Steam-belching iron horses roar across the wild plains! Age of Steam relives the era when pioneering US railroads built the tracks that transformed America's economy. The cut-throat action is centered on the industrial powerhouses of the growing nation: Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and beyond.
Challenges that await you:
Can you finance both the most extensive track network and the most powerful locomotives?
Which routes will give the best returns on their costs?
Can you beat the opposition to the most lucrative shipments?
Will you make enough money to pay your aggressive creditors?
Competition is brutal, with the game usually going to the player who plans most carefully.
Each self-contained phase in the game keeps players constantly involved in making vital decisions and interacting with other players. Age of Steam also allows towns to be developed into cities, ensuring that no two games are exactly the same.
Age of Steam FAQ - Please read this before posting a rules question! Many questions are asked over and over in the forums.
Age of Steam is based on the popular Early Railways Series, created by Martin Wallace and developed by John Bohrer. The major change to that system is the addition of track tiles allowing you to build your own routes.
A discussion of this variant can be found here:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/639847
This is a way to play with 2 players on the Rust Belt map. These rules can also be used (and have been, successfully) to improve many of the fan-based 2-player maps that do not have modified auctions / role selections (e.g.[thing=36377]Scotland[/thing], [thing=38745]Umbria[/thing], [thing=38746]Alpha Centauri[/thing], [thread=394292]Ohio[/thread])
This is nothing more than a conversion of Anthony Simons' (fellonmyhead) Northern England map, collected into a PDF for easy printing on 8.5 x 11-inch paper for us Yanks who are getting tired of our tiles getting squoze together during play. Print out with page scaling off, and the hexes should be the perfect size for your Age of Steam tiles.
This is a QR that I made up specifically for the third edition of the game.
Note: Included on the chart is the ability to sell shares at any time but at reduced value. The places this appears are marked with RR. Feel free to delete this if you don't want it. It's on there since this is the way I will play, at least initially.
This is a PDF of the "10 $10 bills" text (to replace "10 $25 bills on page 2) and the missing sentence from page 4 of the FRED edition rule book. By printing it on label stock and cutting the two parts out, it is set up to fit nicely in the rule book.
The paragraph with the missing sentence fits over the existing sentence in the rules "Any other players pay half the amount they had bid, rounding up." It's not positioned on the page for any particular label size (I use full sheets).