Age of Steam Expansion: California Gold Rush & Underground Railroad

Played a 3 player game of this (using advanced steam as the game behind the board) and there seemed to be too many cubes on the board. There was not a struggle fo cubes, so much so that it turned out that the entire game was determined on the first rounds tile lay, in that the person who picked the best route there won the game.

Would work better with more players where gold would be a better substitute for routes, otherwise cubes need to be removed from the map.

[California Gold Rush] 1x with 4 players. Brutally demanding. Long deliveries difficult to come by, very expensive to build. Brilliant.

[Underground Railroad] 1x with 4 players. Similar to the CCCP map. Balancing profits and free slaves was challenging. Interesting AoS map with a twist.

Rating for Underground Railroad. I rather liked the AoS turned VP engine aspect. Essentially, the question is how to you get your money humming, how do you do it in a way that sets you up to deliver slaves from bondage (i.e. generate VPs), and when do you start doing that. Quite cool.

My rating is only for underground

Underground Railroad: Interesting spin with this version where profits are just a means to an end. There is no award for making money and as long as you dont go bankrupt, the only reason to make money is to make it easier to outbid and build. This results in quite a few different strategies: You can play a normal game, building your cash flow in the north hoping to crush your opponents in the endgame. Or sneak through with early builds in the south, surviving on debt and whipping out slaves as quickly as possible. Most players will walk a middle path, but the whole question of balancing between profits and chasing points is nice to see.

Gold Rush: Yet to play