The latest Age of Steam expansion from Ted Alspach is fully mounted (just like the original Age of Steam map) and contains two new maps: America and Europe.
Age of Steam: America takes place during the great expansion, as the government has subsidized your locomotive, giving you a powerful "6" train as you begin building your railroad network. Unfortunately, competition is high for the limited number of goods that are in demand across the country, making each turn critical to your strategy.
This Age of Steam expansion includes the following unique features:
Powerful, Free "6" train: You start with a 6 locomotive, and never have to pay for it.
Scarcity of goods: Each city starts with only one good on it, and each player may only deliver one good per turn.
Players: 3-6
Age of Steam: Europe puts you in charge of developing a high speed, super-efficient rail system for Western Europe. You've been cleared to create high capacity, high speed track, enabling you to double your income along the most critical portion of your rail system.
Express Links: Each player is able to build an Express Link, that costs twice as much to build, but provides two income when a good is shipped over it.
Player-controlled Goods Production: The player who chooses the Production Action determines which goods make it on to the playing area; if no one chooses this action, no new goods are added to the board.
Players: 3-5
Production Details: Mounted gameboard, incredibly high quality with full color rules.
Age of Steam: 1830’s Pennsylvania, as the industrial revolution began, and the demand for coal to power locomotives and all manner of machinery started to peak. At that time, the railroad industry was driven by an abundant source of coal from the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania.
Unique features to this map include coal-producing towns and cities in Western Pennsylvania, heavily-urbanized cities in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and special bonuses for coal (black cube) deliveries: coal can be delivered twice as far as your locomotive, or you can receive double income for its delivery!
Optimal number of players: 4
Age of Steam: Northern California, focusing on San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Santa Cruz and Sacramento, and the struggle to move goods across the San Francisco Bay Area.
Unique features to this map include two bridges across the San Francisco Bay, the port city of Santa Cruz where goods line up for delivery, a three tile San Jose city with double goods growth, and the ever-changing destination of Sacramento, where the goods desired by that city are dictated by the flow of goods into Santa Cruz.
This map is a redesign of the popular Age of Steam: Bay Area map (Essen 2005 Limited Edition), with modified cities and towns, with a map changed slightly in size to fit on a standard Age of Steam board. It is slightly more forgiving than the original map.
Players: 3-5.
This Age of Steam expansion takes place on the great Mississippi River, where Steamboats were used in conjunction with the railroads to quickly and efficiently deliver goods throughout the Midwest. In this 3-6 player map, players compete to build and deliver goods to steamboats which are moving up and down the Mississippi River. This map contains the following special features:
Moving Steamboats: The Urbanization action has been replaced by Steamboat Building, which creates a steamboat along the Mississippi River. These steamboats can have goods delivered to, from or through them, and each turn they move slowly up or down the river. Players receive a 1 income bonus for delivering a good to a steamboat.
"Gameboard" mounted: This map is mounted on gameboard just like the Warfrog maps; produced by the same company that created the basic Age of Steam "Great Lakes" map and the Warfrog expansion maps. It folds so it will fit perfectly in your Age of Steam box. The reverse side features the Golden Spike expansion.
Optimal number of players: 5
Age of Steam: Goldenb Spike takes place in 1860’s Western USA, where the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad raced towards each other in order to complete the first transcontinental railroad system with the Golden Spike. This is a team-dependent map, with players delivering goods to cities along the main route to build more track towards Promontory; if one side reaches before the other, their opponents are eliminated. This map contains the following special features:
Track Reveal: As goods are delivered to a city on the main Sacramento/Promontory/Omaha line, preprinted track is revealed, which players may use for delivering goods.
Team Dependence: Each side of the map supports two players who are working together to make it promontory before the other side; if one side arrives on a turn before the other side, each player on the other side's has their score reduced to zero. However, whether one or both sides reach the center on the same turn or not, each player is still playing for themselves, with independent scores.
"Gameboard" mounted: This map is mounted on gameboard just like the Warfrog maps; produced by the same company that created the basic Age of Steam "Great Lakes" map and the Warfrog expansion maps. It folds so it will fit perfectly in your Age of Steam box. The reverse side features the Mississippi Steamboats expansion.
Players: 4
Age of Steam: Barbados gives you exclusive rights to build a train system on the beautiful Caribbean island of Barbados. All the cities want Pineapples (yellow cubes), and you realize that the only way to win is to be able to pay off your shares at the end of the game (your score is any remaining money you might have).
Unique single-player action selection: An innovative yet simple solution for making the action selection process integral to gameplay is a key part of Barbados.
A new challenge each time you play: Each game is different and challenging, and allows you to enhance your Age of Steam skills in a relaxed environment.
Great for a quick game of Age of Steam: You can play a full game, including setup, in less than 30 minutes, and still enjoy all the strategy and fun that Age of Steam has to offer...with absolutely no downtime!
Players: 1
Age of Steam: St. Lucia is full of natural resources just waiting to be harvested from its fertile ground. And what better way to get those resources than by building a complex series of train tracks on the island directly to them!
Goods all over the island: Goods are found not in cities or towns, but scattered across the entire island. Whoever builds track to the goods has the ability to deliver them.
