Game Review: Railways of the World

By David Pazmiño
November 5, 2009

Designers: Glenn Drover and Martin Wallace
Publisher: FRED Distribution

Players: 2-6
Ages: 12+
Playing Time: 120 minutes
Rules Language: English
Price: $75
Links:

Version played: Comped review copy
Times played: Eight, three times with 2 players, three times with 3, once with 4, and once with 5

If games had pedigrees like race horses, then the new Railways of the World base game and series from FRED Distribution would certainly fit the bill as the best bred train game. With such parents as Age of Steam and Railroad Tycoon, this new train game series has the bloodlines to back it up. But does it deliver?

First off, Railways of the World relies on the same track-laying, goods-delivery, and economic-optimization system in the now classic Age of Steam. Since Age of Steam had a particularly high learning curve, it was hard for casual gamers to jump in and enjoy their first game. Railroad Tycoon from Eagle Games refined the system to make it a bit more accessible: The game was streamlined, with money not quite as tight and a bit more luck added through Tycoon and operation cards, making it appeal to the more casual gamer and families. Part of Age of Steam‘s original appeal was the vast replayability from the myriad official and fan-based maps. Eagle Games wanted to do the same thing for the Railroad Tycoon system, but then Eagle was sold to FRED Distribution. While one expansion for Railroad Tycoon did materialize – Rails of Europe – that seemed to be the end of the line.

Now, though, FRED Distribution has decided to breathe new life into Railroad Tycoon by transforming the game into Railways of the World, changing a few rules, further streamlining the system, and offering something that the original fans wanted: more maps.

Something Old

Railways of the World is virtually a carbon copy of Railroad Tycoon. Jam-packed in the 8-pound box comes two mounted gameboards (one of the eastern U.S. and another of Mexico), 150 plastic trains in six colors, 125 cubes (to represent goods), and a whole mess of cards, tiles and money. All these bits lead to a game that has huge curbside appeal.

The first time that I saw Railroad Tycoon I was awe-struck by the huge amount of bits and pieces – like Ticket to Ride on steroids. The board was huge, the plastic pieces detailed, and the tracks ready to take you all sorts of places. I thought I was in for a brain burner, but after my first play, I was pleasantly surprised by how approachable and straight-forward the game played.

At the heart of this hex-based train system, you’re trying to earn the most victory points by delivering goods (represented by different colored cubes) to cities of the same color. To get things started, each hex-shaped city on the map is randomly seeded with goods cubes, and depending on the number of players and a particular map in play, a predetermined number of empty city markers are set-aside. Once they have all been placed due to cities being emptied of goods, the turn goes through the final dividend and income phase, then game over. Between the set-up and the end, three phases are repeated: first player auction, three rounds of player actions, and dividends and income. The player actions let you:

• Build up to four tracks or one link (a connection from one city to another)

• Urbanize (develop a neutral colored city on the map and seed it with goods, or remove an empty city marker and add goods to an already emptied city)

• Upgrade your engine (higher engine numbers mean you can deliver goods over more links goods and ultimately make more money or victory points)

• Deliver a good (how you get points)

• Take a railroad operations card (which provides instant or long-term benefits to those who hold particular cards)

In a nutshell, that is the game. Nothing has been added or taken away from the original Railroad Tycoon. When you need money, you raise it by issuing bonds to your company. While the meat of the game is building tracks and delivering goods to different cities, the challenge is also how well you can manage your debt. Do you raise lots of capital to immediately get your tracks down and upgrade your engines to deliver goods for lots of points at the expense of issuing lots of bonds, or do you issue just enough bonds that you can still pay your dividends at the end of the round without having to raise more money by issuing bonds? One would think that such complicated ideas as debt management, capital expenditures to build tracks, and urbanization would make a game overly heavy, but Railways of the World is simple and engaging.

Something New

While Railroad Tycoon had a simple ruleset, people had a few minor issues with the game. First, while the size of the board was breathtaking, it was simply too big for most people’s tables. Second, because the gameboard was so big, it came in three pieces, so if you did manage to find a table for it, the board pieces were often shifted and bumped during play, leaving people to recreate routes and remember which cities had which cubes.

