Welcome to Replayable, where we go to depth on our favorite tabletop games that keep us coming back again and again. I'm the start player Todd, and today I'm joined by Greg and Paul for our 10th episode. We talk about another face on the Mount Rushmore of Train games, Age of Steam. It was designed by Martin Wallace and John Borer and was originally released in 2002. The most recent version was released in 2019 by Eagle Griffin Games with artwork by Ian O'Toole. How are you guys doing today?
Ready to break ground on this empire? I am ready to make a delivery, but I should warn you Todd, if I have to order, I'm going to take your pick. Yeah, I've already hit max loans, so we'll see how much I can do. That sounds like our last game. Age of Steam is an intense board game that transports players back to the golden age of steam-powered locomotives.
Set in the 19th century, this strategic masterpiece challenges players to build and expand their railway networks across an ever-changing landscape, navigate through rugged terrain, and race to deliver goods to distant cities. Players must carefully manage their resources, finances, and limited actions to optimize their routes and outmaneuver opponents. Age of Steam's replayability is further enhanced by its vast library of maps, which offer a wide range of scenarios and challenges.
I think we're all in agreement that this is one of THE train games, right? It's one of the best, or quintessential train games. With a capital T. That's a good way of putting it. Where were you in your gaming development when you first encountered it? This thing is definitely unique. It makes an imprint. Tell me about your first memories of playing Age of Steam. It's hazy, but I remember being introduced to it shortly after I moved to California in 2005.
I had played a game called Struggle of Empires a couple times, and I thought it was just the best game ever made. And so somebody who played that game with me was like, well, if you like this game, let me show you this other game by Martin Wallace. And I had no clue what I was doing. My first game, I don't even remember it. But after a couple plays, I got to the point where I thought to myself, why are people still playing Power Grid? Oh, wow. Okay. How about you, Greg?
Yeah. So for me, I didn't get around to it until a few years later, but it was in 2009. And I had kind of just started to really seriously getting into board gaming as a hobby to the point where I was trying to form my own game group that played nearer to my house and at a better time for me than most of the meetups that were running. And I stumbled into a private game group.
And interestingly, my first game of Age of Steam, I believe, was the first game I ever played with Paul back in April of 2009. We played Golden Spike at a house. Oh my God. Yeah. That map and then on the reverse side, Mississippi Steamboats were such a brutal introduction to the game. I can't imagine that in your first play. Hey, I was just glad I got to participate in laying the Golden Spike.
I think you and a couple other people on one side of the map and me and Marika were on the other side of the map. And we managed to somehow, because you guys kept getting each other's way, we managed to somehow get to the Golden Spike first or something. It's been a long time. Yeah. Wow. That's great. Yeah. Kind of neat that that was not only my first game of Age of Steam, but like I said, I believe my first game with Paul ever. Certainly the first game that I know I played with Paul.
I remember getting into it because I had been playing Railroad Tycoon, which is now Railways of the World. And I originally found that game because it was a board game version of one of my favorite computer games. And someone had said, oh, well, if you like this, similar to what Paul, you had heard, you ought to try Age of Steam. It's a little more of a gamer's game where gamer is more of a strategic player's game.
And at first blush, I was just shocked by how brutal the finances were in Age of Steam. For whatever reason, it just has the right blend of planning and chaos that I still think it's incredible to play all these years later. What do you guys still like about this game? We just played it earlier this week. It's interesting how you brought up Railroad Tycoon because I recall that game being far more popular than Age of Steam when it was released, which was like 2007 or 2008.
And you say it's based on a computer game. It feels to me like it basically re-implemented Age of Steam, but made it more air quotes fun. I don't know if you remember. Yeah. Well, they used the Railroad Tycoon IP, but yeah, it was absolutely just kind of a reskin of Age of Steam with some extra randomness and more chrome bits and stuff like that because it had event cards and stuff going on, if I remember right. And barons, you could have individual player... Unique player powers, right?
Well, end of game points, I think they were. Oh, was it? Okay. Yeah. I guess my point is even though Age of Steam was first, a lot of people found Railroad Tycoon before Age of Steam, right? Just based on popularity. Right. I'll say for me, it was a little bit of a slow learning to love the game because as I mentioned, my first time playing was Golden Spike and Paul can attest, it's not a particularly easy way to learn the game. I wasn't in love with the game at first.
