Railroad Tycoon

Revisit the early days of the Age of Steam as you begin with a locomotive (the venerable John Bull, the first locomotive to run in North America) and a vision (your Tycoon "mission" card). From there, build your budding railroad network into a vast empire. Connect New York to Chicago, earn the most money, develop bigger and faster locomotives and maybe even span North America and build the Transcontinental Railway!

This game is preceded by the designer's other Winsome train games: Age of Steam, Australian Railways, Veld Railroads, Volldampf, Pampas Railroads, New England Railways, Prairie Railroads, Veld Spoorweg, Lancashire Railways, and Ferrocarriles Pampas.

Note: The board itself is gigantic (about 36x45 inches, 91x114 cm) and requires a huge table or playing on the floor.

In June 2007, it was announced that an official expansion: Rails of Europe, will be released by FRED Distribution in late 2007. The expansion will be designed by one of the co-designers of Railroad Tycoon Glenn Drover. It will not, however, use the Railroad Tycoon license from Sid Meier's computer games and it is reported that the original game's name will not appear anywhere in the game.

Re-implements:

Age of Steam

Re-implemented by:

Railways of the World

Similar to:

Steam

BoardGameGeek Info

Publisher: Eagle Games,Edge Entertainment,Winsome Games
Published in: 2005
My Rating: 10.0
BGG Rating: 7.33
BGG Rank: 207
Players: 2-6
Ages: 10+
Duration: 2:00
Complexity: 3.0145 / 5

Eager to Play: No
Plays: 12
Last Played: August 04, 2018
Time Spent: 21:16

This is a game where carefully building a network of railroad links between cities is paramount. The object of the game is to move goods from one city to a target city (based on the color of the city/good). Players do this by linking the cities together with railroad tracks. Players only get 3 actions each turn, thus giving the player some tension in deciding the optimal play for the turn. For each link traversed in the delivery of a good the player whose link was used gains a point on the income track. After everyone has taken their three actions there is an income phase. Players have to issue bonds when they need money, and they pay back each bond each turn, so gaining independent income is rather important. Players do not start the game with money, so debt is inevitable, but controlling how much debt one incurs is part of the game.

The game has a good depth of strategy, and no two sessions will play out the same since the goods are randomized each game. There is a good balance between upgrading engines, building tracks, and delivering goods, combined with the income track which increases in value until the midpoint, and then decreases. The income track doubles as the victory point board, so one does want to increase to win the game, but increasing too fast too soon will deprive you of money.

The game is not too deep as to prevent people from playing it, yet it is by no means light. A good strategy will be clearly rewarded. The game is somewhat unforgiving for bad play, but there is room and time to recover and put up a good fight.

Railroad Tycoon

12 plays