So, a few new games were acquired late last year. Some of these were discussed in the posting about Thanksgiving gaming, and some were mentioned in the post about the Christmas break gaming. But, a few of the titles were train related, and as train related gaming is something of a high interest theme here at Gaming with Chuck, it felt right to do a short blog post about it.
First, a word about Train games. These are not all what purists would call Railroad games. To some, that includes the 18xx series. To others, that includes the Martin Wallace masterpieces, Steam, Age of Steam, and the various derivative titles (Railroad Tycoon and Railways of the World). Still others include railroad themed route building games (which tend to be lighter, such as Ticket to Ride, or TransAmerica). To some it is the family of crayon based games, such as Empire Builder (and Dampfross, and many others). It might include railroad theme games such as Russian Railroads. And strange combinations of these, like Chicago Express. Finally, to some it even includes games that have mechanics that are typically Railroad game mechanics, but for non-railroad themes like Elfenland, or Poseidon.
To me, all of those are Train games. It can be a train related mechanic (pick up and deliver, stock manipulation, network building, travel), or it can be theme (Russian Railroads, Express).
So, what were some of the train titles acquired last year here at GwC headquarters?
Boxcars
Isle of Trains
Continental Express
Paris Connection
Russian Railroads
Ticket to Ride 10 Year Anniversary Set
Trains: Rising Sun
Yardmaster
Yardmaster Express
A few words about these . . .
Boxcars, of course, is the Rio Grande Games re-issue of the Avalon Hill classic, Rail Baron. But wait! Rail Baron was a reissue of the game Boxcars. So we are now back to the original. Except, it has a new board (the UK) and some adjusted rules. This is a game of pick up and delivery. The routes are all developed. What players can do, other than receiving a constant stream of pickup and delivery points, is to purchase railroads, which are cheaper for them to run on, but more expensive for the competition. The game is a simple race to develop a pile of money ($200K) and then return to home base (starting position). Very fun, and now made even better because the one tedious part of the game was using the charts to roll up cities for delivery. This can be done, now, with a very nice App for iPad and iPhone - available for free from iTunes. What a great thing!
Isle of Trains is a great little card game, from the Dice Hate Me games series of 54 card games called the Rabbits. This was the result of a kickstarter, the ended up with six published titles. The series includes:
Yep - Seth Jaffee of Eminent Domain fame is the (co) designer of this great little card game. The game is one of building your train (using mechanisms familiar to deck builder game players - cars have costs, and you pay that cost with other cards from your hand), and then loading cargo on your own, and others', trains. Why load on another player's train? Well, because you are rewarded with special actions - and they make all the difference. Once you have a train, and some cargo, you can complete contracts - of which there are six, each corresponding to one of the main cities on the Island of Sodor Isle that is the namesake of the game. We have played this a few times, and the decision making and action planning is great - especially for a small format game. It takes about an hour to play, and it is an hour well spent. One of the best things about the game, is that the great card art (by Daniel Guidera and Christopher Kirkman) is fantastic, and very reminiscent of a Little Golden Book (especially The Train to Timbuctoo and The Little Red Caboose).
Continental Express is also a small format card game. This one is from Asmodee, and is packed in a really nice tin box, similar to another of their titles, The Builders: Middle Ages. They have several other titles in this same format of small tin box (Noah, Souk, Cardline: Animals, Cardline Dinosaurs, and Cardline: Globetrotter), however The Builders and Continental Express seem to be the most mature of these. In this game, as in Isle of Trains, you are constructing a train. However, that is the goal of this one - building the train. You collect sets of cards, drawn from a pool of available cards each turn, and then turn them in for new cars on your train. Each new car card has a train line symbol, and there are bonus point categories for those symbols. Not a bad little game, and set collection is always a good mechanism. The artwork is gorgeous, although closer to the Ticket to Ride artwork, than it is to other styles.
More coming on other titles, but this is enough for now. . . .
