Railways of Europe
120m - 120m
2 - 5 Players
Ages 10+
Contents - Description
Rails of Europe is an expansion for Railways of the World. Glenn Drover, one of the two designers of the original game, has designed a European setting for the expansion, which uses the original game’s pieces, tiles, money, trains, shares and rules, along with a new map and card deck. There are some rules changed and added for the expansion to reflect the new setting of the expansion.
Due to the complicated corporate history of Eagle Games, this expansion was unusual – it was originally an official, yet unlicensed expansion of Railroad Tycoon. It was official, since the designer of the original game also designed this expansion and it was to be published by a company that is a descendant (of sorts) of Eagle Games. The expansion is unlicensed because it never bore the Railroad Tycoon name, which was licensed from Sid Meier’s computer game. Its status as an expansion of Railways of the World is much more official, although it existed before the base game of Railways of the World was published.
Additional information
| Ages | 10+ |
|---|---|
| Players | 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players, 5 Players |
| Play Time | 120m – 120m |
| Designer | Glenn Drover |
| Mechanics | Auction/Bidding, Network and Route Building, Card Drafting, Pick-up and Deliver, Tile Placement |
| Theme | Expansion for Base-game, Trains, Transportation |
| Publisher | Eagle-Gryphon Games |
Video
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BradJacobs
Railways of the World is an interesting game. I enjoy the thin theme (surprisingly), but I think this is due to my upbringing with Railroad Tycoon (and later Transport Tycoon). The rules need some explaining but are, ultimately, very thin. It is a game full of meaty decisions and calculations though, where you need a keen eye to spot opportunity, and a good sense of how much going first is worth. This is also a mean game. If spending an action and some money on a railroad that leads nowhere is going to prevent your closest competitor from making that final connection scoring one of the major lines, you should absolutely do so. I feel, however, that the game has some flaws and that although it's an interesting puzzle and ecosystem, it shows some areas where there can be some improvement. Perhaps these improvements already exist in some variants or expansions (I am not familiar with all the extra rules, variants etc..). When I played, we must have played the most basic version I believe: no buildings, no station buildings, etc.. For example, the first player auction is pretty bland. Not everyone cared that much about whether they should bid or not because turn order simply follows clockwise from the highest bidder. This can lead to situations where you can be second for the round and not have to invest any money at all for your position. This could be easily fixed with simultaneous bidding: everybody gets one chance to bid, and then turn order flows from highest to lowest bidder. On some occasions some players wanted to pass but the game wouldn't let them. Opportunities had mostly disappeared from the map in the late game, and so players were not interested in spending a lot of money on barely scrappy points. If your network won't capitalize on late game opportunities, you might find that you just want the game to end, and not drag it until the end game condition triggers. This is a yellow flag for any game. Which also leads to another downside: some players are simply going to be behind in points compared to the leaders, and they will likely find that they can't effectively hurt them. The game won't help you recover from a bad start and this can be disappointing. In a game like Dune, you can still barter and negotiate with information or game powers if you are out of contention for the win. But here, if you're less efficient than your peers, nothing will bring you back on par with them. Even with players of equal skill, you will find that the importance of turn order will likely screw your plans big time one time or another. In this sense, I find for example Archipelago's turn order bid much more interesting than what I see in this game. But then again, we'd be deviating from old school euro into something more wild. I also dislike how the distribution of goods during the setup can lead to wildly different games. Some setups are way more engrossing than others, as opportunities abound in one way or another. Some other times though, the most obvious moves are taken in the first rounds, and then there's a lot of investment to be done for scrappy points. Finally, storing this game is a nightmare. There's no way to survive without plano boxes and the like - a good storage solution will help you massively with the setup, yet there's still a lot of pieces and organizing to do at the end of the game. It's not as bad as Gloomhaven, but still.. To sum it up: This is an engrossing game, full of meanness and euro interaction, with a likeable theme, and surprising depth for the amount of rules. As a design, it shows some age and areas of improvement, but some of it could be improved with house rules or variants. Perhaps some of the expansions already fix some of the issues that I see.
BillJ1967
What an improvement over Railroad Tycoon's US map! Smaller, tighter gameplay makes this a very worthy introductory/medium level train game.
aaronseeber
Dumbed down version of Age of Steam with more luck courtesy of several decks of cards, and less agonising decisions courtesy of all actions being available to all players. Still a fine game - I like how the VP/income track works in this version. Typically vulgar Eagle Games design aesthetic.