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Railroad Tycoon - Board Game Box Shot

Railroad Tycoon

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railroad tycoon

The year is 1830.
The age of railroading has begun and you are the head of one of the first fledgling railroad companies. the cities teem with potential passengers, the countryside of a young nation gives birth to a bountiful harvest and countless new factories bulge with finished goods! the potential profits are huge, but who will get there first? the competition will be fierce, and olly the best railroads will prosper.

You will decide the best routes and build the track. You will run the railroad and deliver the goods, thus capturing that share of the market for your railroad. And as your network of rails expand across the countryside, you will invest in newer, better locomotives to deliver the goods faster and father

You call the shots. You are the Railroad Tycoon!

railroadtycoon-gameboard
images © Eagle Games

User Reviews (2)

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2
Critic - Level 1
Rated 25 Games
8
26 of 27 gamers found this helpful
“Best Train Themed Game... so far”

Overview
Train themed boardgames have been around for a long time and Ive had the pleasure of playing some of them, mainly Ticket to Ride, Empire Builder and, of course, Railroad Tycoon.

One would think that Railroad Tycoon is an adaptation of the very famous videogame series by Sid Meier, but very quickly you´ll realize that it is not so, the name is only used as a sales tactic in my opinion. Once you get over this annoying fact, you can start enjoying a very engaging, and sometimes quite tense, race for the cubes game.

The game concept is fairly simple, you must build a network of rails between cities in order to deliver the goods (represented by color cubes), to cities of the same color, the longer the delivery, the bigger the reward of Victory Points. You must mainly do this for a predetermined number of rounds trying to score the largest amount of VPs in order to win the game. The inclusion of special awards, cards and actions give the game just the right amount of variety to keep it entertaining.

The game comes with an enormous board divided in three assemblable parts (youll need a fairly large table to play this one), made out of a nice, thick cardboard. My favorite elements are all the plastic parts: locomotives and empty city markers, that are very detailed and solid. All the other elements are quite good also (cards, money, rail tiles and loans are nicely illustrated).

Gameplay
You are allowed to build anywhere on the map, its not obligatory to have all your rails on the same network, this simple rule together with the fact that the spaces for building rails is quite limited, gives the game a good sense of tension and adds great interactivity between players, as you try to win the cheapest and best routes between cities with the most goods on them trying to deliver the also very limited number of resources on the map before your adversaries.

Pros
The 3 turns/actions per round of play gives a good pace to the game, you dont have to wait a very long time for your next turn (like in Empire Builder).
The system runs as expected, havent found a loop hole or rule that can be taken advantage of (like in Ticket to Ride).

Cons
After several games it starts to get kind of repetitive since the only changes from one game to another is the initial color cube setup and starting cards. Experienced players will have a big advantage as you get to know the best routes and zones of the map.
The deck of special delivery and routes awards is too small and gets predictable after many games.

Conclusion
If you like the train themed games, this is definetively a most. Havent played Steam yet… maybe ill change my mind about the title of this post later.

 
Player Avatar
1
 
3 of 34 gamers found this helpful
“Good Game”

I like this game for the complexity it offers. It’s simple, but yet takes a bit to understand and involves strategy. I was very excited when the new expansions came out for the Western half of the United States and the other countries.

 

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