jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner) (09/09/85)
[...] Someone asked for a quick description of the rules for Empire Builder (which is the same game as British Rails, except that Empire Builder uses a map of the U.S. and Canada, while British Rails uses a map of England, Scotland, and Wales). The map shows cities in the countries involved. Each city produces two or three commodities. Players draw "request" cards. Each card shows three cities that are requesting a train load of a particular commodity. Players have money to build tracks between cities. Tracks are built by drawing on the map with crayon (the map is plasticized so that the crayon can be wiped off at the end of the game). Players also have a train that runs on your track. At the beginning of the game, your train can start anywhere; after that, your train always moves along existing track. Your train picks up commodities at cities where the goods are produced and delivers them to cities that request the goods on a "request" card. You get money for each such delivery, and with this money you can build more track. At the very beginning of the game, you probably only have enough money to build from one production centre to one delivery site, so you'd better choose carefully -- you can get into real nasty corners if you spend all your money on one contract and don't have enough cash to build track needed to fulfill another contract. After a while, you have track over most of the map and can concentrate on racking up cash, upgrading your train, and so on. The winner is the first one to have track going to a number of major centres (three in British Rails, five in Empire Builder) and a set amount of money. Disasters happen occasionally: snow, floods, derailments, wildcat strikes. They add some variety to the game, but are only rarely significant to the game's outcome. Very little inter-personal conflict in the game. As an example, there is a bit of a contest over who gets the cheapest passes through the Rocky Mountains in Empire Builder, but this is a civilized game and trains don't fire guns on each other. Playing time, about three hours with four people. Maximum of six players. Jim Gardner, University of Waterloo