Our Review

Across Russia on the TransSib

Russian Railroads

All roads begin in Moskau

Players take up the guise of an owner of a railroad company. In this role they try to expand their own track network in a way that earns most money and thus is the most profitable. History tells us that with the railroads industrialization grows, too, and this leads in turn to rising prosperity. To this effect railroad owners support engineers, industrial tycoons and unskilled workers.

The net of railroads that can generate most victory points in the course of the game will be the most successful, so our goal is to acquire as many victory points as possible. But before you can start to work at your network you must clear up some things and make some preparations:

The board is laid out in the middle, easily accessible for all players, and each player is given a player board, five of seven unskilled workers and two pawns in his color. Both pawns of each player are placed on the board, one on the track of victory points and the other on the track for turn order which is the first hint of the fact the turn order can change during the game. There are some more preparations that you have to make before you can start your railroad business, but they can be easily looked up in the rule book.

A short explanation must be given on the player boards and the main board. Let's start with the main board, which is divided into four different areas. These areas provide different actions for all players to use in order to improve their track network.

There is one area for track building which assists, yes, in building additional track; there is an analogous are for engines or industries. Engines determine the distance you can cover on one of the lines of track, and Industries provide a variation of additional advantages for a player. Among those areas you also find a general area which accommodates all those actions that did not really fit any of the other areas, but are all the same very useful and helpful. The third are is very important for the turn order of players - if you want to change this order you must plan an action in this area. Another area is the area for engineers. These, again, are valuable and advantageous assistants enabling you to do some exclusive moves.

The personal player board is laid out in front of a player with the Transsib Line from Moscow to Vladivostok being at the top. Furthermore, the board shows two additional tracks that you can build. One of those tracks it that from Moscow to St. Petersburg, the other one that from Moscow to Kiev. The most important of those three tracks is the Transsib, because this track introduces, after the black track pieces, the other colored tracks, which earn more and more victory points. Therefore and also due to the length of the Transsib Track you can, contrary to the other two tracks, have two engines on the Transsib.

The player board also features an Industry track. The marker for this track is on position Zero at the start of the game, and for each position that you advance on the Industry track you receive victory points in scoring. But there comes a position on the track where you have to have industries in order to advance your marker any further on the track. Industries have effects which are very useful for extending your own track network.

Tracks sections come in different colors and score different amounts of points. So you do not score at all for black track, while pieces of gray track are worth one point, and so on. In order tracks do really score points for their owners, two conditions must be met. Tracks of lower values must me moved forward on the line so that you can build track of higher values adjacent to it, because two sections of track cannot share one spot, due to this you cannot overtake track sections of lower value either. Gray cannot overtake, so you must free the necessary section by moving black along.

The second condition is that tracks are only scored up to the point to which the engine can move. An engine can, in relation to its power, move up to nine sections. Thus, should have for instance an engine of power three on a track and the grey track is already on section four of the track, the line is only scored including section three.

But let's get back to the course of the game. The complete game is played over eight rounds, which does not sound like a lot, but can in real play turn out to take a long time due to the manifold possibilities. To keep on track of the round which is currently played you can check the respective round in the Engineer area. In this area two engineers are available for active use by all players, one additional engineer can be hired by one of the players. At the end of the round the engineers are advanced by one step, which frees one spot revealing the information how many additional rounds need to be played.

This is a very useful and helpful feature, because it tells you how long the game will go one, which is of special assistance to players who like to plan ahead over one or two rounds. It also helps players who do not plan that far, because it reminds them to make optimum use of their round to reap all the advantages. This mechanism, in my opinion, is a very positive feature in the game.

Each of the rounds is played in the current turn order; for the first round the turn order is randomly chosen and can then be actively changed due to player actions. If you are the active player you can place your workers to make use of actions. Some actions have a price of only one worker, other actions can cost you two workers and there are even some actions that cost you three workers to implement. As you start the game with only five workers you need to make use of them very economically and chose your actions carefully.

There are many factors that must be considered when placing workers for actions: You can only choose an actions that was not yet chosen by another player, which means that maybe you will not be able to use all actions that would be important for you, in each round. You can also use only those actions which you are able to implement completely. You cannot choose an action and then forfeit it, each chosen action must be actively used.

This is a very good aspect because this forces players, who sometimes spend not enough time to consider their moves, to take a bit more time to think and then place their workers accordingly. At the same time this aspects avoid a too destructive way of playing, you cannot simply choose an action to hinder another player in choosing this action.

An action is instantly implemented as soon have you have made the decision and placed your worker. Then the next player takes his turn, which means that you have only one move in your turn. But you can trigger chain reactions. But this only becomes clear during the game itself and those chain reactions can be very valuable and helpful if you can use them concertedly.

This placing of workers and implementing of actions goes on until all players have placed their workers and then passed. This is necessary, because there is also the choice to place a coin instead of a worker. The coin stands for a worker and enables you to choose and implement another action. The question is, how useful is this additional action? Because you need to be careful with this possibility for additional actions, you have only one coin at the start of the game and there is only one action available that gives you additional coins.

As soon as you have passed you turn over your turn order card and score the respective victory points; the first player of the round never gets victory points in this way, his reward is to go first in a round. When all players have passed a scoring follows. You score all track sections that you have built and which can be reached with an engine, plus the points from the Industry track.

Let me give you a hint: On the track from Moscow to Kiev you score points for black track sections, too, up to section four, if you comply with the conditions. For this you score the sum of values of the individual sections which you reach with the tracks, and not only the points beneath the final section reached. Those points are scored in each scoring and scoring happens after each round, so that means eight scorings in total.

The game offers many different aspects and possibilities which you need to take into account in order to win the game. A central fact which is very important - you must not concentrate too much on one thing only, you must try to score points in any possible way. In two of my games I have concentrated on advancing Industry, which scores a lot of points, true, but is only valuable when combined with other elements; Industry alone is not sufficient to win.

In my first game I had quite a good grip on track building; in my second game I almost completely forgot about it and did only focus on Industry. In the first game I did not have any engineers which in the end did lose me the game despite being in front for many rounds. In the second game I was in the lead for a long time, too, but then fell back to third position, because my track network was not extended well enough. The winner in this game did focus his attention only on bonus points available from tracks and relegated Industry to a side issue.

So you see, there is much to consider in this game, and some aspects become only clear while you are playing. All the same, it is lots of fun and offers a high replay value, as each individual game develops completely different to the many possibilities that are available.

Isabella Schranz

Players: 2-4

Age: 12+

Time: 120+

Designer: Helmut Ohley, Leonhard Orgler

Artist: Claus Stephan, Martin Hoffmann

Price: ca. 37 Euro

Publisher: Hans im Glück 2013

Web: www.schmidtspiele.de

Genre: Railroads, Worker placement

Users: For experts

Version: de

Rules: de en fr nl pl

In-game text: no

Comments:

Many possible winning strategies

Needs a good mixture, scoring in only one area does not work

Good, concise rules

High replay value

Compares to:

Stone Age

Other editions:

999 Games, Bard Centrum Gier, Filosofia, Z-Man Games

My rating:

Isabella Schranz:

Now and then you should try to manipulate the turn order so that you can do certain actions first; because first come, first served.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise):3

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0