So, we had a number of folks come over our house last weekend, and play some games. There were some new people we had met in Columbus - Jason and Kylie, as well as Bob and his college aged daughter Amber, and our daughter Heidi brought her high school friend, Sailor Ann, over to play. It was a great mix, and we had a great time.
Games played included big games of both 6 Nimmt (also called Category 5) and Bohnanza (using the supplemental cards, which I believe now come in the base game). Both of those games were a big hit! The Cows of 6 Nimmt were easily matched for excitement and funny comments by the Beans of Bohnanza. As usual, with our German version of Bohnanza, without German speakers in the game, we made up our usual funny names for the bean (poopy bean, angry bean, etc).
German version (that we own) of 6 Nimmt - "6 Takes It"
Some of the many, exciting, cows - or Hornochsen, in 6 Nimmt!
The Rio Grande (U.S.) version of Bohnanza - we actually own the Amigo German version
The eleven types of Beans in the basic game, and first expansion, plus the Third Bean Field card
These games had everyone in a great mood, and it was made even better by dinner - Anita served up some delicious home made chili and corn bread muffins, and we then followed up with Cake that was made by Amber. She decorated the cake with the cover art from Ticket to Ride. The TtR cover art was on the top of the cake, and the scoring track was around the side of the cake. It was a quite good confetti cake.
We then split up into two groups - one group played Ticket to Ride, and the other played Ticket to Ride Europe. In addition to the basic game, there were some extra pieces used in the North America version - they used the wooden replacement train pieces that we own, as well as the Halloween Fright Train pieces from Days of Wonder.
Finally, after the Ticket to Ride fest, the evening rounded out by the remaining five gamers (myself, Jason, Kylie, Amber, and Bob) playing a game of Power Grid. We used the standard US board since not too many of us had played before, and it was a really good time.
All-in-all a great social event, and a great boardgaming get together. We'll do it again in about a month.
The following is an excerpt of a letter I wrote to a friend comparing the various Ticket to Ride variants. The official ones, anyway. I thought other people would find it useful.
Ok, here is the rundown. The dice add on, as I said, makes for a different, faster, but still enjoyable game. We like it a lot, but it does feel different from regular TTR.
Both the Nordic Countries and the Switzerland alternative are loads of fun, especially for small groups. They are both designed for only 2 or 3 players. Both incorporate rules for tunnels, and Nordic Countries has rules for Ferries. Very simple rule changes, but fun. Tunnels are specially marked train routes that may require extra cards to build them. It is random (you draw three extra cards every time you build a tunnel; if any match the color you are building, it means you need an extra card). The effect on play is that it is a little risky to build a tunnel route, unless you have collected a few extra cards of that color. We find it to be a nice rule addition. Ferries are routes that require either one or two of your cards to be locomotives. Also a fun addition. The maps themselves also have differences.
In Nordic Countries, the map has lots of short routes in the southwest, and lots of long routes in the north east. It means that depending on the tickets you select, your strategy will be different. In Switzerland, almost all of the tickets are easy, and short, and you tend to complete a LOT of tickets. Scores can run high in Switzerland. Both are lots of fun and we (Anita, my wife, and Heidi, our daughter) like them. Nordic Countries also has a Christmas-y feel to he artwork, so we often pull it out to play over Christmas break.
There is a Europe version, that is great for family play. He reason is that it allows you to build a Station if you like, on a city. It has the effect of allowing you to use a route that was claimed by another player, so being cut off is not as disastrous as in the other versions of the game. It really is only important for larger games, or games where one or more of the players are somewhat aggressive. The tickets for Europe are much more evenly spread out than the base game. Europe also incorporates tunnels and ferries.
There is a Legendary Asia version, that features a map stretching from the Ukraine to Japan, and from Siberia to India. It is a lovely map, and the tickets are the most spread out and even of all the variants. It features Ferries, and Mountain Passes. The latter require you to discard a train piece every time you build one. Those discarded pieces are worth 2 points each at the end of each turn, and they have the effect on the game of making the many short routes in the higher population areas of the map as being worth a decent amount more than the regular 2 or 4 points they would be in other versions. It is a very fun version and has a great feel to it, but less player interaction (like racing to complete a route) because of how evenly placed the tickets are.
