Review #33: Steam

# of Players: 3-5
Playtime: 2-3 Hours

Core Mechanic: Pick-Up and Deliver

Theme: Trains
Type: Euro

Weight: Heavy

Year: 2009

Rating: 9*

Trains make an excellent board game theme. When I first started playing board games, it was shortly after Steam was released which shot up to near the Top 10 on BGG. This instantly drew me in, especially since Martin Wallace had a lot of board games near the top of the rankings at the time, such as Brass. I think this was actually the first train-themed board game I played, even ahead of the gateway Ticket to Ride. Well, this is just an amazing game, one of the best pick-up and deliver games I have played, and definitely the best train game that I have experienced yet.

There are two ways to play Steam - the Base game and the Standard game. I don't think I would ever play the Base version because there is so much depth to the Standard and I would prefer everyone I play with to just learn the Standard way. The game is played on a map of hexes depicting cities, towns, hills, plains, and rivers. The core of this game is building tracks between cities and transporting goods along your tracks to earn victory points and income.

There are seven phases in each round of the game and the number of rounds before the game ends is dependent on player count. The first phase is buying capital. During this phase, players will be taking out loans in order to acquire cash to fund all their other actions during the upcoming round. Each loan of $5 reduces income by 1 point. If you have negative income at the end of the round, you will need to pay this amount whereas if your income is positive you will receive money. Players are not able to take out any additional loans outside of this phase so need to strike a balance between raising enough capital to account for any unforeseen expenses, but not so much they have a mountain of debt that they cannot get out of.

The next phase is determining play order for the round, which is done via bidding. In previous turn order, players will keep raising their bid until they want to pass. Once everyone has passed and the new turn order is determined, the first and second place players pay the full price of their bid, the last place player pays nothing, and everyone else pays half their bid rounded up. After the new turn order is determined, the next phase is action tile selection.

There are seven action tiles in the game that can be selected during this round and each one gives a boost to the normal actions that can be taken. Players select the action tile they want for the round in turn order. First is the Turn Order tile, which allows you to pass out of the next play order phase without dropping out. The next two are the First Move and First Build action tiles, which allow you to bypass the turn order to go first in the Move Goods and Build Track phases, respectively. The Engineer action tile allows players to build four tracks instead of the usual three. The City Growth action tile allows players to add additional goods to cities while the Urbanization action tile allows players to transform towns into cities. Finally, the Locomotive action tile allows a free upgrade to the next locomotive level.

Building tracks is the next phase of the game where players will want to link cities and towns in order to deliver goods to score income and points. Unless you take the Engineer action tile, you can build 3 pieces of track during this phase. The cost of each tile depends on the tile itself and the location on the board you place the track. When you build a track, you take one of your own train markers and place it on the route to indicate that it belongs to you. There are a lot of small little details that I won't get into here, but essentially you want to try to create continuous tracks between cities of one colour to another city with goods that match the colour of the first city. That is because in the next phase you can either move goods or improve your locomotive.

In the moving goods/improving locomotive phase, in turn order with the exception of the player with the First Move action tile, players will select whether to move goods, improve their locomotive, or pass. Each city will have a number of cubes on it of different colors and each cube must be transported to its matching colored city. Players will move goods over the railroad links connecting the cities. Their locomotive level will determine the number of links they will be able to move over and each link they move over that belongs to them will score them a point to either apply to their victory points or to their income. Consequently, each of your opponent's links that you use will result in them earning points. When moving goods, at least half of the links you move over must be your own, so you wouldn't be able to move a good over three links when only one of them is yours just to score one point. Instead of moving a good, you can upgrade a locomotive level, which is maxed out at 6. In player order, each player will do one of these two things or pass. Each player will then get to do one of these two things again if they didn't pass the first time before moving onto the next phase.

The last phase is collecting income and paying expenses. First, players will see if they are positive or  negative on the income track and receive or pay money respectively. Therefore, if you have been buying a lot of capital on loan, this is the time when you will need to effectively pay interest. Next, players will have to pay expenses based on their locomotive level, i.e. if your locomotive level is Level 5, you will need to pay $5. If at this point you did not raise enough capital at the start of the round and do not have enough money left, you must start losing victory points. You lose a victory point for every $2 you are missing. If you run out of victory points, you start losing income. If you have no more income to lose, you are eliminated from the game. I have never played a game where this happens - just make sure you raise enough capital to start the round!

So, in a way similar to Power Grid, another network building game, there is a lot going on with all the different phases. I like the idea of buying capital at the start of the game and trying to figure out how much debt you are willing to take on in order to power through your turn. There is a lot of interaction as well, especially with the way you build your routes to shut out other players and force them to use your links. A very well done game and another Martin Wallace classic. I think this has a proper place as the train game in every Heavyweight collection. Although it is my favorite train game, Ticket to Ride already occupies a spot in the Essential collection and from a broad perspective, it is a better fit. But there is room in the Collector collection for another train game and this one fits the bill for something on the heavier side.