Games has done a great job of converting it to a board game. Of course, since they seem to have a predilection for making games bigger than my table, the game is enormous. The board alone is larger than any card table you might have, so unless you have a really huge table, prepare to clear some space on the floor.
As you might expect from a game as enormous as Railroad Tycoon, there is a lot in the box. On top of the afore-mentioned huge board (which, even in its enormity, only shows half the United States), there are more than 150 plastic miniatures of everything from locomotives to filling stations. There are cards that show trains from the early days of the steam locomotive, and they are beautifully-illustrated. Even the fake money and little track pieces are gorgeous. As always, Eagle Games has gone to great lengths to make a beautiful game.
The game play is fascinating, because unlike most games (especially ones this big), the game has absolutely no luck to it. There are no dice, and even the selection of the person who goes first every round is decided by bidding. If a player wants to go first, he pays for the privilege.
The initial setup consists of selecting your color trains, getting your money, and placing cargo all over the map at various cities. Once the bidding for the first turn is completed, players take turn buying pieces of track and connecting cities. When two cities are connected, players may move cargo from one city to another, gaining money for every piece of track the cargo travels. The real trick is getting the right cargoes to the right cities - red cubes must go to red cities, yellow to yellow, and so on.
On his turn, a player can issue stock to get more money. In fact, since nobody starts with any money, you have to issue stock just to play the game. However, that debt can never be discharged, and will cost you money every turn. It is a sad state of affairs, but a player can actually have negative income on his turn. That is obviously an undesirable situation, but it happened in one game we played. That player effectively sunk himself with debt, and had no chance to recover.
Money is used to purchase track, upgrade your trains, and to urbanize a city. Placing track connects cities, as described above, and moves cargo. Upgrade trains lets you move cargo further. Urbanizing is still a very viable idea, because it can turn a gray city (one that cannot accept deliveries) into a colored city, thereby allowing a clever player to drop cargo there. Urbanizing also places two cargo cubes in a city.
Income is the key to winning the game, not just because it lets you keep playing, but because it actually determines who is the winner. When a set number of cities is empty (having had all their cargo delivered), the game ends and the player with the highest income is the winner.
Railroad Tycoon is a brilliant game. The complete absence of luck means that the better, more strategic-minded player will win – which, in my opinion, is as it should be. The game is as even as chess, possibly more so because in chess, the first player is an arbitrary decision. The game play is fast and fun, and when players are close to evenly matched, extremely exciting.
If Railroad Tycoon does have a single flaw, it is that it is too big. The board nearly extends over my dining room table, even with the leafs in it. Players approach a game this serious with trepidation, and you will need to find hardcore gamer friends to play with you. However, if you can talk your friends into a game, you will not be disappointed. If you are a serious gamer, I cannot recommend Railroad Tycoon enough. The game is gorgeous, strategic, fast-moving and intense.
Style: 5 – A beautiful board and great pieces makes Railroad Tycoon a feast for the eyes.
Substance: 5 – Fair as chess and twice as exciting, Railroad Tycoon is my favorite game of all the games in my collection.
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