There is a Team Asia version (the map focuses on China) that allows you to play as teams, possibly including a Sixth player. You can also play without teams, but the team rules look interesting. Each player has their own train cards, plus train cards that belong to the team. Team mates are not allowed to share info about what they plan to do, and can't show each other their non team cards. Looks interesting, but we haven't played the team version.
There is an India version that just is a different board, but one that is a lot of fun to play. It gives bonus points for completing tickets using two or more different paths. Very interesting feel, and a bit more competitive than other versions.
There is a Germany version called Märklin. Märklin is a German manufacturer of model trains, and they sponsored this one. Every train card has a picture of a different model train car on it of the right color. The map has Passenger markers on it at the beginning of the game, and a player may choose to collect all the markers on a train route instead of a regular play. Knowing when and if to do that adds another level of decision making to the game. I love this version, but Anita and Heidi have said it is the hardest to play, and quite competitive. I love the cards because I love railroading history, so maybe that clouds my judgement!
There is a Heart of Africa version, that has special cards allowing you to multiply your points for jungle, mountain, or desert train routes. I have not played it, but it looks beautiful (the map and the cards).
These are the official map board variants. Switzerland and India come packaged together. Legendary Asia and Team Asia come packaged together. Africa comes alone in a box. Europe and Märklin and Nordic Countries all come packaged alone, and they each include basic pieces (plastic trains and train cards). The others only have rules and ticket cards, so require a basic set to play.
Other than the variant map boards, there are four other add ons. First, already mentioned, are the Dice, which work with any variant, but building the special 9-car ferry in Nordic Countries would be very hard using the dice system.
Another (Excellent) add on is the 1910 box. It has very nice full sized train and ticket cards for the North America game (I really don't like the little cards, they are fiddly and hard to shuffle). It also includes a number of variant ticket cards hat each give the basic game a very different feel. For a small add on it really improves the game experience (better cards) and gives lots of different game play alternatives.
Europe has a similar boxed add on called 1912. I also adds extra tickets for Europe (the Europe base game comes with larger cards, they learned their lesson after the first set), and another variant. This is the Warehouse, which is a way to collect extra cards that come in handy.
There is also the Alvin and Dexter add on. Alvin the alien and Dexter the dinosaur are plastic pieces that move around and block cities from being developed. Very cute, but it was not a favorite at our house.
Finally there is the Halloween add on. It is a full set of plastic trains in gray, witH plastic pumpkins in them. Very cute, and a nice add on set of pieces, but no real changes to he rules.
There are a lot of songs in the rich repertoire of North American music that concerns Railroads (there are a lot). Not surprisingly, as railroading in many aspects is of great interest to me, this music is also of interest to me.
The history of railroading, with powered locomotives, goes back to the turn of the century, 1800. There about, several inventions came together (flanged rails in the last century, and steam engines most recently) to enable the major developments that lead us to what we view as the classic railroad - a powered locomotive pulling cars full of either passengers or cargo. As a brief note of interest, however, cars on rails goes back to about 1550, when rails were first built in Germany to enable cargo wagons to travel easier.
Railroading in Europe and North America grew and grew in prominence and sophistication all the way up to the point where road traffic started to supplant it economically. Around the period of the 1930s, during the Great Depression, there is a ton of American folklore and history that has to do with railroads - it was a part of almost all aspects of life. PBS did a very nice documentary about young hobos riding trains, called Riding the Rails, with information available here. One of the things they did along with that was a nice article about the history of Railroad based music.
For the music selections in this edition of Theremin Thursdays, however, I am going to concentrate on some later music. First to not cover some territory already done in this area, I can point to a great article posted on the music blog, Hidden Track, called B List: 10 Best Songs about Trains. Amongst other things, it covers two of my favorites - Casey Jones by the Grateful Dead, and Take the A Train by Duke Ellington. As you can see, the coverage of Railroad themed music covers a lot of different genres, even in modern times. The list at Hidden Track covers some of the greatest musicians of the pop music over the last 50 years (Pat Metheny, Gladys Night, Bob Marley, Rolling Stones, etc).