And then I played Railroad Tycoon around the same time and I had fun with that. And so I kind of appreciated it. But I had decided at that point that I would go buy the new and improved version of the game, where they got rid of ages and it's just Steam. Yeah. And since then, Paul and I have had an ongoing battle of whether Steam qualifies as being anywhere near as good as Age of Steam. But it took me a while to find maps that I liked.
I think that was part of what I would say about it is, but we're talking about what we love about it. We did eventually grow into loving it and part of it is there are really good maps that are a lot of fun that has some element of being a really intense auction and can be a fun battle for resources on the board and whatnot. But part of the fun for me is the variety of maps out there and getting kind of that novelty, even when you're still playing by the same roles. Right.
Yeah. It's really incredible how many there are. How about you, Paul? What do you still like about the game? There are three things that in your words thrill me about Age of Steam. Number one is it, I feel like it starts with a blank canvas where it's really hard to predict what that board is going to look like by the end of the game. And so I'm always excited to see the choices that we make and the routes that we build as we go.
Number two, the auction or should I say the dollar auction thrills me every time, just second place paying their full bid is the cause of so many tragedies. And thirdly, I really appreciate how Age of Steam forces players to confront their own tendencies towards irrational behavior. The old slogans of throwing good money after bad or how it forces you to learn the first law of holes. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Yeah, I didn't learn that on Monday night.
Oh, you and me both were digging for our lives. I think we both ended up in Max Lons. Yes, yeah, we did. Yeah, I agree. That auction is one of the most interesting auctions I've seen implemented in just the way that you can go from doing well to being last so quickly. If you're lucky, you're last. What's worse is being second to last and losing half your bid for third place or fourth place, depending on number of players.
I actually don't mind second place paying full bid as much because at least you're getting one of the two things. But sometimes just by the way of the player order, it's like you look at it and you're like, if this comes back around to me, it's going to be at a level I can't afford. But do I want to try to jump it so high now and let everybody else get second and third and whatever place inexpensively? I mean, you still want the other players to have to spend their money.
It's just a fantastic mechanism in and of itself and it's practically its own game. Yeah, I think it is the core of the game, at least for me. Yeah, it's interesting. I've been finding that, you know, I mean, there's like a lot of auction games, there's a timing aspect to it. You can't go in hard on every auction with some minor exceptions. I managed to pull it off in a game or two ago, I think that I won a lot of the auctions.
But most of the time you have to choose which rounds you're going to try to get in, get that extra money and win the auction and which rounds you're going to just go last and be okay with it and plan ahead for that a little bit. But I was thinking about it in different terms the other day that it's often, you know, kind of flips the paradigm of, you know, it's not about doing what nobody else is doing. It's about not trying to do what everybody else wants to be doing.
If everybody wants Loco this turn, don't get in there. Just be happy, you know, plan a turn where you're doing something else. Right. And yet it seems like you never get Loco easily. No. The last couple of games we've played, every turn there's at least two people who won it. Or at least that's what we think. It depends on the map to some degree. That's true. And the distribution of cubes.
If I've got a good progression where I can deliver a two cube in the first round and a three cube in the second round and a four cube in the third, and I can just keep going like that, you know, I just don't bid on the auctions and I just keep my progression going. But that doesn't work out every game. So this last one was really tough. Cubes were not friendly. Right. So that's actually a great callback.
Paul, you mentioned you love seeing how the routes come out or the routes, depending on how you want to pronounce that. And in that game we just played, I got first build and I took the obvious two link build on the table and I thought, okay, this is going to be great. I've got this, you know, I'm going to set myself up to take Loco and then make a two link delivery. Big mistake. And then you managed to bob and weave amongst the same things.
And yeah, you paid a couple extra bucks because you had to upgrade a city tile. And since you got Loco, you were capable of making both the deliveries that I had set myself up to grab one. Now in retrospect, you were kind. You left one for me. And at the time I was like, oh, why would he have done that? I mean, I would have stepped on my throat. I would have stepped on your throat if the positions were reversed.
