Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 90-120 minutes
The Components
Steam comes in a short bookshelf box crammed with components. It includes:
Gaming Board: A six-panel linen-textured board. I adore publishers who make the effort to double-side their playing boards to increase the replayability of their games, and that's just what Mayfair does here. One side of the board shows the Northeastern United States and Canada (and is designed for 3-4 players) while the other shows an area of Germany (and is designed for 4-5 players).
Rather than just including plain terrain, the maps are quite attractively drawn, but a careful eye has been given to usability, with colored outlines used to delineate mountains and rivers.
Each board also contains a variety of additional information around the edges, including: an income track, a score track, current locomotive level, and spaces for goods lots. It's nice to have all these in one location, and Mayfair has rather cleverly arranged this info so that it lies to the edges of the board in such a way that a replacement map can be put atop the board without covering the general game info.
The results are highly usable, great quality, and attractive.
Cardboard Tiles: Linen-textured cardboard is used for a number of other components in the game. These include 8 new city tiles, 136 track tiles, 10 city growth markers, 68 money tokens, and 7 action tiles. The track tiles are quite attractive and everything else is fair.
Some of the elements are very nice usability additions, such as the city growth markers (which remind you of which cities have already enjoyed growth) and the action tiles (which remind you what special power you have on a turn).
Wooden Bits: There's a little wooden train, which keeps track of the current turn, as well as 96 small, colored goods cubes (in red, blue, yellow, purple, and gray) and 144 circular, colored player discs (in orange, green, beige, white, brown, and black).
Or at least that's what the rulebook says. My copy of the game came with four additional player colors and one additional goods color. There was a little note in the box that said that due to "uncertain wood supplies", Steam might include extra player colors and special "black" load cubes for future expansions. So, I guess they're not guaranteeing this stuff, but it's certainly cool that they've looked toward the future, and to helping out their players with this first printing of the game.
Cloth Bag: The wooden goods cubes are drawn randomly at the start of the game; Mayfair has included a simple cloth bag for that purpose.
Overall, the components of Steam are all good quality, and you get a lot of them, even without the extra wood that appeared in some or all of this first print run. The beauty and usability of the components are all good, and Mayfair has made some real efforts to plan for the future with their board design.
Really, the whole production is top rate, and thus I've given Steam a "5" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
Steam plays similarly to older Wallace games in this series like Age of Steam and Railroad Tycoon, with some very specific polishing done to this version of the game. As usual, your goal is to earn the most victory points by delivering goods, but with a few catches this time around. I'll explain how the game works here, then talk about how it varies from its predecessors in the next section.
This description covers the 'Base Game' of Steam, though I offer a few comments about the 'Standard Game' at the bottom. Where appropriate, I've just copied over my rules explanations from Age of Steam.
Setup: The good cubes are randomized and two or more and placed on each city, as indicated on the board. Then an additional 12 lots of three cubes each are placed in the "goods supply spaces" on the board. Each player starts with "0" victory points, "0" income, and a size "1" locomotive.
A player order is randomized for the first turn (or created via a series of auctions, if you prefer).
Raising Money: At any time during the game, a player may raise money that he needs by reducing his income by 1 (to a minimum of -10) and taking $5. All the players will need to do so at the start of the game, as they start with nothing.
Order of Play: There are six phases in the game, which are taken in order each turn:
- Select Action Tiles
- Build Track
- Move Goods
- Collect Income & Pay Expenses
- Determine Turn Order
- Set Up New Turn
Select Action Tiles: In current player order, the players select action tiles (roles) for use in the first turn. Each one is numbered (which affects next turn's player order, as we'll see) and all but the first give a special power. The action tiles are:
- Turn Order. Puts you first in the turn order next turn.
- First Move. Lets you move goods first, in phase #3.
- Engineer. Lets you build one extra tile of track, in phase #2.
- First Build Lets you build first, in phase #2.
- City Growth. If you immediately pay $2, lets you place new goods on a city in phase #2.
- Locomotive. Allows you to increase the level of your locomotive by one, but you must pay $4 the new size of your locomotive.
- Urbanization. If you immediately pay $6, lets you place a new city tile in phase #2.
Build Track: Each player gets to build track, starting with the player who took the "first build" action, then going in player order.
A player can usually build 3 sections of track (unless he took the engineer action which allows a 4th tile of building). The cost of each tile is $2 per exit plus $1 for a town (as the base tile cost), plus $1 for a river or $2 for a hill (as the terrain cost). Some of these tracks can later be rebuilt for just the tile cost.
All track buildings goes from cities to towns and/or cities. A set of tiles between a town or city and another town or city is called a "link". It defines how goods movement occurs.
A player doesn't have to keep all his track connected, but he'll usually do better if he can.
As you might recall, there are a few special actions that can occur during this turn. I've already mentioned Engineer and First Build. City Growth and Urbanization also occur at this time if you picked that action (and paid for it).
