Steam

I knew this was like Age of Steam and I had to get my arm twisted to play it. And I disliked it just like AoS. Incredibly dry. Zero fun. A brain-burner. The best thing about the game was moving the train-shaped turn marker. Luckily I was sat at that corner of the board so I got to do that 6 times. It took nearly 4 hours to play (5 players) but no-one seemed to be taking too long to take their turns. A large amount of downtime, but arguably you need it to think about your next turn. Life is too short to play games like this. And this is when I won.

Despite all the controversy and rubbish written here on the Geek, I still see this as another variation on AoS and thus I love it. Crikey, there are lots of AoS maps out there that change the base rules far more than Steam does so why get so upset by it. As such, I refer you to Age of Steam for my comments

An econ train game where the movement of goods functions in the polar opposite from how I see it logically playing out (where as you want to move them to the nearest port of business) in that you move goods the most inefficient chain possible to score the most points (compared to Indonesia where you pay per hop which makes sense). In that regard, my plays always felt sort of backwards in the analysis; I want track to go lots of places, but I don't want to move the goods there easily (but I do want to move the goods). An interesting puzzle, but not one that really holds my attention compared to other econ games. The digital version doesn't hold my attention after 9 or 10 plays, and plays in a fraction of the time as the cardboard copy...

Map Expansion #1

Will only play this game with the basic rules which make it a very clean game of the right length. Looking forward to some new maps by Mayfair.

Much more enjoyable than Age of Steam, but felt a lot like Railroad Tycoon with a smaller map. I liked a few of the special abilities and such, like urbanization.

Uninteresting theme, but good mechanics.

A caveat: rating is for the "basic" game, which I think is marginally better than the original age of steam. However, "standard" steam is a significant step down, despite the near elimination of luck from the game - urbanisation is just too powerful.

Rated 8 after one play of family game variant. Liked it very much. Quite an interesting game with clearly a lot more depth to offer. I'd definitely play it again.