Joel Burton
United States
San Francisco
California
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I've played Steam several times with the regular rules, and recently aquired Steam Barons.
The expansion offers four main features:
Wooden Trains
These replace the discs in the main set for use in marking tracks on the board. They're required, to some extent, when playing the stock market game, as that requires about 10 discs for marking stock ownership/value/etc, and so the normal discs are used for that, the trains are used for track.
The trains nice looking, and work well on the board. That said, I found the wooden discs to be more asthetically pleasing (something about the round discs on the board just made it look cleaner), and may continue to use these when I play non-stock-market Steam.
The trains come in the six "official" Steam colors (white, natural, brown, orange, green, and black). So, if your copy of Steam came with the extra colors (as mine did), you'll have to switch to using the normal colors for the stock game.
Several people have noted that the natural color trains are hard to distinguish from the white. I solved that by simply drawing a light brown line down the natural trains (and discs) with a Sharpie; now, it's easy to tell them apart, even in dim light.
New Board
Steam Barons also includes a double-sided board, with one side being the US, and the other being England. This board must be used for the stock game, but may used for the non-stock (base or standard) Steam game.
I haven't played the non-stock game on the board, so I can't comment on that. It does have a lot of cities and towns (more than the board that comes with Steam), and may make a slightly easier game. It also includes mountains that are $3, in addition to $2 hills.
The new boards will allow up to six players. To facilitate this number of players, extra tiles are included (mostly the standard non-town, 2-connection straight/gentle curve). Additional money is also included (since the stock game has bigger payouts).
The Stock Game
The stock game itself is a significant variation from Steam. Some of the changes are:
- Instead of players individually building track, now companies build track and move goods.
- There's no auction for player order; rather, the company turn order is randomly chosen.
- Locomotive sizes and player income isn't used.
- Towns cannot be urbanized, nor is there city growth (towns are given a cube each, though, so there's still plenty of goodies on the board).
- Players can buy and sell stock; selling stock is the main way that players earn income (though they also get dividends from high-performing companies).
The stock game seems more complex to me than the standard Steam game--there's the additional layer of trying to think about the best move of every company you control, and constantly evaluating whether to sell or buy that shares.
That additional complexity, of course, can be good or bad, depending on your perspective. I enjoyed these additional layers.
The stock game also seems a bit less predictable than the base or standard game. In addition to the usual sources of unpredictability (which goods will an opponent move, etc), the company order is randomly selected (which, judging from some comments on BGG, isn't very popular with some people). In addition, you have to decide which stocks to sell before you'll know the turn order for the next turn--removing a valuable clue to the value of a company.
Personally, I don't mind these features--it helps keep the game in a "intuitive" mode, rather than a "I can count every single thing and it becomes a math exercise" mode.
I don't know how often I'll play the stock game with 3 to 6--the additional complexity may make it a bit harder to get to the table.
2 Player
The last main feature that this offers is that the stock game allows for 2 to 6 players (since you'll always be using all 6 companies, the board fills up and gets tense; you don't need more players to make that happen, as you would in the normal game).
With two players, the stock game makes for an interesting, one-on-one challenge. Some of the feel is lost--you can't form allegiances with another player on a company where you both own stock--but there are additional strategies: since you'll both own controlling shares in several companies, you can use one company to help another of yours, or sacrifice one just to screw up the delicate plans of a company controlled by your opponent.
FYI: there are add-on boards for Steam/Age of Steam that allow for non-stock game, normal 2 player games. I haven't tried these yet. I'm not sure if they would preserve the tension of a 3+ player game (the reviews of them, while positive, suggest that AoS/Steam are always best with 3-5 players).
Overall
I'm glad I got this. Each of the features, on its own, wouldn't be worth the money: I just don't think the stock game itself will prove as popular for most people as the standard game. However, having a good two-player option AND wooden trains AND new boards AND new rules makes this a well-valued addition to Steam.
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This exp sounded interesting until the random turn order for companies. I wonder why they chose to go with that?
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Joel Burton
United States
San Francisco
California
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Well, if it were just "auction for turn order", the richest company might just get richer.
The base game of Steam does have the "action tile #" turn order (which, IMHO, works very well), but the actions aren't used here.
As mentioned in the review, I don't mind the random-turn-order. But, obviously, many people do. It'll be interesting to see what the common house rules end up being.
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Martin Wallace
United Kingdom
Manchester
Unspecified
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Nice review. Glad you enjoyed the 2p rules.
In earlier versions of the game the order of player was determined by company performance. This led to two problems, a) companies deliberately underperforming to guarantee first place in the ensuing order of play, and b) perfect information aboutthe performance potential for the following turn. This made the game far too dry. In reality stocks are not predictable, otherwise some brokers would be a lot richer than they already are. All you can do is invest in companies where turn order is not so crucial, or you can take a chance.
Martin
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Sean McQ
United States
Mechanicsburg
Pennsylvania
I don't want happiness by halves, nor is half of sorrow what I want. Yet there's a pillow I would share, where gently pressed against a cheek like a helpless star, a falling star, a ring glimmers on the finger of a hand.
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Frog1 wrote: In earlier versions of the game the order of player was determined by company performance. This led to two problems, a) companies deliberately underperforming to guarantee first place in the ensuing order of play, and b) perfect information aboutthe performance potential for the following turn. This made the game far too dry. In reality stocks are not predictable, otherwise some brokers would be a lot richer than they already are. All you can do is invest in companies where turn order is not so crucial, or you can take a chance.
That makes sense. I don't think random turn order will be as bad as some people think.
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Remember that this is company turn order, not player turn order. If you like to be first in turn order you are free to try to take control of that company.
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Chris Reynolds
United States
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Frog1 wrote: Nice review. Glad you enjoyed the 2p rules.
In earlier versions of the game the order of player was determined by company performance. This led to two problems, a) companies deliberately underperforming to guarantee first place in the ensuing order of play, and b) perfect information aboutthe performance potential for the following turn. This made the game far too dry. In reality stocks are not predictable, otherwise some brokers would be a lot richer than they already are. All you can do is invest in companies where turn order is not so crucial, or you can take a chance.
Martin
This absolutely makes sense. In market terms, this represents unsystematic risk, or company-specific risk, which should be difficult to hedge. On the flip side, the idea of a perfect information stock simulation is simulating no stock market that I have ever seen.
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Bien HBB
United States
Downingtown
Pennsylvania
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Thanks for posting your review. I finally got Steam in a trade and I've been eying Steam Barons for a while. And since I have trouble getting Steam to the table with my regular game group, I will most likely be playing Steam Barons with 2.
How long did your game take? I'd imagine it might run quicker with only 2 players making decisions, even though there are 6 companies operating.
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Posted Tue Dec 1, 2009 2:35 am
