This is another in the Catan series of games, this time with another twist it includes trains and rails.
The components, as always, are high quality wooden pieces with some excellent cards and a well made large board. The only let down for me are the money pieces which seem an afterthought and do not match up with the other parts. This is a minor gripe though and not a distraction from the great game.
There is a lot going on in this game, which plays a lot longer than most Catans but you hardly notice the time when playing. It has a few changes that help both gameplay balance and removing downtime.
The game is played until one player has delivered their last good, goods only being released for transport when you build a city.
On your turn you roll dice as normal collecting resources from hex's that match that number where you have a city, if anyone does not receive anything they now get a gold. Trading resources is same as normal Catan except you can now buy up to 2 cards for 2 gold each or trade resources to the bank at 3:1, you can even trade 3 resources for a gold.
There are development cards, now themed to fit the new game so there are a few neat little bonuses. One addition of note is the extraordinary build phase between turns, this helps balance out people building players into a corner. After each players full turn, every other player gets a chance to build (they cannot trade or move pieces) this can be extremely useful, they can also buy development cards. This latter option means, if you get the timing right, you can buy one just before your actual turn and then use it.
To build new cities players first have to build a Settler and move him to a new city site, the settler is then removed and replaced with a city. Each Player starts with one train which can be moved along rails as they are built, players can also build a second train to help then deliver there goods.
As the Railways move from East to West some of the resource number tokens get moved depleting the reserves in the East forcing players to settle elsewhere to maintain a steady flow of precious materials. To deliver you goods you must send you train to another players city so this makes for some strategic choices as you have to pay a toll to use another players rail system.
I like this game a lot, it plays well and so far every game we have played of it has been pretty close near the end. If you like the Catan series of games then this is a must, even if you are not it is still worth a look as it does address a few shortcomings of the original games.
