First off, Age of Steam is a gamers game. It requires hard thinking, difficult choices and precision money management. You'll find that, as you play the game more, battles will get more nasty and often small errors will spell certain defeat.

Also, the rules are not clear in places. For example, we were stalled about twenty minutes over the example on page 6, before we understood that the cubes carried in the example ought to be blue and not red.

So, what we have here is a train game, my favourite type of game. The game falls somewhere between the simpler 'crayon' type train games and the more complex 18xx type games.

The box is pretty hefty, containing 6 sheets of good quality tiles. These hextiles for the most part have straights and curves on them, while others depict towns and more complex track designs for tile sharing and crossing existing track. Unlike 18xx tiles, existing track isn't upgraded by adding branches to it.

Players begin with just $10, raised from the first 2 shares. Money is tight in this game, and a mistake early on can see your company going bankrupt as it over stretches itself, so careful planning is vital at this early stage. Fortunately, planning can be done as all the information is displayed right at the start. Towns have goods for delivery on them and future goods for each city can be seen on the Goods Display. These goods come into play at the roll of the dice, so its uncertain as to when they will come out, however.

The games share issues, each issue worth $5, have to be paid for in the expenses round at $1 each, plus $1 for each engine link you have, so right from turn 1, with no expansion, you have to pay back 3$ of your initial 10$, leaving just $7 to build. Each basic tile cost $2 to lay, so laying 3 tiles on turn 1 will cost you $6, leaving just $1 for turn 2! So it's vital that your early builds bring you in some income right away.

Each turn, player order is determined by a neat auction process, after which, each player selects an action they want to do this turn. Each turn, each player can only do one action, which has to be a different action to the other players, similar to the method used in Puerto Rico. These actions allow 1st build, 1st move, engineer who can play 4 tiles instead of 3, Locomotive allowing a train upgrade, Urbanization, allowing a city placement, Production allowing 2 more goods to come into play and Turn Order pass for the next turn. These options add to the strategic choices you can make.

After track is built, players then move goods over their track. Move goods is more like establishing trade routes as each goods delivered increases your marker along the income track, and each point of income is worth 3 Victory Points at games end. Goods come in different colours and have to be delivered to the first city of that colour it comes to, but the further it travels, the more income you get. This means laying more track at more cost, did I mention money is tight? However, each track section in a completed rail link is worth 1 Victory Point at games end, so the more track you lay the more victory points you earn. Unusually, money is worthless at games end, so if you can meet your expenses, then its worth laying track to 'convert' that money into victory points. Its also worth bearing in mind that those share issues, which bring in $5 each also count for a huge MINUS 3 Victory Points at games end! So you avoid Share issues if you can, which makes money tight (I have mentioned money is tight).

SUMMARY:
This is an excellent addition to any games collection and if you enjoy train games or tile laying games, then you should also enjoy this game. It isn't overly complex and is easy to play, but the strategic and planning decisions it is necessary to make means that this isn't a game for the casual gamer, which is why I rate it as medium complexity.

The first game I played saw me overstretched and out of the game by turn 2! Fortunately for me, 2 others went bankrupt the following turn, so we started again, notching it up to experience, and we had a much better game.

Review by Brian