But I didn't even see that possibility coming at first when I had planned to get first build and take that spot. I didn't realize what kind of risk I was putting myself on because you had already had your train upgrade. Right. It was a surprise to me too. I didn't see it until I saw it. I was like, that's the only thing I could do. You didn't see it. I don't think you saw it until you were actually, Todd had already built and you were building. It wasn't something you had planned to do to him.
Right, because I would have warned him if I had seen it. Yeah, but I did not. But then I have to say that the next thing you did by not taking both of those deliveries, I would have dedicated the rest of my game to getting in your way. And by allowing me to have a lifeline, you actually gave me enough of a run to go build elsewhere. And unfortunately, that ended up being playing in Greg's backyard. Yeah, right in my backyard. That's right. That's my whole plan for the game. Muahahaha.
Well, there was just this incredible city that had like five yellow cubes in it just begging to be tapped. Yeah. And we all decided to go after it. Even Paul, which was surprising the way that you managed it. Well, yeah, that's part of the reason I let you have that delivery. I feel like I undervalue locomotive early in the game, so I'm trying to get a larger locomotive earlier in the game. It's a tough trade off though, because you have to be able to pay for it.
So you I've seen people upgrade too quickly and have trouble finding the cubes to deliver. It's a little scary, but I think it can be worthwhile. Right. Especially in higher player count games, to give up those early deliveries for bigger loco, even though you're going to have to take more loans in the long run. Yeah, that's what I ended up running into a lot in this game was that I couldn't find the cubes at that next step without building like two turns worth of track.
So I was really slow in upgrading my local the whole game. Yeah. So how would you say your understanding and appreciation of the various actions has evolved? Like I was just saying, I feel like I have been undervaluing locomotive, especially in four and five player games for over 15 years. So this year I'm trying to get locomotive earlier and faster and just catch up with my income after the fact.
You know, I think it was last year and the year before when we played France like five times in a row that I really learned that I was overvaluing urbanization. It's just not as great as I once thought, mostly because whoever goes after you is going to be able to get value out of your urbanization in a lot of cases. Right. Yeah, that's true. But that was also how you managed to tap into all of those yellow cubes that Greg and I had been eyeballing. Oh yeah. I made my own city to deliver to.
That's right. Yeah. And then suddenly you were taking them and making a four link delivery a turn ahead of my completing my route to do the same. So it was a great use of urbanization. And then there's the idea of defensive urbanization, right? Oh yeah. If you've got a route that is four or five links long and it's delivering say black cubes and I can urbanize and put in a black town one or two links away from your main source of product, that's a great way to slow you down.
Yeah, chop that route in half. I actually did that last week in a BGA game of Railways of the World. Did you? I realized that I might come in second. So I urbanize the guy who is in first town to black one step away from three black cubes that were five deliveries. So I converted 15 points into three points. Nice. But that's what I mean. These actions end up being deeper than you originally think they can be, just the way they end up being applied to the game.
Yeah. I think the sleeper one is production. Tell us more. Yeah, production is a bit of a sleeper, kind of following on what Paul was saying. We played France a bunch of times there and it affected my view of the auction as well. I mean, it definitely, I've been playing more of a philosophy of, like I said, trying to figure out what do people want and what can I do that's not going to fight them for that so that I don't have to worry about getting into the big bids.
I slipped on that this past game and I know I was fighting Dave for first place because I didn't want him to take what I wanted. But if I'd really paid attention, he didn't want what I wanted. I think I wanted Loco and he wanted engineer. But it's really kind of paying attention to what other people want. And if you don't get into those battles where you've got a three way fight for something because everybody's going to overbid in that case, even if you might not get it.
So I'll respond with a question. Have you ever seen the board run out of cubes like nothing to deliver? Not nothing, but I have seen games where nobody had more than like or most players didn't have more than like a two delivery in the last round. Yeah, I've seen that a few times. Usually it happens when the dice are especially hot or cold, depending on your perspective, like they keep rolling the same three numbers over and over and over.
And so in those games, the production action became more important than locomotive because you're like, I know a three is going to be rolled. So I need to take production. I mean, gambler's fallacy, but sure. Well for me, in this last game, it became valuable to me because I didn't get to build the route that I wanted and I got cut off in a few places. So I had to put cubes down that I could actually deliver for three and four because I wasn't going to ever make my fives and sixes.
