This game was originally designed by a teacher to be used as a learning tool. There are several different editions of this game (originally released in the UK as Railway Rivals), but most feature several different hexagonal maps of real locations, such as Tennessee and Germany. Starting from one of the cities pictured on the map, players build track during the first part of the game. Players receive a small bonus for reaching a city before anyone else, but otherwise funds are quite limited. After nearly every city has been connected to someone's rail line, several races are held on the resultant track. The starting city and destination city are determined randomly, and players can use each other's track (for a nominal fee, of course). After all races have been held, the player with largest bank account is the winner.
This series of games is very similar to Mayfair Game's crayon rail games series, though they use erasable marker pens instead of crayons.
- Railway economics and race-like play
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- It's now at this point the most prestigious board games award in the world.
- There is no public influence and there is no industry influence either because they just journalists they don't take review copies they don't take payment.
- You can only have the award logo on your box for three years.
- The rules have to be clear, they have to be concise, there can't be any weird ambiguities.
- It's independent as it can be, that's really cool.