Ambition and a thirst for wealth have driven humanity to strive for ever greater progress. In America, during the 19th century, battles were waged between huge railway corporations that sought to connect state to state and coast with coast… making themselves filthy rich in the process. Railroad Revolution drops you straight into the middle of these tempestuous years; a time that changed America forever.
In Railroad Revolution, you will manage your own railroad company, ruthlessly competing to be the most powerful railroad tycoon across all America. You will build railroads, establish stations in your connected cities, expand the network of telegraph lines, and chase your objectives, increasing the value of your company with every action you take.
You start with mainly a team of non-specialized workers, but during the game you can hire additional ones with specific skill sets. The cost or effect of an action is determined by the type of worker that does it. To complete your company objectives, you will have to remove some of your workers from your active pool, promoting them to managerial positions. You must carefully assign each of your workers to perform the right action at the right time in order to exploit their specializations in the best way. You need to decide which ones to promote and which are instead still needed to take actions, as your priorities will change from turn to turn.
Railroad Revolution is a fast paced game with relatively simple rules, and it provides you with interesting and challenging decisions. Having a good strategy and finding the correct timing to implement it, is the key to winning the game.
- engaging action selection with a wide variety of options
- strong thematic feel of building rail networks across the US
- lots of room for strategic planning and planning ahead
- criticisms about balance and potential over-saturation of certain strategies
- some players found long decisions or late-game fatigue depending on player count
- Nippon
- Signorier
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action-selection with worker pawns — on each turn, players place a worker on one of four action spots and resolve that action.
- color-coded workers with special bonuses — colored workers (gray, purple, orange, blue) grant discounts or bonuses at certain spots.
- endgame track/stock market-like scoring for telegraph outputs — telegraph-related bonuses and shared scoring tracks influence late-game scoring.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Lizboa definitely my number one of the convention.
- Holy bleep, that is amazing.
- I love the idea of building those tableau in front of you.
References (from this video)
- engine-like decisions with multiple paths to revenue and growth
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Railroad Evolution is super cool and I want to play that one more
- there were many things I liked about the game and there were several things that I really didn't like about the game
- I just think brass is a better game
- the scoring for the way you put your stuff out seemed pretty illogical to me
- I really enjoyed this game
- it's like being a kid in a candy store
References (from this video)
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I have a really big problem with the status quo.
- I'm desperately looking for more colonialism themed games at least from the Western colonial eyes.
- Don't ruin the magic if you prefer not to but do you preset the first few turns of a playthrough so that you could better show the rules or is it all standard setup and you show the rules as they come?
- I pre stack cards like in terraforming Mars I made sure that there were cards in people's hands so that a greenery tile would go down a Sydney tile would go down an ocean would go down that every single little button could be pressed in that first generation.
References (from this video)
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I have a really big problem with the status quo.
- I'm desperately looking for more colonialism themed games at least from the Western colonial eyes.
- Don't ruin the magic if you prefer not to but do you preset the first few turns of a playthrough so that you could better show the rules or is it all standard setup and you show the rules as they come?
- I pre stack cards like in terraforming Mars I made sure that there were cards in people's hands so that a greenery tile would go down a Sydney tile would go down an ocean would go down that every single little button could be pressed in that first generation.
References (from this video)
- expansion fixes a prior flaw and enhances the depth
- open, joyful feel with big space to do cool stuff
- great balance between take-that and strategic planning
- entry barrier due to needing base game and expansion
- resource management with expansive action options
- railroad expansion era / industrial infrastructure
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- end-game scoring conditions via expansion rules — customizable scoring conditions that evolve during play
- resource heavy engine-building — gather and spend resources to fuel a growing engine with multiple pathways
- token bidding — players bid with tokens on cards; highest bid takes the card; bottom/top effects provide ongoing value
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I think that the Anno system is brilliant
- the systems are just so simple there's not that many rules it's very elegant
- I can teach in like 15 minutes
- the fun value has been so high
- I have loved playing Beyond the Sun this year
- the technologies themselves really do shift the pattern of the game
- these technologies fit in with various other technologies and make one game so different from the other
- I will never be playing this game without the snake board again
- it's an amazing package, it's gorgeous
- the snake board is a much more balanced and far more fascinating experience
- this is a heavy gaming experience it's not crazy heavy but it leans on the heavy gaming experience
- this expansion has you throwing away the old board and adding a bunch of new mechanics and tokens
- I think the game is great overall
- it's a joy of a game to play
- the highs have been the highest out of any game that I've played this year