So for me, it became a necessary thing just as a fallback to have something that wasn't a two delivery. Right. And then Megan rolled the lights out and put those newly placed goods onto the board by rolling the numbers. Yes. Well, I know we totally colluded on that. Oh, you and Megan? Yeah, okay. Well, why didn't you win, Greg? Because I was in his way. I was delivering stuff out from underneath him and vice versa.
Yes. That last turn taking that yellow cube from you and having you call me a name, it was kind of a guilty schadenfreude there for me after how you had kind of destroyed my old game. Right. Right. And for those of you who are paying attention to names and places, Dave ended up winning that game. Well, if you want to talk about why I took second, it's because I was given one extra income which pushed me into the higher tax bracket. Yeah, but it was Dave that did it.
So I don't remember when it was that we discovered that trick, but it can be pretty nasty. Like it's a gift that you then take back, right? And then some. What I thought was particularly interesting about the one that Dave did is that he had upgraded to the six train, even though he never had a six cube to deliver. And he's like, oh, that was a waste. But then in that final delivery, he's like, wait, I can deliver my five and then just add the six link to give Paul an income. Right.
Effectively minus three points. Yeah. Which he won by two points. So there you go. Right. But Greg, you even did something that I thought was really clever earlier in the game where you had overspent. And so you ended up having to go backwards on the track. And it basically was the two points you were going to go back anyway due to income reduction. Yeah. That was really well done. Oh, yeah. That was brilliant. I didn't plan for that.
But when it shows up, it's like, well, I can spend the extra two bucks that I won't be able to afford, but I'm going to go back in income anyway. So might as well. Yeah. Do I let this money go to the government or do I spend it? Just a lucky circumstance. I can't really take credit for any brilliance there. Well, I think you at least identified it and then you exploited it. So we'll give you full marks for it. I appreciate it.
All right, so engine building is not one of the mechanics on board game geek, although it applies here literally as a result. These kinds of games snowball towards the end. How extreme do you think this phenomenon is in Age of Steam? The snowball is heavily curtailed by loans. Yeah. But for the most part, it depends on the map and player count on that map. For example, when you play with fewer players, the snowball is going to be more extreme.
Like when we played Rust Belt with four, at the last turn, some of us have like 20 bucks and we don't know how to spend it. But the other night we played five players. That did not happen. Yeah. And some of us were at max loan and still struggling to build any track. And it was the same map, just a different player count. For me, I don't feel like it's so much a snowball. I mean, obviously you increase your income every turn, but it feels like a steady progress to me.
It doesn't feel like it snowballs into exponentially. Because of the loans, because of your cost of the loco, that potential exponential growth is really curtailed. And then when you get into cube scarcity, like Paul said, when there's more players on a map, it's sometimes... I've seen people go backwards on the last turn because they didn't have a cube to deliver and they got knocked back. Right. I'm like comparing it to say some splotter games.
So if you're thinking about the Great Zimbabwe or Food Chain Magnet, either one of those, they hockey stick at the end. Everything is basically a setup for the final round scoring and then see how many points you can score. And I agree with you, Greg, that I feel like this is more steady pace. Well, yeah, the only building you're doing is your locomotive, your literal engine building.
And if nobody else is taking your cubes, then I would say, yeah, you're snowballing, but other people can drink your milkshake. So that puts a stop to that. Yeah, I remember there was that one point late in the game where I looked down and I saw I had like a five link delivery with the black cube and it turned out three different people all wanted the same black cube. And I think Dave got it first. And then Greg, you were like, well, if he didn't take it, I was going to take it.
And I was like, ah, I never had a shot at it. No. So I actually have a question or something that I want to talk about because one of the things I find really interesting in this game is that you can't tell who's winning based on who's earning the most money. You have to not only look at who's earning the most money, but also who's taking the most loans. And that differential there is or few or well, most out of fewest.
Yeah. I mean, whoever's taking the most loans and has the highest income that right there is your best indicator of who's winning. And it's not always easy to see. One of the things I like about steam is it abstracts that out, steam the 2009 variant of age of steam and makes it a choice that you make every turn that you can choose to pay back your loans.
