Rails of Europe – 1st Play

Game Night: Rails of Europe
Mar 12th, 2008
Host: JeffL
Guests: DanD, DaveF, BobN, JimG

BobN(67), Jim (50), JeffL(49), DanD(42), DaveF(11)

First time play of the Railroad Tycoon expansion for everyone but Bob and boy, did he school us! Very quickly, he hooks up Amsterdam to Marseilles for a major line as well as a couple of other bonuses to jump ahead into the mid to high teens while the rest of us are puttering along at about 6 points apiece. The game tightened up in the middle as we pushed hard to close the gap with Bob. However, his 10 to 15 point lead gave him the breathing room needed to develop the infrastructure he needed to continue delivering goods through the end of the game. Poor Dave was caught in a debt spiral early in the game. He made it up to 32 on the points but had 26 shares to subtract from his score and was able to complete his baron objective.

Bonus points

• Bob – Amsterdam to Marseilles and Madrid to Milan major lines, Marseilles and Naples service bounties, Passenger Lines, Paris Capital Charter, King Alfonso baron
• Jim – Berlin to Rome major line, Lisbon service bounty, Railroad Era Begins, Speed Record, Milan Hotel
• Jeff – Paris to Constantinople major line, Constantinople service bounty, Berlin Capital Charter
• Dan – Moscow service bounty, Largest engine baron
• Dave – Moscow to Vienna major line, Most cities connected baron

My impression after 1 play…I liked it a lot. The board is tighter and the interaction between players in terms of competing for city connections happens much earlier and to a far greater degree than in RRT. Paying attention to the Major Lines and Service Bounties is a must. If one player picks up very many points off these early in the game, it’s over (as was the case in this one). I still don’t care for the turn order bidding. There’s no cost to the player on the left of the start player. Still, a significant improvement in the RRT series — something in between RRT and Age of Steam.