Game: Prairie Railroads

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CortexBomb — 2007-06-19T16:37:13+00:00

Cover of the plastic box edition

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Mijjy — 2006-05-07T00:55:23+00:00

Like kids with crayons....

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buergerberatung — 2005-05-26T11:58:11+00:00

Thread: Replacement shares and cards.

theaney — 2004-11-09T23:07:14+00:00

I've uploaded two new PDF files to increase your enjoyment of Martin Wallace’s “Prairie Railroads: Kansas” game while you are waiting for the “Struggle of Empires” or the new “Age of Steam” maps to make through the mails.

The new share cards liven things up a bit with the semi-historically correct railroad logos of their respective railroads. The cards replace the cardboard chits included in the original game. They sport a new picture as well as the instructions for each action. (Boy, I hope I got all those correct.) This might make it easier to teach new players the various actions, or it might just confuse them. Hopefully more the former than the latter.

Errata:

Katy railroad shares should be printed on YELLOW, not gray paper. Sorry.

Thread: Session Report

dougadamsau — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Doug writes:

Craig, Roger, Doug

Time to chew some 'baccy, and head out to exotic places like "Great Bend" and "Abilene", with this interesting Winsome railroading game that Roger and Craig both played last week. Roger gave it high marks, and having enjoyed Lancashire Railroads recently, I was keen to give it a try.

This game has some nice, clean mechanics. Action chits drive the game - on your turn you can play an action chit from your pool, or draw one from the cup and playing the drawn action.

Actions come in three flavours:

Offer Stock: a share stock is auctioned off. There are six companies, five shares per company. In order to make money you need shares in companies, then get those companies building crayon track across the laminated board. A very nice mechanic makes the money paid for the stock go into that company's coffers. It is these funds that the company must use to build track, so while you may get a bargin share for $1, that's not much use as it costs $5 to build a track segment. Very clever, and it certainly adds a twist to the old bidding mechanic.

Construct Track: a company's coffers are plundered for funds to build track. More track segments built, the more the payout per share when the next action is played.

Pay Dividend: each company pays the dividend bonuses to all shareholders. The total dividend is based on the value of towns connected by track, with bonus $1 for towns that experience "growth". This total is divided by 5 (shares per company) then each shareholder receives this amount per share. A bit mathematical, but by keeping records as you go, it is pretty painless. As there are only 8 Pay Dividend chits in the game (well, 3 player game), it is a reasonably rare occurance compared to the other two actions.
The game ends when the 8th Pay Dividend is played, with a slightly different tweak on the final payouts.

Roger and Craig played this game well, while Doug lagged badly. Having played before the tactics, bid amounts, etc where a lot more evident, and it was only by about the half way point that Doug began to see what he should have been doing from the beginning. However at this stage Craig had deadlocked him on his red and green shares, and had a stack of other shares to boot. This meant that Doug was always going to lag behind Craig whenever a Dividend turn came around.

Roger meanwhile had cornered the black railroad and had skilfully filled the coffers up to ensure it could traverse the board and exit the map into the special bonus box. This gives a nice bonus payout at the end of the game.

With Craig owning stock in every company and blissfully building track, Doug began a futile "Offer Stock" strategy to try and get Craig and Roger spending their money against each other. That really didn't work, so once the two Pay Dividend chips had come out of the cup, and Craig had played his two, Doug saw no point in letting this go on. Doug played his two Pay Dividend chips, and Roger played his remaining chip, and the game was over. Craig in a canter....

Craig: $467
Roger: $370
Doug: $289

Despite the drubbing, I can see an excellent game here. Very clean, turns are lightning fast, and with four or five players I anticipate it would play very well. I give it an 8.

Thread: Session Report

dougadamsau — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Roger Smith writes:

Janet: 527
Craig: 526
Roger: 457

I've been dragging this along to Billabong for months now in the hope of gettting a game. We looked set to go with 5 players when Bernie arrived. The lure of Siedler von Nürnburg was just too much for some, so we split into two groups. Let me start by saying I think this is a great game: much better than Lancashire Rails (which I do enjoy). PR has very much the look and feel of a German game: some very tricky decision making. The mental arithmetic you need to go through when deciding how much to bid for a share is very reminiscent of Medici. On the negative side, it does require lots of paperwork, and the aforementioned mental arithmetic might be a turn off for some people.

As none of us had played before, we had absolutely NO idea what to do at the beginning: particularly how much to bid and how many shares we should attempt to get hold of. It took us quite a few turns to work out even the most basic strategy. I kept having "NOW I think I get it" flashes of inspiration throughout the game. We played one rule right...then wrong...then right again. This may have thrown the balance of the game out somewhat. I concentrated on a couple of lines, Janet had the majority of shares in the only line that made it through to the west (I just couldn't make that last link) and Craig diversified and accumulated large quantities of cash. Worked well with three players, but I'd like to try with more.

Roger's rating: 8

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2000-02-18T06:15:18+00:00