Let me state first that I had no train games previous to this one, unless you consider Santa Fe Rails and Stephenson´s Rocket train games. I have never played any boardgame of the 18xx series, much to my regret. With that said, let me say that I simply love Age of Steam. There´s been a bit of hype surrounding this game and although I was suspicious at first, because hype usually ruins a boardgame by setting expectations too high, this game does deserve the hype.

In Age of Steam you control a railroad company in the North-American mideast, with Chicago at the center of the board. You then build tracks between towns and cities in order to move goods, the only way to earn income in this game. First, let me talk about the rules. The rules should have been a bit more clear in their meaning. For instance, the first time I read the rules I thought the goods should only be moved to a city of the same colour as the city where the good initially lay, whereas the correct rule is that you move a good to a city of the same colour as the good. The rules are a bit ambiguous, and one of the examples is outright wrong. With that said, I didn´t had too much trouble understanding the rules, except the moving goods from city to city part.  

Setting up the game is a bit of a pain too. You will lose about five to ten minutes setting up the whole game. Best advice is to get your hand on some of the small plastic bags that come with all boardgames and separate the track ownership discs into those bags. It will speed up the setting up process but it´ll still take a minute or two to place all the goods cubes into the goods display and separating the track tiles.

 The game itself is divided into 10 phases. First you issue shares. Each share gives you $5 immediately, but there´s a downside to that, and that is the fact that you must pay $1 per share in expenses. So the more shares, the more you have to pay. Then you determine player order, which is done through a bidding process. After that, you select a unique special action that will influence the way your turn will be played. The next phases are building tracks and moving goods. Only by moving goods will you earn income. You receive $1 per link that the move traveled through. A link is a connection between a city or town and another city or town. After moving goods you will receive your income. Income and money at the start of the game will be low as players try to move goods from city to city, but at the later stages income will be high money will be a-plenty as a consequence. This brings me to another point about this game, if your income ever falls below 0, then you´re out of the game. Elimination from the game can be a bother to the player that was thrown out, but in all my plays of this game no-one ever got eliminated, so I must presume that getting less than 0 income is a rare event.

After collecting income, you pay your expenses, which are $1 per link and $1 per share. Then comes the income reduction phase, which means that the higher income you have the more your income is reduced. I like this mechanism of the game, it allows for players who are far behind the leading players to catch up with them and balanced the game evenly. The next phase is goods growth, where you roll a number of dice in order to replenish the goods in the cities. As a last phase, tou advance the turn marker.

I should point out that one of the actions you can choose in the select actions phase is the urbanization action, which allows you to build a city out of the existing city hexagons in one of the many towns dotted in the board. This makes each game feel different than the previous one and adds some dynamism to the game. No two games are equal because of this.

I can´t compare this game to other serious train games, since I don´t own any except this. From what I read, this game is less complex than any game of the 18xx series, and is much quicker to play as well. As a boardgame, Age of Steam is simply outstanding. I find it quite addicting, always wanting to play a game of Age of Steam whenever possible. It has a lot of strategic depth, since you must build tracks that will allow you to constantly move goods through them, and you much weigh when to issue a share or not. Age of Steam has made its way up to my top 5 boardgames, it´s that good! This is the first game I played by designer Martin Wallace and it really impressed me with its smooth design. Despite its small flaws, this is a great boardgame and well worth anyone´s money. If you´re a fan of train games or even if you´re not, you can´t pass without this game. It deserves to belong in every gamer´s collection. I simply can´t praise this game enough, get it while it´s in print! </p>

 10/10

 http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=4098