Players: 2-6
Playing Time: 30-45 minutes per player (2-4 hours)

This review is largely a revision of my Railroad Tycoon review, though I've been careful to note the updates and changes to the game.

The Components

Like its predecessor, Railways of the World contains 8 pounds of cool bits. This includes:

• 3 gameboards
• many tiles
• 174 miniatures
• 1 first player marker
• 125 goods cubes
• 1 goods bag
• money
• bond certificates
• 24 engine cards
• railroad baron cards
• railroad operation cards
• 1 rulebook

This game has actually been positioned as containing three different products: Railways of the World (the base game), Railways of Mexico (an introductory map), and Railways of the Eastern U.S. (a medium-level map). You'll see that division in some of the components, below.

Gameboard: To wit, you get three different gameboards with Railways of the World. For the base game you get a large, one-panel income track which runs from 0 to 99+. Railways of the Eastern U.S. features a large six-panel map of the Eastern United States. Finally, Railways of Mexico features a smaller two-panel map of Mexico.

I find it a little frustrating that each of these boards has been produced differently. The income board is linen-textured, the Mexico map is low-gloss and the Eastern U.S. map is high gloss. They don't entirely look like they fit together. However, they're all very high quality, particularly the two maps which are as heavy a board as you'll find in gaming.

Each of the two maps features an area laid out in hexes with cities of various colors dotting the board. They're generally divided between clear and mountainous terrain, with river running through the plains and ridges running through the mountains. Though the US map in particular is large, it's a good fit for the pieces that come with the game.

Previous editions of this game had problem with board warping and undifferentiated colors, both of which appear to be resolved in this newest edition. They also had some issues with board size, but this time the U.S. map is a little smaller thanks to the income track being removed (though you still have to fit the income track next to the board).

Tiles: Players lay their track by putting down track tiles: straights, curves, or crossovers, in one of the two terrain types (clear or mountainous). The tiles are all full-colored and linen-textured. They're also all double-sided, which is great, but the fronts and the backs were somewhat random rather than being related to each other, which is less great.. As a result there was plenty of each piece, but they were sometimes hard to find. One of our players noted that he particularly liked the attention that had been paid to details in the artwork on the tracks.

Other tiles include twelve new city markers and two western link markers (for the Eastern U.S. map).

Miniatures: There are twenty-five trains in each of the six player colors (red, light blue, green, yellow, purple, and gray). In addition there are twenty-four brown "empty city" markers which depict water towers, coal towers, round houses, and railroad stops.

Overall these miniatures are well-molded and well-detailed. They look absolutely beautiful when they're covering the board as the game proceeds.

First Player Marker: In previous editions a wooden marker; here it's just a card.

Goods Cubes & Bags: A large black cloth bag, filled with large wooden cubes in the five goods colors (blue, purple, red, yellow, black).

Money: Paper money in $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 denominations. The denominations are distinguished by color, but otherwise identical.

Bond Certificates: These linen-textured cardstock certificates feel almost like vinyl and are another of the very attractive components in this game. They each simply show a share count (1, 5, or 10) and the money earned for those shares ($5,000 per).

Engine Cards: Not really cards, though that's what the rulebook calls them. They're actually full-color linen-textured thick cardboard tiles which show an engine, along with its level and cost.

Other Cards: The actual cards are all medium-weight and high gloss.

The Railroad Baron cards (formerly Railroad Tycoon cards) simply give each player a special goal. They feature period tycoons, complete with pictures. They're specific for the Eastern U.S. (with no similar cards for the simpler Mexico game).

The Railroad Operation cards offer various actions, goals, and bonuses. Good use has been made of icons to show when a card can be used. (They're also similar or identical to the icons used in Eagle's Conquest of the Empire, which is a nice bit of continuity.) The cards feature period artwork and text explaining the cards. The text is pretty clear, but entirely impossible to read from across the very large board. Some iconography would have made these cards easier to use. Like the Railroad Baron cards, the operation cards are specific for the Eastern U.S.

There are also several reference cards. As already noted, one is the "first player" marker. There is also a player reference card for each player which lists the major lines of the Eastern U.S. on one side and the potential actions and costs on the other. These are definitely nice to have (though the Major Lines graphic ended up a little pixelated).

Rules: There are three rulebooks for the game. The 8-page Railways of the World game contains all the major rules for the game system. It includes illustrations and example that keep things clear.

A one-sided black-and-white rulesheet covers the rules for Railways of Mexico, which are quite simple (acting as a subset of the full Worlds rules. It unfortunately neglects the rules for the Major Lines (and there are major lines for Mexico, as shown on the map), but they're easy enough to intuit from the rest of the rules.

A two-sided full color rulesheet covers Railways of the Eastern U.S. It includes extra rules for railroad barons, major lines, and the western link, which don't appear in the main rulebook.

