Steam : Rails to Riches

STEAM is the perfect introduction to the world of 'serious' economic games. Designed for 3 - 5 players, it can also accommodate more or fewer by the use of specially designed expansion maps (many of which are available to download for free on the boardgamegeek website).

The game comes with a double-sided game board, showing a map of the northeastern US on one side, and the German Ruhr region on the other. Hexes on the board show cities, towns and terrain such as rivers, plains and hills.

Each player represents the director of a railroad company, who must build connections between the cities, using towns as junctions (or developing the towns into goods-laden cities). At set-up, goods cubes of randomly varying colours are placed on the cities. Players will score points by 'shipping' cubes along the routes they build to towns that match the colour of the cube - the longer the route they are able to ship along, the more points they will score.

Each turn, the players have a number of simple choices and actions to take. Firstly, there are six special actions that are auctioned for the turn. (In the basic, beginner-friendly game, players simply take turns to choose the action they wish to take for that turn - certain actions having a set price, others being free : the actions will then be resolved in a set order, which will also be the order that players choose their actions in the next round. In the economically-tight 'standard' game, the actions have no set price or order, players enter an auction for turn order, and choose whichever action they please.)

After choosing their action, players then have the option to build 3 sections of track (or four if they chose the action that giveds that bonus). The cost of each section will depend upon the terrain and the number of terminals in a town junction.

After players have built track, they then have the chance to 'ship' up to two goods (or to increase their 'locomotive' level and ship one good if available - locomotive level determines how many connecting routes of track a good can be shipped along, and thus how many points can be scored too.)

Finally, players pay upkeep (in the standard game they must pay for every point of locomotive level - which contributes greatly to making the standard game extremely tight financially) and/or take income. In the basic game, if a player hasn't enough money at any point in the turn, they can simply borrow more money from the bank, by decreasing their income level and taking cash. In the standard game, any loans must be taken at the beginning of a turn - any shortfall lent later is charged at a very punitive rate, making the risk of running bankrupt very high indeed unless players plan their turns extremely carefully.

When players score points from shipping goods, they can choose to either raise their income level or score victory points. In general, players will try to increase income to the point where it is sustainable, and then put all their profits into VPs (thematically, think of this as the director creaming off the company profits to their own benefit).

The game will end after a set number of rounds determined by number of players. Once players are experienced at the game, this can easily fall into the region of about an hour's play, especially playing the basic game. Certainly, unless players are excessively prone to analysis paralysis, games shouldn't run over two hours.

If you spend only a small amount of time browsing the forums at boardgamegeek, you will quickly learn that Steam is a reimplementation of Age of Steam by the same designer, and that this is a source of contention for a large and vocal minority of boardgamers. Many fans of the earlier game consider Steam to be an emasculated product. And the fact that Steam is much nicer produced is even held against the game. The 'standard' game of Steam is not very far from Age of Steam, but it is true that the older game is certainly the tighter and more unforgiving. The many maps and expansions designed for Age of Steam can be used for the newer game, but many (or perhaps most) won't play in quite the way they were intended owing to the slight rules differences. It is hard to say whether this really matters.

The basic game of Steam is where the scorn of Age of Steam is mostly directed, it has also, however, won over many converts from the older game, who find the lighter version of Steam to be an extremely enjoyable game in its own right, and one which it is possible to play with newcomers or family members without leaving them a shivering, catatonic mess. I would suggets that if you have any doubt about which version of the game would suit you better, then you are almost certain to prefer Steam. If, on the otherhand, the idea of turning your opponent into a shivering, catatonic mess (perhaps over the course of 3 or 4 hours) has its appeal, then you know where else to look...