The railroad companies themselves, in the mid 20th century, started putting out videos about their history and service, and some of these (for a gamer) are very interesting to watch. Here are two that I think are pretty neat, although a Youtube search will uncover a lot more. The first is a history of the Chicago and North Western Railroad (C&NW), released in 1948, the 100th anniversary of their existence. There is some (fun) dramatization to watch in this, but also a nice history of the spread west of North American railroads.
The second is a nice article about the impact of railroading on American industry and the economy. If you play economic railroad games, this is a very interesting history worth watching. It is from the New York Central Railroad, one of my personal favorites.
But, now to the music, and then to the games. The first is from Gordon Lightfoot. Gordon Lightfoot's song the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a great song, and will probably be part of a future Theremin Thursdays article. The song being featured here, of course, is the Canadian Railroad Trilogy. What a great song, about the history of the Canadian Pacific Railroad.
Another song from around the same era is Jim Croce's Railroad song. What a great song. There is a version on youtube, below, but it has some special effects added in for the train sounds. Not sure I like those . . .
I could add a link to Lynyrd Skynyrd's Railroad Song, but enough with the mellow stuff. I will end the litany of music about railroad songs with one of the most fun (if ridiculous) songs about trains. The song, of course, is Crazy Train by Ozzy. But, for a video, I'll post a version of the song done by Iron Horse (what a cool Train name...), in a bluegrass mode. At least I didn't post this version.
Okay, so what about gaming and Railroads. First, there is the immensely popular game Ticket to Ride. But is it a train game? There is a whole sub-hobby of railgaming purists out there who would say no (note: I gently disagree, as to me any game with a Train theme is a train game, but there are of course different types, and different levels of difficulty and degrees of simulation involved). A fun game, and an excellent gateway game to the hobby of modern board gaming, but not a train game. Okay, so then, what is a train game? A future article could be dedicated to this very question, but it seems to include some aspect of rail line building; cargo delivery; be based on economics; and sometimes have some aspect of company control, or a stock market. If we use that as the criteria, then our list is a lot shorter.
The main categories seem to be three. First, there is the whole large collection of very nice Crayon based Train games from Mayfair. These are so nicknamed because they involve drawing on the game board, marking up your train segments, as you build them. This could be done with crayons or with erasable markers, on a board specially built to be easily erasable. The first of these was Empire Builder, but there have been lots and lots of successors. You build your train network in the first phase of the game, and then you deliver cargo in the second phase of the game. Nice.
The next category are games where the main action is driven by control of various train companies, through the purchase or selling of stocks. These are chiefly nicknamed "18xx" games because many of them feature a year from the 19th century (1830, 1860, 1853, etc) in the title. One of the main influences in this category is the title 1830: Railways and Robber Barons from Mayfair, which was recently (and beautifully) reprinted. These games have the players building routes, etc, but the main emphasis is on ownership, for determining control and winning the game.
The third main category of train game that railgamers take seriously is the series that is heavily based on Martin Wallace's design in Age of Steam. Successors have been Railways of the World, Railroad Tycoon (taking the name from the enormously successful series of computer based Railroad games), and Steam. I personally have Steam and Railways of the World - both are good games, and all four of these differ in some very important ways. These games have the player controlling one train company throughout the game, but the action of building train lines and then delivering cargo is what the game is all about. All great games, in my opinion. Here is a picture of Steam, one of my favorites.
Okay, so those are the big categories, and I like them all. Of the three my favorite is probably the third (Martin Wallace) category. I love Steam, and I don't think I could play enough of it. There are just so many layers of strategy to be employed, and lots of decisions (both tactical and strategic) - features I really like in games.