But it now becomes everybody's on this one little track and it's very easy to see who's winning based on who's got the best income or who's actually taking points. So I always find that kind of frustrating in age of steam that it's this weird calculation of income versus loans versus how many tracks people have built. And it's hard to tell who's in the lead. Right.
What do you guys think about that mechanism and also how that compares to say the mechanism in steam where they've abstracted that out? In general, I prefer games where it is difficult for me to determine who's winning because I think play is faster and people are more self-centered. When playing a game where it is easy to see who's winning, I feel like a lot of extra time is taken to min max how to beat down the leader. Yeah, bash the leader. Yeah. I would agree with that.
It's one of the reasons why games like the one we talked about last week, Great Western Trail are often interesting because there are so many contributors to the final score. It's hard to keep track of them all. I will say that the calculation for who wins this game is still not a complete mystery, but it still kind of baffles me that we're going to triple our income and then we're going to subtract triple the loans and then we're going to add in the tracks.
I don't even try to keep track of my own score. All I'm trying to do is make sure I have the money in the next turn to bid on and build the stuff I hope to build. Exactly. I like that about the game. Okay. Okay. So the 2009 variation of the game. The totally renamed train game. That's the one I have. You have the actual totally the one that has that title on it. It's called Martin Wallace's totally renamed train game. Yes. Nice. I have the Mayfair like standard edition from that year.
Moving on to the prompts. The first one is weighting complexity. So on board game geeks scale of one to five, of course, no decimals for this podcast. How heavy of a game would you say age of steam is? Greg, why don't you start us off? It's a four for me. There's a lot of complexity of the game.
I mean, it's relatively simple mechanics of just the fact that you can't always predict what other people are going to do and you'll have to, you know, if people get in your way, you're going to have to replan your whole turn sometimes and take a whole different route to the cubes you need or find different cubes entirely to deliver.
And the network of rails gets so complex towards the end and trying to figure out how you're going to maximize your gains and maybe give a little bit to somebody else. Yeah, it's a four. Paul, would you have the same? I give it a four. I think the rules are simple. However, playing well requires a lot of calculation and planning and then continuously recalculating and replanning because everybody else is drinking a milkshake. Right. You like that. I drink.
Somebody wants to play food chain magnate here. So I have it down as a four as well. And a lot of it has to do with appreciating the individual actions and how they can be used both offensively and defensively. And then there's just the tactics of understanding the auction and the old adage of once settled get definitely applies as you often find yourself having to bail out early and then choosing your second or third preference for action, which will revamp your actions for that entire turn.
Because there is so much reevaluation that needs to be done, I have it down as a four for weight as well. And to your point, before the auction, you had to make a plan and take out loans or that plan. Right. And how angry do we get if we end up with five dollars or more? Well, and then there's that dread that comes over you when you know, two people before you take two loans and they have like around 10 bucks and like, OK, I'm going big. I take 15 and the next person takes 20. It's like, right.
There go my plans. Absolutely. So how about strategy? How do you guys rate this game in terms of strategy? Same scale, one to five. I give it a five. And that's because everything starts in a known state. Not only do you know where all the cubes on the map are, you also know what cubes are going to come out at each city as the game progresses. The only thing you don't know is when they're going to come out or if they're going to come out. If the game.
Yeah, the game could end before they're rolled. That's true. So it allows you to to plan and plan and plan and then just have other people steal your plans or force you to change your plans. But yeah, I think it is very, very, very strategic. How about you, Greg? I have trouble having is thinking of any like five player game as a five just because there's too much player chaos to really plan that far ahead.
I mean, obviously you have your plans, you have goals that you want to do, but people are going to get in the way and you have to be flexible. You have to be tactical about what you do. I would probably put it at a four for that reason in a three player game and some of the maps that support three players. Well, then I would say, yeah, it bumps up intensity of strategy and it allows you to really get that extra level of long term planning. Yeah, I agree.
