I decided to do further development work on Age of Steam because many people had said that it would be good to have a simpler version of the game to help introduce it to new players. It is my intention to include an advanced set of rules to allow a version closer to the original to be played. It is also hoped that players will be able to use existing Age of Steam maps with the new game, and any new maps with the previously-published rules. However, there are some fundamental changes to the rules which I will be making in the game for the advanced version. I don’t want to go into more detail now but at some point I will ask Mayfair if an electronic copy of the rules can be made available to the public in advance of the actual publication of the game.

Huh?  Anymore background info on this?  So Mayfair was contracted to publish the game in 2007, but instead have sold on the rights to another unnamed publisher?

Well if I understand it correctly, Winsome will be reprinting AoS using a new publisher/printer, this will be the same as the original version.

Martin and Mayfair will be publishing an updated/simplified/advanced version. Whether this will be called AoS I don’t know - it’ll be confusing if it is. It’s confusing enough already.

And now Glenn Drover has announced Railroad Tycoon 2 to be released by his Tropical Games Co.  Pretty crazy - 3 different versions/reprints from the same system being developed about the same time.

Something fishy is going on.

Oh my.  All we need now are the cigar-smoking chimps and the Flying Wallenda Brothers to make this a true circus.

Although absolutely NOTHING can be said with any certainty about this mess, I assume that the one person will do very well from this is Martin Wallace.  He’ll just have to be sure that the royalty checks are labelled properly so he can keep straight which games are giving him the greatest return!

(P.S.  There’s GOTTA be a game idea in this!  Dueling Designs!  Think Martin could slap something together?) :-)