Railroad Rivals

Today's review is of the 2018 release, Railroad Rivals. For 1-5 players, it takes 30-60 minutes.

Overview

In the golden age of railroads, twelve main companies spread their networks across America. Railroad Rivals is a tile-drafting and tile-laying game where you work to expand your city connections while investing wisely in company stocks. Order matters- at the start of each round, you will have a chance to bid to be first player. But bid too much and you may find yourself behind the competition. Do you have what it takes to succeed?

game in progress; image from here

For the sake of example, let's say you are playing a four-player game. Each player is dealt three city tiles. Each city has a railroad company named on each side and a load value (the number of load randomly drawn from a bag and placed on the city when that tile is laid). Four more city tiles and four stock tiles are laid out in public view. 

Select Tiles

In player order, select a city OR stock tile. Once all four players have chosen, then you select again, choosing the opposite category of what you selected the first time (so select a stock OR city tile).

Place City Tiles

In player order, place a city tile onto the common map. It must be placed adjacent to an existing tile, and the touching sides must have matching railroad companies. Lay your train across these tiles to indicate that you own the route. Randomly draw the number of load cubes listed on the city tile and place it there.

Deliver Goods

In player order, deliver one load between connecting cities and remove it from the game. Whoever owns the connection you deliver the load through gets 3 points (if the load cube's color is the first to be delivered this round), or 2 (if the color was delivered for the second time) or 1 (if three or more times). Then advance the stock of that railroad company by one on the scoring board.

To set up for the next round, lay out four more city tiles and four more stock tiles. Then players bid for the right to go first using the points they have accumulated. The winner pays the points and shifts their position to first (pushing the others down one but maintaining their order). The next round begins. Play continues until all cities are gone. Then stock values are added to the final score (if I have 3 stocks in the PRR and it is worth 5, I get 15 more points). Highest score wins!

Review

This is a neat little game. It is simple enough to understand but has enough choices to make it hard to master. Sometimes you are stuck without being able to place a city (if your city sides don't match any exposed on the common map), and when that happens you cannot place a train or deliver goods, leaving you at a marked disadvantage. That knocks it down a peg in my book, but it is a solid choice overall and is a nice dose of nostalgia for train enthusiasts to boot.

Rating: B+