Fast-paced gameplay: Games are typically finished in less than an hour, but still have all the tough and interesting decisions and challenges of larger games with more players...just less downtime!
Unique two-player system: A unique two-player turn/action selection system that is both simple to understand and strategically challenging.
Players: 2
Age of Steam: Jamaica Welcomes to a tropical paradise, where the locals are as bright and colorful as the cubes you need to deliver. Gain the respect of the Jamaican people by setting up an efficient railroad throughout the island, so that one day it will become a burgeoning tourist destination.
Unique Game-ending condition: Instead of a standard turn-order marker, Jamaica keeps going until there are no more cubes left on the island; considering that goods growth happens after you deliver goods, you're never quite sure when the game will end!
Fast-paced gameplay: Games are typically finished in less than forty-five minutes, but still have all the tough and interesting decisions and challenges of larger games with more players...just less downtime!
Age of Steam: Puerto Rico requires you to secretly deliver weapons (black cubes) to the capital while publicly only delivering livestock (red cubes), for which you are paid handsomely. If any weapons exist on the island at the end of the game, a severe penalty is inflicted.
Unique single-player action selection: An innovative yet simple solution for making the action selection process integral to gameplay is a key part of Puerto Rico.
Multiple difficulty levels: Control the difficulty of the game, from Novicio (newbie) to Dios (Age of Steam Deity) by making a single simple adjustment!
This Age of Steam expansion takes place in a Disco Inferno, where 'satisfaction comes in a chain reaction' and everyone keeps shouting 'Burn, baby, burn' as you set up routes for disco dancers (goods cubes) to be shuttled between various discothèques (colored cities) on a map covered with flames. Unique features for this map include:
Disco Infernos: Once a discothéque no longer has dancers, it burns to the ground and is no longer a delivery location. Players take a track tile and turn it upside down on the burned down discothéque (or simply flip a "New City" tile if it was a lettered city that burned), creating a city that can't be delivered to or have any cubes placed on it via the production action.
Chain Reactions: Players have the ability to deliver a "chain" of dancers, up to the players' locomotive length. For instance, a player with a locomotive length of 5 could deliver a dancer three links, and then pick up another dancer at the same location and deliver that new dancer two more links. This unique twist on delivery has a profound change on the way you view deliveries in Age of Steam, yet is a fairly simple rule change to understand.
Instant Population of Urbanized Towns: When a town is urbanized into a discothéque, it come with three dancers on it already.
Production Directly on the Board: Players choosing the production action are able to place dancers directly on the discothéque of their choice, which can be critical for keeping important delivery location alive for another turn.
Optimal number of players: 3 or 4
WARNING: The "Disco Inferno" theme may very well be offensive to railroad purists (after all, this is "Age of Steam," not "Age of Funk"), and has the potential to cause straight men to become slightly uncomfortable. To make the theme even more obnoxious, the towns are named after famous disco-era songs ("I'm going to urbanize Boogie Oogie Oogie,") and the Discothéques are named after disco-era singers and groups ("Oh no, KC has burned to the ground"). You may experience shunning by your local gaming group by merely suggesting to play such a heavily disco-themed game, so purchase this at your own risk.
Souls are in jeopardy, and only you can save them! Build a train to carry souls (goods cubes) from Hell to Earth, and then deliver them to their final resting spot in Heaven. This Age of Steam expansion uses a three-part board in a unique 'flip' fashion, with a linear delivery system that provides a strategic challenge to Age of Steam players. Unique features for this map include:
3 Part board "flip": The first part of Soul Train uses the bottom of the Age of Steam Expansion: Disco Inferno board, along with the Earth portion of the Soul Train board. Initially, players focus on delivering souls from Hell to Earth; when 10 or fewer souls remain in Hell, track, cities and any remaining souls are removed from Hell, and Hell itself is picked up and flipped over to reveal the Heaven side of the board, which is placed above Earth. Players then have two turns to deliver as many of the Earth-bound souls to urbanized towns in Heaven. No turn marker is used, with each game taking on average one turn less than a turn-metered game for the same number of players.
Track Costs and Engineering: While track on Earth is the typical Age of Steam cost ($2 for standard spaces, $4 for mountains), building track in all of Hell is $3. Heavenly track costs only $1. Each player may build up to six pieces of track per turn, but all track must begin and end in a city or town. To help offset the cost of so much track, the Engineering action now reduces the cost of track to half the total cost rounded up.
No Production Action or Goods Growth: The only souls in the game are the ones on the board. When souls are delivered to Earth, they remain on the board, awaiting transport to Heaven in the second part of the game.
Urbanization and New Cities: There is only one city per color for the new cities that may be urbanized. When the board is flipped cities in Hell are placed on towns in Heaven in player order, one per player, providing a dynamic city placement phase that changes with each game.
Income bonus at flip time: Instead of getting victory points at the end of the game for track built in hell, players receive income when their track is pulled up as the board is flipped, at 1/3 of an income point per track, rounded down.
WARNING: Soul Train does not endorse, nor is it intended to challenge any existing religious doctrine. To the best of my knowledge, no current theological beliefs are based upon a series of train tracks that carry souls from Hell to Earth and then give worshippers two turns to deliver them to Heaven. However, if such a dogma exists, this game should not be used as a substitute for that religion's practices.
