Transportation

In Thurn & Taxis, players build post office routes across Bavaria and the regions around, collecting bonus points in various ways. The board shows a map of all the cities, with roads leading from each one to some of its neighbors. There are various colored regions around the board, most with two or three cities, and a large region with all the Bavarian cities in the center.

Players build postal routes from city to city to city so that each city is adjacent to the next city on the route and there is a road connecting these two cities. Each route must consist of at least three cities. Players may only build one route at a time. Routes are represented by melded city cards arranged in the order of the route.

Players start with a supply of 20 post offices in their color, a carriage house card and a player aid card. The board is populated with bonus tiles, carriage cards and city cards. On a turn a player will draw a card from a display of six, face up, city cards (or the top of the face down deck) and meld one card, either starting a new route or adding to the current one. If after adding to the route, the length of the route is at least three cities, the player may declare it finished and score it. The player may, depending on the length of the route and which cities are in the route, place post offices in the cities, collect bonus tiles, and acquire a higher value carriage. Optionally, the player may receive support from one postal official in the form of: drawing a second card, melding a second card, refreshing the six city card display, or acquiring a higher value carriage than the route length when finishing a route. Once a route is scored the city cards of that route are discarded, and the player begins a new route on his next turn.

When a player exhausts his supply of post offices or acquires a value 7 carriage the end of the game is triggered. Play continues until the player who is last in turn order finishes his turn, and the game ends. Players score points for their highest valued carriage and bonus tiles, and lose points for unplaced post offices. The player with the most points wins.

The fact that you *must* add at least one city to your route each turn or lose the whole route gives the game an enjoyable planning element.

The goal of the game is to build the most successful Underground lines and in doing so gain the most points. You can gain points by connecting your lines to various destinations on the board, and by having the passenger use your lines to travel from station to station.

The player who has best balanced the demands by the time that the deck of destinations is exhausted will be declared the winner.

From the entry for Rail Baron:

BOXCARS is the predecessor of Rail Baron.

In the late 1960s or early 1970s, previously unknown designers R.S. Erickson and T.F. Erickson, Jr. began
boardgame development. In an era when both the railroad and board gaming industry was in flux, the Ericksons managed to combine elements from the two to create a game that has withstood the test of time. In fact, it provided solid footing for the whole "train gaming" genre.

The Ericksons decided to publish the game on their own, and released it as "BOXCARS" in 1974. It was billed as "The Informative NEW travel game of OLD-time railroading." For a first-time effort, the components of the resulting boardgame were surprisingly refined and professional.

The single-piece board unfolded to reveal a map of the United States on which routes of 28 historic railroads were traced. The rules of BOXCARS vary from those of Rail Baron in several ways. For example, BOXCARS has no restriction in the re-use of routes: this allows players to circle along the same track as long as desired. BOXCARS also allows a player to trade, sell or auction a RR at any time during the game. Furthermore, BOXCARS lacks the Express and Superchief locomotive upgrades that Rail Baron contains.

Before long, the Ericksons' game caught the attention of The Avalon Hill Game Company (AH). The original designers apparently sold the BOXCARS rights to AH and were obligated to quickly disperse the remaining copies of their game. It is estimated that there were only 1000 copies of BOXCARS ever printed.

AH scaled down the game's physical size to match the "bookshelf" style of many of its other titles, modified the rules, and released it as Rail Baron in 1977.

(Description adapted with permission from "An Illustrated History of Rail Baron")

On the cusp of the twentieth century, America is the undisputed land of industry. Factories fire their machines twenty-four hours a day, and demand is skyrocketing in the cities. A small but fierce rivalry of shipping barons must manage their amazing airships and the extensive railroad system in order to get goods to the cities before the demand is met by someone else. Anyone who can't stay competitive will be left with nothing but dust in their coffers!

The process is simple: Factories produce the goods (machinery, textiles, chemicals, food, and luxuries) that are coveted by the city folk. Airships – forbidden from landing in the cities but capable of carrying cargo over great distances – must be used to gather those goods and deliver them to depots along the rail network. Trains then haul the goods to the cities that want them, earning cash for the competitor who gets there first! Will you be the "King of Air and Steam?"

Kings of Air and Steam spans five rounds, and at the beginning of each round, players plan their Airship flights using four of their movement cards. When everyone is ready, everyone reveals their first planned card. According to the turn order and movement limits of their cards, players move their Airships, then take an Action; Actions include Building Depots, Upgrading your Airship or Train, Shipping Goods by rail, and Soliciting Funds from the bank. When all players have acted, the second planned cards are revealed, and so on through the four planned cards until all players have finished carrying out their plans for the round. All the while, players must keep aware of the rising values of the different types of Goods and try to get the most-valuable Goods from the specialized factories that produce them to the cities that want them. At the end of the game, the player with the most money and the greatest shipping network will be declared King of Air and Steam!

Kings of Air and Steam includes seven teams of characters, each with unique powers to give them a competitive edge, and a modular game board that makes each game a different experience.

In Brass the players represent industrialists in northern England during the hay-day of the industrial revolution. Each player needs to build an economic engine that surpasses the other by the time railways are established and the foreign markets have been saturated with English cotton.

The goal of the game is to have the most points at the end of the game. These are obtained in three ways:
1) Building industries and having them successfully utilized
2) Building canal or rail connections to cities that have many successfully utilized industries
3) money at the end of the game (very inefficient).

Game play is divided into two phases - the Canal Phase and the Rail Phase. At the beginning of each phase players are dealt a hand of cards that represent a mix of the cities and the available industries.

On his turn, a player has two actions (except first turn of the game where there is only one action) and must spend a card for each one. Available actions include:
1) building an industry
2) building a connection [either canals or rails based on phase of the game]
3) develop their own industries which removes lower victory point industries from a player's board in favor of higher victory point ones
4) sell cotton
5) take a loan (absolutely necessary a few times a game.

At the end of a player's turn they replace the two cards they played with two more from the deck. Turn order is determined by how much money a player spent on the previous turn - from lowest spent first to highest spent. This turn order mechanic opens some strategic options for players going later in the turn order allowing possibility of back-to-back turns.

After all the cards have been played the first time (deck size adjusted for number of players) the Canal phase ends and a scoring round commences. After scoring, all canals and all of the lowest level industries are removed for the game, new cards are dealt and the Rail Phase begins. Rail phase is identical to Canal Phase except players may now occupy more than one location in a city and a double connection build (though expensive) is possible. At the end of the Rail Phase there is another scoring round and a winner is crowned.

The use of the cards limit where you can build your industries but any card can be used for the develop, sell cotton or building connections actions. This leads to a strategic timing/storing of cards. Resources are common so that if one player builds a rail line (which requires coal) they have to use the coal from the nearest source which may be an opponent's coal mine which gets that coal mine closer to scoring (i.e. being utilized).

[Side Note]
Brass provides a game of timing and positioning yourself to have your opponents propel you victory. The rule book is notorious for being difficult to understand (though has been significantly fixed in the most recent edition). After a few turns the game reveals itself to being far more simple than the rules suggest. A teacher or viewing a how to play video is definitely worth the time.