Overall, Railroad Tycoon is a beautifully produced, high-quality game. The game is gigantic, so be prepared for that, however. I don't like how the division of the game in three has resulted in rulebooks and game boards that literally look like they came from different games, but I can't complain too much when Eagle has made the effort to include an extra map in their base game, so it still earns a full "5" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Railways of the World is to earn the most points through the delivery of goods and the meeting of specific goals. What follows are the full rules, as used in the Railways of the Eastern U.S. game. I'll make some notes about Mexico at the bottom of this section.

Setup: The players must find a table large enough to set the board on. The board is then laid out and initial goods are put on the board. Each city is marked with a number between 1 and 6, and that many goods in random colors (blue, purple, black, yellow, red) are placed in that city.

Each player chooses a color and takes the trains in that color. Each player also draws a Railroad Baron card, which will give him a secret goal for the game (e.g., least shares issued, most money at the end, etc). Finally, each player also takes a "1" engine card.

An initial set of Railroad Operation cards are laid out across the top of the board.

A first player is selected and play begins.

The Board. The main game board depicts the Eastern half of the United States. There is plain terrain, sometimes with rivers, and mountains, sometimes with ridges. There are numerous cities on the board. Some are colored the same colors as the goods (blue, purple, black, yellow, red), while others are gray, which is uncolored.

Railroad Operations Cards. There are a number of different Railroad Operation cards. Some of these are goal cards, which give bonus points to the first players to do certain things (most frequently link up two cities or deliver goods to a specific city). Other cards can give players immediate benefits (e.g., an extra action), later benefits (e.g., build track for free on a future turn), or continuous benefits (e.g., earn a point whenever someone delivers goods to a specific city).

Money. Note that no money is given out at the start of the game. Whenever players need money they must issue bond in their company. Each bond earns a player $5,000. However, each one also has some deficits. $1,000 in dividends must be paid on each share every single turn and they're also worth -1 point each at the end of the game. However, players will need to issue shares to win the game: usually at least a couple and at most 7 or 8.

Order of Play: Each turn of the game is divided into the following phases.

• First Player Auction
• Threaded Player Actions
• Income & Dividends

First Player Auction: Each turn starts off with a simple auction to be first player. Players either bid or drop out, and it goes around until there's only one player left who pays for the privilege of being first player.

Threaded Player Actions: Starting with the first player, each player now gets to take three actions, one at a time. Actions come from a list of six possibilities.

Build Track. You can lay up to four spaces of track each turn, usually connecting up two cities. The cost is as low as $2,000 a space (for building on open terrain) to as much as $8,000 a space (for building over ridges in the mountains). When you build you mark the "link" (a connection between two cities) with one of your trains to show that you own it.

Urbanize. You can urbanize any gray city by choosing one of the "new city" hexes (available in all colors but red) and placing it on the city. You must also pay $10,000. The city is now the new color. You finally take two new goods cubes from the bag and place them on the city.

Urbanized cities are useful because they give you a new destination for goods of the appropriate color and because they introduce a few new goods. They can also be used offensively to block a player's longer delivery of goods, as will be made more clear in a second.

Upgrade Engine. You can increase your engine size one level (e.g., from "1" to "2", up to "8"). This rating measures how far you can move goods cubes. This costs from $5,000 (for upgrading to level "2") to $20,000 (for upgrading to level "7" or "8").

Upgrading engines is entirely vital because the delivery length of a good is also the amount you score, and thus a 2-link goods delivery is worth twice as much as a 1-link goods delivery, and you need an engine "2" to do that.

Deliver Goods Cube. This is really the heart of the game, and the goal you're trying to reach, because it's how you earn points. The object is to deliver a goods cube of a specific color to a city of the same color. However, as just noted, you can only move it across as many links (connections between cities) as your engine size. So, that's initially 1.

There's a bunch of finicky rules. You have to move a goods cube all the way as one action. You must stop in the first city of the appropriate color you reach. You can't pass through a city more than once or use a link more than once (both meaning you can't loop goods). But, the main idea of shipping is pretty clear: move a good from one place to another, using the longest path you can.

After delivery you then remove the transported good and earn points equal to the number of links you moved the goods cube across to reach its final destination. (You can use other peoples' links, but then they get the points for their links used.)

Select Railroad Operation Card. You can take one of the Railroad Operation cards that's currently available. Some give an immediate action, some can be used later.

The goal cards can't be selected in this way; instead they're simply taken the second the goal is accomplished. The major lines work the same way (under the default rules), whether cards exist for them (as is the case in the Eastern U.S. or they're printed on the board (as is the case in Mexico).

Build Western Link. Two of the cities, Desmoines and Kansas City, have special Western Links that you can build for $30,000. This dumps a bunch of red cubes in the city which can be delivered to Chicago, where they then multiply into more goods. It's a real special case that may not come up in many games, but is nicely evocative.

