Game Review: Railways of the World

The aim of this game is simple, build the biggest and best railway network, deliver goods and make money. The premise is simple, the game play however is as deep and strategic as you would like in a medium weight game.

Sitting in between Ticket to Ride and the 1830 series of railway games, do not let the theme put you off. It could be anything, they just chose trains.

Game contents

You get a lot of game in this big, heavy box. There are two game boards, Railways of the Eastern US, which is quite simply put, HUGE. You need a big table for this one, or the ability to bring in another table to the room. The other board, Railways if Mexico, is smaller and suited to 2-3 players. There is also a score board and income track board. Each board has their own set of cards assigned to them. You get a main rulebook, and two smaller rule sets for the individual maps. Also in the box you get paper money and bond cards, train cards, wooden goods cubes, lots of track tiles, and lots and lots of trains.

Set up is simple. Each city on the board has a number, this is the number of goods cubes that starts on it. Place cubes on all the city's. Each player each gets a level 1 train card, and a handful of train markers. 5 cards are dealt out, representing events that unfold throughout the game, and play begins. It could take a while for one person to set up alone, but with a group setup should not be more than 5 minutes.

How it plays

The game uses a auction system to gain the first turn. This can be vitally important, as if there is a card that would greatly benefit you, chances are it will greatly benefit someone else also. Bidding wars can be fierce, but great fun.

You start with no money at all in this game. Once the first auction is completed, players have to take bonds from the bank to get some money and get that game going. These bonds can never be payed back, and deduct points from you final score, 1 point for each bond you have, so you have to decide if you want to go for big money and gain a big lead, or play more reserved and see if other people will get into a lot of debt.

So now you have a little bit of money and its your turn. What to do? Well, you have 5 options.

• Build track, which costs money.
• Deliver goods, which gains you money
• Urbanize a city, change a grey city to a colour and place some good on it.
• Upgrade your train to the next level
• Take a operations card

It can be overwhelming at first, but after one turn, most players will have picked up what to do.

I'm not going to go into much detail on this game, as this review could then easily turn into a small novel. I cannot speak highly enough of this game, its almost perfect. There are just a few little niggles, like it being 1 turn to long, and some of the rules are not that clear, and you need to turn to the internet to work some problems out. But on a whole, this is like monopoly on steroids, with a good dose of strategy to boot. Plenty of options, and no two games will be the same due to the randomness of the cards and goods in play.

If you like trains, this is the game for you. If you don't like trains, then forget about the train theme, and play it. Its a economy game at heart, and a very good one at that, don't pass this one by.