While the huge gameboard wasn’t a huge issue, it was a minor annoyance for such an expensive game; I remember playing games of Railroad Tycoon and having to reach across the whole table, hitting the train markers on the victory track. In Railways of the World FRED has kept the core of the map, while removing the victory and income tracks and border treatment and placing them on a separate board, which makes set-up and play much easier. The board in Railways of the World is also now one fold-out piece, which prevents the board from shifting during play. Don’t get me wrong – the board is still big, but it is now more manageable, plus it fits on my table. What’s more, with the edge of the eastern United States going right up to the edge of the board, I foresee a western U.S. map in the future that will create a huge board for a mega-train game. This is a nice touch.

Technically, Railways of the World is simply the game system. Packaged in the same box are two expansions: Railways of the Eastern U.S. and Railways of Mexico. While the first item is the same map as in Railroad Tycoon, the second is a new map. This smaller, two-piece map is designed for 2-4 players while the larger map is for 2-6. One of my major complaints with Railroad Tycoon was that while it was listed for 2 to 6 players, it was really best with 4 to 6. Any fewer than that, and it was too easy for people to turtle in one section of the board with little player interaction. The game was then more of a race to see who could empty the most cities of their goods cubes and have the least amount of debt. The new Railways of Mexico map, with the central mountains of Mexico running down the center of the board, ensures that people will be fighting like true railroad barons to get their goods delivered. It also means that that game will make it to the table more often. In my household, for example, there are only three of game age who could play this game. Railways of the Eastern U.S. would hardly make it to the table, but the Mexico map will surely see the light of day much more often.

When I have played Railroad Tycoon, the rule that bugged me the most was how to price the cost of going over water. If your track was crossing a river there was one cost. If you were running the track parallel to the river it was another cost, and if the hex had any water that was not river you could not build on it at all. This rule has now been streamlined so that it costs $3,000 to build track on any hex with water, whether river or seaside. While Glenn Drover has commented on BoardGameGeek that the new river rule is a good idea, he didn’t necessarily agree with the second change. In the games that I’ve played, though, I never found a particular issue with building on a hex that was both land and water (not river). Particularly on the east coast near Baltimore, this rule change proved helpful, preventing another player from getting the major line points between Washington and Boston.

Another small rules change is that two railroad baron cards are dealt to each player, allowing them to choose one rather than just receiving one at random. These railroad baron cards, like the tycoon cards, assign secret goals to each player that if met, advance them on the victory point scale at the end of the game. Five of the original tycoon cards made it as railroad baron cards while the other seven are slightly modified with two new cards. In spirit, these cards create pre-set agendas allowing for some speculation during the game. I have seen people just ignore them and others attempt to fulfill these goals. They definitely add more flavor as you think about your potential routes.

Something Borrowed

If Railways of the World lives up to his pedigreed past, it will not be for the game mechanisms but for varied experiences offered by different maps. Although I do not own Age of Steam, one of the things that I like best was the different playing experiences based on the different maps. Railways of the World promises to offer the same thing. In fact, two expansions were already developed: Rails of Europe (to be reissued in 2010 as Railways of Europe) and Railways of England and Wales. Either one can be played with the base components from Railroad Tycoon or Railways of the World. What I really look forward to is even more maps, hopefully more like Railways of Mexico that are designed for smaller playing groups of 2 to 4.

One thing that Railways of the World attempts to do is create an expandable train system that appeals to new gamers as well as experienced ones. Their attempt to do this is with increasingly more difficult rulesets that don’t dramatically alter the base set of rules. In this way, each expansion can be tailored to different markets without altering the core of the game. This is something that many game companies have attempted to do with varying degrees of success.

Something Blue

Overall I was quite happy with the changes that FRED made in Railways of the World, making this train gaming system more widely available, but in the process, there were also a few oversights. That rule change about being able to build tracks on hexes with water is clear in the rules – yet it’s accompanied by the same pictures from the Railroad Tycoon rules that say laying tracks on hexes with water is not permissible. This kind of editing error confuses not only experienced gamers but the same customers FRED is trying to attract to the industry.