There are, however, other games that even serious Railgamers might grudgingly acknowlede as railroad games. Here is a nice list of shorter games. One of the criticisms of the above three categories is that games of those types take a l_o_n_g time to play, typically. Not as long as, say, a 6 player or 8 player version of the Avalon Hill class Civilization, but still, pretty long.
So here is the list, it is called "Train Games in An Hour or Less" with the subtitle, "Where you don't own a Company". Well, I don't know if Chicago Express breaks that rule, but it is still a very good list.
A few of my favorites that are not in the categories above are First Train to Nuremberg (which was, btw, Dec 7, 1835); Chicago Express (which features really cool dials on the board, but is also a great game); and Steel Driver (which involves stock shares, and line building, but is otherwise pretty benign). One of the cool things to note about those three titles is that they all started life in different forms.
First Train to Nuremberg - has long deep roots to Last Train to Wensleydale (the new version includes the old version).
First Train to Nuremberg
Last Train to Wensleydale
Chicago Express - Was originally Wabash Cannonball from the train game specialty publisher, Winsome Games.
Chicago Express
Wabash Cannonball
The third of this trifecta of Games Chuck Likes is:
Steel Driver - Which is very strongly based on Prairie Railroads
Steel Driver (note: Rubik's Cubes not included)
Prairie Railroads (updated Cube version)
I think that in all three cases, the newer versions (First Train to Nuremberg, Chicago Express, and Steel Driver) are all very attractive games, with first rate components, but if it wasn't for the design pioneering with the originals, we might not have gotten there.
Much the same with today's high speed rails, and the debt they owe to the pioneer in self powered railroads.
Williamsburg Muster (our next convention will be Guns of August, Aug 12-14) was last weekend, in Williamsburg, Virginia. It was an excellent time! We had over 200 gamers come to the convention, in addition to the 70 staff and vendor bodies that were there (but hey - we all get to play at the Muster)!
One of the things I got to do (more later some of the other stuff I was part of) was play a great game of Steam on Friday night with some old friends and some new friends. Steam is a relatively new re-implementation of Age of Steam, from the genius of Martin Wallace. Great game, with turns (in the basic game) consisting of (1) choosing roles (which grant special privileges through the turn; (2) building tracks and city improvements; (3) moving cargoes; and (4) adjusting income. In the advance game, rather than choose roles, they are auctioned off. It adds a good deal more strategy, but with the addition of an auction and also a money sink.
Around the table were Jeremy C (Black), Bob W (Natural), Byron C (White), Jake DT (Green) and myself (Orange). We played (since I only had the base set, and we had 5 players) the Germany map.
{Not actually our game}
The game was great. The thing I love about Steam (other than role selection, building, and TRAINS!!!) is that there are several paths to victory. We played the basic version, which allows for money borrowing at any time, and also allows for role selection in order (vs. bidding for it each turn, which makes the game economy harder by creating a resource sink, but I digress into game theory).
{Actually our game}
Anyway, at the end of the game, the four of us other than Jake were pretty closely grouped together. Jake, on the other hand, had over 10 points more than any of us. Fun, but disgruntling. I definitely want to play more!
When I got Steam, I was definitely interested in a tile based train game. The other options open to me would be to find a used copy of Railroad Tycoon, a copy of Age of Steam, Railways of the World or some other tile based railroad game (less popular than those). Age of Steam has a zillion supplements available for it, many of which seem to be compatible with Steam. But between those two Steam wins, because it is (1) more casual gamer friendly, and (2) has more attractive components. Railroad Tycoon is based on one of my favorite computer game franchises, is ALSO a Martin Wallace design (albeit with development by Glenn Drover of Eagle Games), and has AWESOME plastic bits for the towns. However . . . the board is HUGE (3 feet by almost 4 feet), and won't fit on most tables. It has been replaced by Railways of the World - which was the serious contender against Steam. In the end, I think I chose Steam because of all the Age of Steam variants that could be accessed. However, there are already several nice new boards, etc out for Railways of the world. From talking with some TAGS guys (Jake, who played, and David) it appears as if there are enough differences to possibly warrant also getting Railways of the World, one day when I'm rich and famous.
