TransEuropa

Transeuropa is a network-building game in which the goal is to lay rail tracks across Europe. The gameboard shows a map of Europe divided into a triangular grid with five groups of seven cities - each group is a different colour. At the start of each round each player is randomly allotted one city from each group, which they must connect by placing two tracks per turn. Most connections require one piece of track, but some (over rivers and mountains) require two. All track is identical, which means that once you connect your track to an opponents then you may also use their network and, of course, they may use yours - a key part of the strategy is timing when to link networks. Once one player has made all their connections the round is over and players score one point for every piece of track they would need to complete their network. Whoever has the lowest score after a series of rounds is the winner.

+ Simple rules and easy to play for all ages
+ Great quality components
+ Packs a good strategy game into a short time
+ A simple small expansion - Vexation (highly recommended) - is available, which increase the opportunities for strategic play

- For well matched players the winner can be decided by luck, since not all cities are equally accessible/connectable

+/- Artwork is nothing special, but functional

Overall Transeuropa is a good, short game with enough decisions to keep it interesting, but not so many that it becomes too hard and overly analytical.