Another minor issue is with the use of the railroad baron and railroad operation cards in the expansion for Railways of Mexico. The rules state that if experienced players want a more difficult game, they should add these cards when playing with this map. But many of these cards have specific goals associated specifically with the Railways of the Eastern U.S. map. I played one time by sorting through the cards that had generic goals and playing only with those, but the flavor of those cards seemed lost on the new map.

Despite having more than eight pounds of components in the box, it is a shame that a pawn for the turn marker track isn’t included. The rules state to use one of the new city tiles, but for a game of this caliber and vast appeal, I was disappointed that the new edition of Railways of the World didn’t include such a pawn.

Mix-and-match colors


The last minor gripe was the change in train and city colors; Railways of the World has train colors that are several shades different from those in Railroad Tycoon. I’m not sure whether this was done so that the train colors would differ from the goods cubes as well as from the city colors, but now there are three shades of each color on the board: one for the train, one for the goods cubes, and one for the city. While some goods cubes and cities are easy to match up – black and yellow – others are a bit confusing. The blue cities have a color very similar to the purple cubes, and the purple cities are more of a violet color. In all the games that I played, everyone commented and took the game to task over this. While this is not a reason to not buy the game or play it, it is a minor quibble for an otherwise stellar game.

If you love train games, Railways of the World offers exciting new possibilities. You will need this base game for any of the new maps that will eventually be published. If you already own Railroad Tycoon, there isn’t much new aside from a few rule changes (which are easy enough to introduce), minor changes and additions in the railroad baron cards, and a new tighter map for 2 to 4 players (sold separately on the Eagle Games website for those who have Railroad Tycoon). Since I got into gaming after Railroad Tycoon went out of print, I will be hanging onto Railways of the World, especially for when the expansion maps come out geared to smaller gaming groups.

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Comments:

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” if the hex had any water that was not river you could not build on it at all” That’s interesting.  My edition of Railroad Tycoon has no such rule and no example in the rule book illustrating this.  The closest it gets is to re-iterate that you can only build track in complete hexes. “Railways of the World has train colors that are several shades different from those in Railroad Tycoon. I’m not sure whether this was done so that the train colors would differ from the goods cubes as well as from the city colors,” I seem to recall a post somewhere that indicated this was done so that you could combine pieces from the two different editions for more than 6 players.  I also seem to recall an implication that there was going to be a Western US map that could be combined with the Eastern US map to more easily allow for more players.  Not sure how often you could set that up, though. Posted by Stephen Smith on Nov 6, 2009 at 08:52 AM | #

Thanks for the clarification. You are right in that it has to be a complete hex. There are only a few hexes on RTT’s map that have water. The change to Railways of the World was that they added many more complete hexes that also include water. One important area is another hex to potentially link New York. There are also a few more on the East Coast and a few around the Great Lakes. So there is not the possibility to make more connections. When these “water hexes” were added to Rails of Europe they had an increased cost. This was the rule that Glen Drover commented that he didn’t like. On he second point. I too had heard Keith Blume discuss the potential of the Western map that on the Myriad Games podcast. As for the color issue, there have been several comments on BGG from Sean Brown who overses production. Here is the link to see his comments: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/453642. It appears that the different finished affected the end color. I have not seen a reference from FRED that the decision for the color difference had anything to do with adding pieces from RRT and ROTW together. That would make sense. But I agree with you, I am not sure if there ever would be the possibility for more than 5 players or 2 maps put together besides a game board convention. I am imagining that that would be a long and somewhat tedious game. Someone would have to just manage the turn order and who was to do what. Thanks. Posted by David Pazmino on Nov 6, 2009 at 10:47 AM | #

"Jam-packed in the 8-pound box… All these bits lead to a game that has huge curbside appeal.” It won’t be appealing when my wife throws me and my huge game collection out on the curb after she sees me bring this behemoth home. Posted by Jonathan Degann on Nov 6, 2009 at 02:11 PM | #

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