Top 10 Train Board Games

boardgamequest.com:

A little look behind the curtain, I have been working on this list since April 1, 2021, slowly updating items and adjusting the list as I played favorites more and got some different ones to the table. And to be honest, I am so happy that I waited this long to publish it. Because when I started, I was deep into train games. But now, I have sunk into the abyss that is the train game rabbit hole. When looking at my total plays for 2022, 53 percent of them have been train games (thanks to the Dads on a Map community for the help).

Train gaming itself is a fairly niche genre, with the majority of the ones I’m mentioning having under ten thousand owned copies registered on BoardGameGeek. There’s some debate on what a train game is as well. Most would consider any game with a train theme to be a train game (Ticket to Ride, Railroad Ink, and Russian Railways being quite popular examples of train-themed games).

Others that have explored the genre more would say that train games require some amount of shared incentives to fall into the category. Basically, if someone takes an action, can players benefit or face drawbacks to their decision more than just blocking. An example would be through the payouts a lot of economic games feature. If Player A and Player B are both invested in a company, then they both receive the benefits of a dividend payout. Player A can also decide they no longer want to make positive plays for that company, which in turn hurts Player B. This is a key feature to nearly all the games on my list.

There are a couple of asterisks to mention. I’m only featuring published games on my list, but not all of my favorites have been published. For starters, Drew Edwards has designed the fantastic two-player Streetcar