Overview:

Railroad Tycoon puts you in charge of a rail empire at the dawn of the Age of Steam – during the formative years when railroad companies competed for space and cargo to establish their shipping and transportation empires. The board covers the United States from the east coast all the way to Kansas City and as far south as New Orleans and Jacksonville.

Money isn’t the name of the game – you are after victory points You acquire points by making deliveries from city to city (the longer the route the more you earn) and completing specific tasks that may or may not come up each game such as being the first player to make a delivery to Mobile or being the first player to complete a Major Line from New York to Kansas City. Finally, each player at the start of the game receives a Tycoon Card which is kept hidden from other players; this card provides yet another way in which the players may achieve points – such as having the longest railroad, or being the player with the most money at the conclusion of the game.

However, you start the game with no money at all and must issue Share Certificates in order to start building rails or buying a better train. Each Share is worth $5,000. You can never repay these “loans” and it forces players to do a balancing act of determining how many Shares are too many Shares before you get crushed under the weight of all the debt. Even worse, at the end of the game you subtract the number of Shares you have acquired from your final score.

After a certain number of cities have been emptied of their goods, depending on how many people are playing, the game ends and the player with the most points wins.

The Fun Factors:

Mechanics:

Every turn in Railroad Tycoon starts with an auction to see who goes first. This happens even on the opening turn when players have no money and must take out a Share or two to get things going. Players take turns bidding in order to see who gets the first crack at taking a card, laying down an important rail tile, etc. This is yet another important decision that is thrust upon the players. How much to spend? How important is it that that you go first? This is going to depend on several factors including which cards are up for grabs or if there is a link that you feel you must complete before an opponent does, and so on. Sometimes, it can be just as important to go second rather than going last, so balancing this is a very important part of the gameplay.

A turn in Railroad Tycoon consists of three rounds, and each player gets one action per round. An action could be to lay down up to four rail tiles; since you can lay down four per round you can build up to a 12 tile “link” every turn. However, any unfinished link, meaning if you don’t complete it by connecting one city to another by the end of the third round, is lost and you lose the tiles as well as the cash it cost to build it. You can also spend a round simply moving a single goods cube to a city to earn some points.

Another option is to upgrade your train. You start the game with the venerable John Bull, the first North American locomotive. The Bull is a “Level 1” train which means you can only ship goods from one city to another, making no other stops in between. Upgrading your train to a higher level (up to Level 8) allows you to ship goods through multiple cities earning more points in the process. Still, it’s a balancing act because you need money to upgrade your train and you have to decide when to do it – do you take out Shares in order to upgrade or do you wait until you have cash on hand?

You may also opt to take one of the few Railroad Operation cards that are in play. There are always a limited number of these cards so they’re usually a hot commodity. Some cards do not need to be “taken” to be used. For example, if a card states that the first player to deliver a cube to Duluth earns 4 points, then no one needs to spend a turn taking the card; they just needs to deliver the cube in order to earn the points. However, some cards must be taken and they range from allowing you to build rails for free to allowing you to take back to back turns.

Finally, there is the option to Urbanize. There are loads of cities on the map and each come in various colors. These colors determine which colored cube that the city will accept. New York, for example, is a red city and therefore only red cubes may be delivered there. However, some cities are gray; these are small cities that may be “urbanized” at a cost of $10,000 (or by use of a free urbanize card). When urbanized, the player chooses a new color for that city and the cubes may now be delivered there as a result. (There is one final option: to build a Western Link, which costs $30,000 and is important if you have cornered the market in Chicago, but this option mostly comes up only in the latter stages of the game.)

Duration and Downtime:

A game of Railroad Tycoon can take as long as five hours or as quick as 45 minutes – depending on the number of people and how fast players wish to empty cities. As the game’s conclusion is strictly dependant on emptying cities of goods, it’s up to the players to determine how long each game plays out. A two player game can zip along very quickly because you use fewer cubes and cities empty faster as a result. A viable strategy is to empty cities as fast as possible when and if you have a nice point lead, so games usually don’t go into the wee hours of the night. Expect the norm to be around two to three hours.