City Growth. This allows you to take a lot of three goods and place it on a city. You can only do this once per city over the course of the game (which is what you use the city growth markers to mark).
Urbanization. This allows you to replace a town with a city. This means that it's now a location that you can deliver goods to. You also get to take a lot of three goods and place it on the city. Each new city tile comes with its own "city growth marker", because you can't place more goods on them either.
Move Goods: This is what everything has been building toward. Starting with the First Move player, then going in player order, each player now gets to move two goods, one at a time. A good is moved from a city, through one or more links to the first city whose color matches that good.
A good must be moved all at once, and it can't be moved more spaces than your locomotive rating. When you've moved a good, you earn "track points" based on the number of links you moved the good across. The track point for each link goes to the player who owned that link. Typically that means you get all the track points, but for a longer run, you might have to move over 1 or 2 links belonging to other players to finish the delivery.
Converting Track Points. As soon as a player earns track points, he gets to decide what to do with them. You can either add them to your income (which maxes out at 10) or earn them as victory points. You have to do the same thing with all of the track points you earn at one time.
The Locomotive Alternative. You may, instead of taking one of your two move goods options, increase the size of your locomotive by 1.
Collect Income & Pay Expenses: You either take cash for your positive income or pay cash for your negative income.
Determine Turn Order: You rearrange the turn order based on the values shown on the roles that players selected.
Set Up New Turn: Finally, you return all the action tiles and move the turn marker forward one space.
Ending the Game: The game ends after 7-10 turns (depending on number of players). Each player earns additional victory points for his income (with positive income being only slightly rewarded and negative income being greatly punished) and for his completed links. The player with the most victory points wins.
The Standard Game: The more complex "standard" game makes four main changes to the game:
- Capital may only be raised at the start of the turn.
- Players bid for turn order rather than it being dependent upon the actions selected.
- Urbanization and city growth no longer cost money to use.
- Locomotives now have a maintenance cost of $1-$6 per turn.
Relationships to Other Game
Steam is Martin Wallace's nth game in his series of track-building and goods-moving railroad games. I've reviewed two other iterations of this game. Age of Steam is its immediate (and very near) ancestor, while Railroad Tycoon (and expansion Rails of Europe) is a close cousin; like Steam, Railroad Tycoon sought to produce a slightly friendlier and simpler game.
Generally, I find Steam better than its ancestor Age of Steam in almost all ways. It's done a terrific job of polishing up rough spots in the original design, by doing things like making the City Growth action more appealing and somewhat simplifying the track construction costs. I also feel like the changes to how the income track work have made Steam a much more positive game than its predecessor. Even if the two methods are mathematically the same (and they may or may not be), taking a loan against an income that iterates around 0 feels much better than forever putting yourself further into debt. It's entirely psychological, but it truly works.
So, if you're an existing Age of Steam play, I think you'll find stuff to like in Steam, but ultimately I feel like those updates fall into the class of "minor development". There are no staggering changes.
However, where I feel like the game has changed even more is in the 'Base Game'. I'm one of those gamers who always appreciated the design of Age of Steam but rarely wanted to play it because it was too "tough". The 'Base Game' makes Steam much more compelling for me, for two reasons. First, I greatly appreciate not having to calculate all of my expenses at the start of every turn. It felt way too much like work and was the main thing that turned me off of Age of Steam as a player. Second, I love the way the roles work in the 'Base Game', with numbering controlling future turn order rather than a potentially monotonous auction.
So, if you're one of those folks who found Age of Steam a bit over into the "too complex" side, I think the new 'Base Game' offers a lot to like.
You'll notice I offer my comparisons to Age of Steam, not Railroad Tycoon. I think Glenn Drover had some of the same goals in his version of the system as Martin did here, and I think he accomplished them fairly well (particularly in the follow-up, Rails of Europe). While I think Steam has some clear wins over Age of Steam, I think that when comparing Steam to the "Rails of the World" series, you're seeing two variants rather than one clearly outpacing the other.
The Game Design
In my previous reviews, I've lauded the Age of Steam-derived games. As with its predecessors, Steam is highly strategic. It allows for fun play of both the economics and the connectivity. There's a lot of thought that goes into the game, and a lot of fun that comes out.
Steam just does those same things, but better. I think the lovers of the game's innate complexity will find that Steam still has all that in its more advanced form and plays just a slight bit better (though if it's enough better to warrant buying an additional copy of the game, I can't say). I think this new edition is even more of a plus to those who (as I said above) thought the previous game was just a bit too complex.
I give Steam a full "5" out of "5" for Substance. It manages to improve on a game that already had great design and to open it up to some more casual audiences.
Conclusion
Steam, the newest of Martin Walalce's track-laying and goods-moving railroad game, improves on an already excellent classic. It also offers a variant of the rules which allows for simpler gameplay and which will thus appeal more to people put off by the economic complexity of previous editions of the game.
