Transportation

Take your Age of Steam experience to the next dimension! Age of Steam: Time Traveler Expansion comes with several new maps that represent not only different locations, but also different times as well, and adds an exciting twist as players travel from one map to another using time portals. Rather than the usual board with one single large map, the game features multiple considerably smaller maps, each representing a different era of time, and together make up the game board. In addition to building routes within a particular smaller map, players will be able to `travel' from one map in time to another map.

Game-play and theme is similar to that of Railways Through Time, the forthcoming expansion for Railways of the World.

Players place track and cities, create routes, and deliver goods. Bonuses are awarded to players who deliver multiple types of goods. This game requires careful management of steam to move your train as well as hand management to thwart other players as well as enable your own route.

500 copies manufactured for Essen 2008.

Days of Steam is #5 in the Valley Games Modern Line

Description from the designer:

Crazy Diamond & Karatino are two games on a unique double-sided playing board. In Crazy Diamond, the players try to smuggle as many diamonds as possible across the board. But the trip is risky! The players travel along the various routes using planes, jeeps and speedboats. They can bribe the local police in order to get control of important ports and airports. The first player who owns 25 diamonds wins the game.

In Karantino, each player is faced with the challenge of processing the rough diamonds and selling them at the right moment. However, there is a limited amount of storage space and there are other players on the market, looking to get the better of you! The combination of luck, strategy and interaction makes Karantino a unique and very addictive game.

Martin Wallace's streamlined redesign of Brass.

Players are tycoons in the early days of the Industrial Revolution; a time when traditional craftsman were being rapidly replaced with steam-powered machines. Players invest in the production of raw materials, the manufacture of goods, and the transportation networks needed to connect them to their markets.

Like Brass, the strategic space is vast, and player decisions are limited by cards. In Age of Industry, however, cards are color-coded to regions rather than specific cities, allowing the players to be more flexible with their plans, while at the same time continuing to limit the decisions available. The color-coded region cards will also support expansion maps.

In addition, the original Brass rules were simplified by eliminating the canal period; there is only one period, the railway era. There is also a new, non-specific industry, which will change with each map.

According to Wallace, "You can now play something with the depth of Brass, but in half the time. The game will have a double-sided map, with Germany on one side and southern New England on the other."

In The Great Heartland Hauling Co. (originally announced as Over the Road), players take on the role of medium haul Midwest truck drivers doing their best to make a living by hauling goods for big suppliers. Players truck to various locations around America's Heartland, picking up and dropping off goods using matching cards from their hands. Most locations have native goods that require fewer cards to load; other locations may pay a premium for those goods but may also require more fuel – and time – to get there with the cargo. With limited space in each trailer and only five cards in hand at a time, players will have to expertly manage their resources, as well as play the odds and press their luck to be the best trucker on the road.

The Great Heartland Hauling Co. offers a lot of replay value through the use of cards to create a variable board set-up each game. The game includes 60 goods cubes, four thick cardboard trucks, and 46 resource cards – required for pick-up and delivery – that are drawn from a shared draft board, as well as 20 fuel cards, which are used to move about the Heartland.