Trains

With a bright Peep from the whistle, a full Chuff from the pistons and a powerful Clank from the drivers, America's first steam locomotive moves down the steel rails of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in Baltimore in 1830. This strategic railroad game extends from the first of America's railroads through the golden age of steam, where pioneering rail barons knit together the fledgling United States with iron roads, realizing the full power of the nation's mighty heartland. Each player takes the roles of railroad presidents and their wealthy investors, betting that their capital gambles will pay off handsomely. Baltimore and Ohio is not a game of luck or chance, but a competitive struggle of wits, savvy and guile. With the resources at hand, should you focus on further expansion, technological breakthroughs or emerging markets? This modern classic has all the challenges faced by the empire building capitalists that created a superpower.

Eddie Robbins' Baltimore & Ohio is a no luck, no auctions, 3+ hour, grand strategic economic slugfest of a train game, for 3-6 players. It was part of the Winsome Games' 2009 Essen Set, has been licensed to Eagle Games and will be released by Eagle in 2010.

The railroads in the game are:
Baltimore & Ohio
Boston & Maine
Chesapeake & Ohio
Erie
Illinois Central
New York Central
New York, Chicago & Saint Louis (aka Nickel Plate)
New York, New Haven & Hartford
Pennsylvania
Wabash

Railroad Barons belongs to the family of 18xx games, but raised to the meta-level. Individual companies are no longer the focus, but large holding companies which add more and more new railways to their portfolios. At this abstract level there is no need for the game board and route tiles used in traditional 18xx games.

The two players buy and sell stock in holding companies, and the holding companies they control buy railways to generate revenue. Corner the market in the best companies, and exploit the weaker companies, to edge out your opponent and gain any possible relative advantage.

Like other 18xx games, there are no random elements, merely a battle of wits between two ambitious financiers. Assets that are profitable in the early game rapidly become obsolete, so you must always plan ahead for future growth and investment. Growth or Bust!

This game is purely about the money, as there is no map or track tiles!

Cards and tokens are used to represent:

5 Holdings (with a Director's share of 40% plus one share each of 30%, 20%, and 10%)
Railroad companies (with a fixed income) which become obsolete as more modern Railroads come into play.
5 private Investor cards (similar to the 18xx Private companies)

A re-issue of David V. H. Peters' SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français). Originally released by Winsome Games as part of its 2010 Essen Set, SNCF was subsequently licensed by Queen Games and rereleased as Paris Connection in 2011. This is a fast economic game with a train theme, with the objective of having the most valuable stock portfolio at the end of the game. Players can own and trade stocks as well as influence the value of each company.

There are 6 colors of wooden locomotives, each color representing a company. Players are dealt random hands of 5-10 (depending on number of players) locomotives, which are essentially a stock portfolio; the rest of each color are placed in a pool. On your turn, you can either increase the value of a single company by placing 1-5 locomotives from the remaining pool of that company, or you can trade one locomotive in your portfolio for one or two locomotives from the remaining pool in a company.

The game board is a map of France, with cities worth anywhere from 1-4 points, and rural hexes worth 0. Connecting to a city adds to a company's value.

The game ends when Marseille is reached by a company, or when there is only one company with locomotives remaining in the pool. Players' scores are determined by the value of each company at the end multiplied by the number of locomotives the player has for each color.

SNCF expansions may be used with this game.

Railways of the World The Card Game is a fast paced card game adaptation of the popular Railways of the World board game series. In Railways of the World The Card Game players use track cards and city cards to build a series of railroad routes and deliver goods!

As the game progresses, players work to connect more cities, upgrade their engines for larger carrying capacity and deliver goods through a network of routes across the table.

Railways of the World The Card Game provides two versions of rules: one the whole family can play, which is also a great way to introduce them to Railways of the World, and one for more experienced fans of the Railways of the World series.

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.