(A side note: one of my friends is color blind and he struggles mightily with the cubes and the city colors. The game is heavily dependant on colors (from shipping the right good to the right city and can get frustrating if you have trouble telling one color from another. What adds to this frustration is that in production cities that were supposed to be blue came out looking more like a violet…which throws things out of whack since purple is in fact one of the real city colors in the game. We took a blue Sharpie and colored them in which helped quite a bit. )

One final nitpick is the “empty city” models. When you clear out a city of its goods you place a marker on the city to identify it as being empty; you count these markers to determine how many cities are empty and thus how close you are to finishing the game. The large markers (the water tower) are fine; they’re easy to see, but there are also a few tiny ones that are easily overlooked. It would have been better to just include several large ones so players don’t miss an empty city location due to a small model.

Conclusion

The mechanics blend just the right amount of luck and skill. You will never lose a game of Railroad Tycoon because you rolled poorly. You will lose a game because you made poor decisions. There’s still some luck involved – cards coming up at the right time, cubes being placed in the perfect location, and so on but strategy and planning are the game’s key elements.

Railroad Tycoon is simply a wonderful game; it’s easy to grasp, provides the player with a multitude of challenges and decisions and is the perfect way to spend an evening. - William Abner