Ride the Rails and Expansion Maps Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Ride the Rails from Capstone Games. This 18xx game not only looks great, but plays really well also. In addition to the core game, we also talk about the expansion maps for Ride the Rails.

As a board gamer who enjoys train games, I’m used to playing games that are sometimes not very good to look at. But in 2014, Capstone Games reprinted Irish Gauge, a fan favorite cube rail game with brand new art from Ian O’Toole, and announced their Iron Rail series of games.

Well, today we are looking at Ride the Rails, the second game in that series. As far as cube rail games go, it has quite a different bend to it—no auctions and the board is full of passengers to pick up and deliver somewhere. So the only question that remains is if it’s different in a good way or a bad way?

Unlike many cube rail type games, Ride the Rails does not start with an auction. Instead, in each round, every player just picks a share to add to their portfolio. In the first round, only the blue and red companies are available. In each subsequent round, a new company will become available (except in the final round).

Once every player has chosen a new share you can then build a track for any company you own at least one share of. The number of trains you get to play scales differently based on player count, but generally, you’ll be placing trains in a way to get to as many cities as possible. All of a single company’s track must connect but can branch out in multiple directions if needed.

At setup, every city has a passenger waiting to be delivered elsewhere on the map. (Interestingly none of these passengers care where they are going, they just want to get out of town apparently.) The final action of the round is to deliver a passenger to a new