Income & Dividends: After everyone has taken their three actions, the round now comes to an end. Each player earns money based on their space on the score track. There's an income curve that runs up from $0 (at 0 points) to $25,000 (at 41-48 points), then starts decreasing again. After they earn their income, each player must also immediately pay dividends on their issued shares, at $1,000 per share.

Before the start of a new round, one new Railroad Operations card is put out. This will often drive the First Player Auction in the next round.

Ending the Game: Whenever a city is emptied of goods that's marked with a special plastic miniature on the board. When 7-18 cities are so closed (depending on the board and the number of players), the game ends.

Any player who met their secret Railroad Tycoon goal earns a bonus of 2+ points, depending on the card.

Each player loses points equal to his number of issued shares.

The player with the most points wins.

Railways of Mexico: The Mexican map is intended as a simplified introduction to the Railways of the World system. It doesn't include the Railroad Barons or the Railroad Operations cards. It also doesn't have any "new city" urbanizations. Finally, it's intended for 2-4 players. The rules suggest that it runs 1 hour rather than 2 hours; I'm not certain on the times, but it should definitely run quicker thanks to the simplified rules and the smaller player count.

Relationships to Other Games

Railways of the World was one of three major releases of 2009which used Martin Wallace's Age of Steam gaming system as its base. The other two were Eagle's own Age of Steam, Third Edition and Mayfair's Steam.

I used to call Railroad Tycoon the simplified version of Age of Steam, but I think that Steam has now taken up that mantle, so instead I'll call Railways of the World the American version of the Steam family. It's got huge and beautiful components and a somewhat more random feel (thanks to the cards). It's also somewhat more forgiving than the original. The result is something that will probably appeal more to the average Fantasy Flight gamer than the Eurogamer (though Eurogamers can love nice plastic bits too!).

As previously noted, Railways of the World is also the updated version of Railroad Tycoon. The biggest change is, of course, that the licensed name has been removed. Beyond that, there are tweaks. There are more Baron (Tycoon) cards, for example, and some have been changed for balance. By default all of the major lines are now available the whole game (whereas you had to draw a card in the original game). Some frustratingly complex rules about following rivers are gone as well (yay!).

Finally, as already noted, this new version of the game includes a Mexico map.

The Game Design

Overall, Railways of the World is a beautifully themed game that really feels like a railroad game. Perhaps that's the components, or perhaps that that's the game system, but you genuinely get the feeling of building rail lines across the eastern United States (or Mexico, as the case might be). This creative force is a lot of what makes the game fun, as you watch your empire slowly blossom.

The game is almost pure strategy and there's quite a lot of it. Every build and every expansion you really need to think about how you're going to ship goods now and in the future. However, as noted, the economics in RRT are somewhat forgiving. As a result if you use poor strategy you're more likely to lose, but you won't be totally out of the game.

The game considerably varies depending on how many players you have. In a 3-player game, the Eastern U.S. board was overly expansive, and our railroad empires never actually touched up. Thus, while we got to enjoy the creativity & strategy of the game, there was never any direct competition. (Though you can now choose to play on the Mexico map instead for those smaller sessions, which is another great reason to have the board available.) In a 6-player game, players started butting heads pretty early and by the end of the game each player was involved with at least two other railroad companies. At this point you can have some fun competition, as players steal goods and good routes from each other.

On the downside, the game gets longer the more players you have. I'd initially estimate it as being a 45 minutes per player game, though I could see that dropping to 30 minutes per player with more experienced or less indecisive players. However, that means that a 6-player game lasts 3-4.5 hours, which I find a bit long. I think that downtime is well controlled by the threaded actions, but I know another player in our 6-player game felt it still excessive, because he read a book in between his turns. I suspect there's a single sweet spot for Railways of the Eastern U.S. at either 4 or 5 players, where you have a decent amount of competition between players, but a shorter length. (And in my experience, the game is even better with 3 players, but for that you need to play on the Railways of Mexico map, or use one of the other supplements like Rails of Europe.)

Finally, the Baron and Operations cards offer some nice variety to the game, primarily in the way of short-term goals which can give you some nice direction and some alternatives to just moving goods around. I wasn't convinced that the original Baron cards were balanced, but I know that some effort was put into fixing that in the new edition. I've heard some complaints about the randomness of the Operation cards, but I find that issue minor at best, because there's always a chance to bid for first player to take most cards, with the only exception being the goals, and it's pretty rare that a goal comes up which immediately benefits one player, and if one does it's because they've already got a well-designed empire.

On the whole I find Railways of the World to be interesting, well-designed, evocative, and fun. I've given it a "5" out of "5" for Substance: very good.

Conclusion

Railways of the World, yet another iteration of the Age of Steam system, offers an Americanized variant of the now classic game. Age of Steam fanatics won't be won over, but the rest of us will find a less stressful and more enjoyable game that doesn't require the same intense logistical calculations as Age of Steam but still enjoys all the good elements of the game system. Particularly if you like American designs like great components and some random elements, this is the variant of the system for you.