Railway Boom

They say that men, regardless of age, always stop to look at flying planes or helicopters with interest. I must admit that I am no different, except that I am more interested in trains. Maybe I am not quite such a railfan who photographs every passing train, but I definitely feel an traction to railways. Especially since I can watch freight trains every day from my office window. But let’s get back on track…

Today, I invite you to read my review of the game Railway Boom, which should appeal to every railway enthusiast.

Railway Boom is a board game in which we expand our railway network in Japan.

A distinctive feature of this game is that we will be bidding for practically everything. You could even say that it is a bidding game with a train theme added on. Because in practically every phase of the game, we have to fight to perform actions faster than other players.

Bidding mechanics used to bother me in games, but when I played Legendary Cyclades, I quickly changed my mind and came to appreciate such bargaining moves. After all, there is a lot of excitement in estimating how much our rivals can outbid us. Especially since we know how many resources they have available.

Another feature of this bidding is that we will be bidding with the resource that we will later have to pay for certain things. We can’t play recklessly and have to calculate everything carefully to see if we can afford our purchases. That’s probably the best thing about Railway Boom.

Now that you know about bidding, I’ll tell you what else we’ll be doing in Railway Boom.

In phase 1, we will choose a new train and new carriages for our rail empire. This will have an impact on subsequent phases of the game, so we won’t stop here for too long.

Moving on, we will then determine where we can expand our lines. This is one of the most important auctions available in the game. It will affect our income, the available resources for transport, and how much of the map we will be able to cover with our railways.

By the way, if we position our trains on the map correctly, we may be able to complete one of the available missions. However, I wouldn’t count on it too much, because in all games, rarely anyone has succeeded in doing so. The reward is not that impressive either. I treat it more as a random bonus points.

After this phase, we move on to purchasing new technologies. These can be one-time bonuses, passive abilities that mainly affect railway construction, and skills that we can use once per round. It is worth investing quickly in technologies that generate income, as this will definitely come in handy in subsequent rounds of the game.

It is in the next phase that we will collect our income. It will also quickly become apparent that if we overbid, we may run out of resources. This is because the injection of resources during income is not particularly impressive. This is a game where you have to be careful how much you spend. Just like in real life when buying new crowdfunding games.

Next, we will move on to the best aspect of Railway Boom (another one). We will connect trains with carriages to gain resources and various bonuses. We will reslove each train from left to right, collecting the benefits from these connections. The best part is that we have complete freedom in creating these combinations. We just have to remember to have enough coal to continue the journey.

In the last phase, we will bid on point multipliers, which depend on the scoring card available in a given round.

Then we will repeat this 3 more times and move on to the final scoring.

Game time and number of players

With two players, the game should take us about 90 minutes. Once you understand the rules, we will quickly go through these phases. Especially since some of them can be resolved simultaneously.

The more players there are, the more time we will spend going through these stages. However, the bidding also becomes more interesting and exciting. Because let’s be honest, even if the game is good for two players, we don’t have that constant battle to be at the top of the leaderboard. It’s better when there are more railroaders.

Graphics and Components

Ian O’Toole is responsible for the graphics in Railway Boom, and that news alone was enough to get me interested in this title. Especially since I love Voidfall. He did a great job there, and you can feel his talent here as well. The icons are very intuitive, and I really like his style in terms of graphics. As for the appearance of the board, I had to get used to the colors and searching for individual cities. It’s good that they are at least marked on the location cards.

Summary

If someone had told me once that I would enjoy playing a game with bidding, I would have laughed at them. Next to trick taking, it was probably my most hated mechanic in board games. However, as with mustard in real life, I had to mature to acquire a taste for it.

I liked Railway Boom from the first time I „choo choo”. The game simulates the expansion of a railway empire, spicing it up with exciting bidding. All phases of the game fit together perfectly, and if you combine the elements in the railway launch phase correctly, you can feel great satisfaction from the bonuses you earn.

Final verdict: My hearts goes boom boom for Railway Boom.

Pros

• Continuous bidding
• Asian theme
• Combining trains
• Trains and more trains
• Graphics by Ian Tool

Cons

• Sometimes it’s hard to find a city on the map
• Better with more players