TransAmerica is an extremely simple railway connection game. Each player seeks to build a railway network across the country.

Mechanics & Game Play:
At the beginning of the game is player is given five destinations, one from each of the five decks or zones; North, East, South, West and Central. Seven cities are in each of the zones.

After receiving the destinations and determining who will start the players each will put down a line marker in their colour. This marker can be placed on any grid intersection.

Each player from then on has the chance to place up to two pieces of track. Each piece of track placed must connect back to their line marker. All track sections are identical and can be used by all players. Certain places requires a player to use both of their track placements to build that section, there include bridges over rivers and mountain crossings. Each piece of track will be placed along the edge of a triangular grid that overlays the board.

Play continues until one player declares that they have connected to all of their destination cities and then the round is over. Each player loses a number of points equal to the number of build actions required to connect to their remaining cities.

The game ends when one or more players has no points remaining.

Strategy:
TransAmerica is a simple game that rewards straight forward play. Achieving your goal with the fewest actions is paramount. Being able to connect into opponents sections of track to expand your network is needed to finish quickly, so attempting to ensure that your track benefits your opponents as little as possible is also a very good idea. Connecting cities that you don't have as destinations is a definite no-no.

Components:
The components of the game are nothing special. There are lots of black wooden track pieces and a few simple tokens. However, the components do what they need to do, so everything is adequate at the least.

Number Of Players:
The game caters for between two and six players. I think that five is more-or-less the optimal number.

Box To Box Time:
TransAmerica should be finished within thirty minutes the vast majority of the time, though I have known games to go for much longer. Set up and pack up should not take more than five minutes each making TransAmerica a very quick filler.

Overall:
TransAmerica is most often going to be fairly middle ground; very few people will either love it or hate it. Its main advantage as a game is that it is very quick, allowing it to be played as a short break between big games. It's greatest downfall is that luck plays a huge factor over the course of the game. If your destination draw is much better than your opponents then you should win the round easily. Very lucky players will simply slaughter all opponents.

Overall I like TransAmerica as a quick filler. It is certainly not something that I'll ask to play, but if someone declares they've only got a short while left I will probably suggest it. It can also be a nice warm-up for an evening of gaming because of its simplicity.