I mean, I want to say it's a five, but part of the delicious nature of this game is having to do the best with what you can get, and that means your strategy is going to have to change sometimes. So it's a strong four in my book. On to luck. How much do you think luck plays a factor? And I'll lead us off and say the only time that luck comes into play is a big one, and that's when you're determining where those new production goods will be placed. And Paul, you're right.
I mean, you can, you know where they're going to be placed, right? You can tell which colors are slated to go to certain cities, but that's only if that number gets rolled. And in games where we've been playing at equal levels, we've seen outcomes boil down to which cities received goods and allowed us to deliver a five or, you know, make a five or six link delivery. And someone else didn't get the benefit of production. And so their engine stalled. And so for that reason, I think luck is a two.
What do you guys think? I have it as a two as well. For me, it pretty much similar things. I mean, I've seen situations where I wanted a cube to come out this turn so I could make a four delivery. I had to settle for a three delivery and then next turn it comes out and somebody else makes a five delivery with it before I can use it. And so I get stuck kind of behind the curve there on keeping up with income. So it's so it does affect things, but it's it's rare cases.
For exactly the same reasons I rated a one for luck. What? Okay. Well, even down to drawing cubes out of the bag. You know what? You know what? I would rate a one for luck, Paul. I would rate steam a one for luck because you know exactly what cubes are and you have complete control over where they end up. But that's beside the point. You're just not going to let this one go, are you? This is this is something Paul and I have been I think we've actually settled it.
Finally, we used to kind of go back and forth about whether they were comparable games. I mean, I think it mostly depends on map. I get his points of it's a it's a one to five scale. It's not zero to five. It's not one to 100. It's one to five. So I think they're the same. Okay. All right. On to theme. So how much do we think the theme has been integrated with this game versus paste it on same scale one to five? Paul? I'm not sure. I just went with three a middling score.
You know, it's it's very much a train game. It has network and route building. It has deliveries. It has an income track. That's all I have to say about that. All right. Same here. Yeah. I don't feel like I'm, you know, a robber baron or anything like that. I'm playing a board game. I just it's a fun board game and it I can connect it to its background, but it doesn't, you know, it feels a little bit disconnected on some levels for me that I just can't rate higher than a three.
Okay. So for me, this is a bit of a crazy question. My preferred version to play has disks and cubes and simple maps without faux shading for plains or mountains. We substitute poker chips for the paper money. I actually have the I have two versions of the game. I have the 2008 version with the plastic trains and I don't like it as much. I mean, I might as well get rid of that one. Yeah. And yet the feeling of running a train company and competing to deliver those goods is 100 percent there.
So even though the components are simple and, you know, themselves aren't blinged out by today's standards, for me, the theme is still a four because I do feel like I am playing a train game and competing to deliver goods. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you talk about the bling and stuff like I think of railroad tycoon to me. That one is a four or maybe even a five on it on the theme because you've got the events going on.
You've got some random chaos going on from world and you've got differing barons that you're playing and then you've got the cool bits that you're putting out, you know, the water towers and everything. Right. You know, and so I still don't know that I feel like a robber baron in that, but it definitely like it evokes the time of the arrow in which you're playing in Age of Steam for me. Like, get rid of all that. I just want to play this game that's really fun and cool.
So it's nice that it's streamlined down to just disks and a more abstract map. I don't know. Like what came first, Age of Steam or games with a train theme? I mean, the answer is obvious, but for me, Age of Steam almost defines what train based board games are supposed to be. So I don't know. I mean, I would say that Francis Tresham did a great job getting the ball rolling in the 80s with 18, what was it? 29 was the first one and then 1830. Oh, for sure.
Yeah. But I wasn't playing that back then. No, but you were playing Railbaron. I was. I was playing Railbaron and Empire Builder. Yeah, back in those days. That's true. All right. So what's your favorite player count? What's this game best played at? For me, it's completely map dependent, so I have no answer. I would say it's map dependent, but I don't think there's any map that plays six players that I want to play. Oh, that was going to be my answer for the next one.
Okay. So favorite player counts map dependent, but least favorite player count. Yeah, I have yet to find a map that I think I would enjoy at six players. Yeah, exactly. Have you ever played a six player game? I have. Oh, well, to be fair, the six player game that I played was Steam. Okay. But, I mean, a lot of the mechanics are identical in the two games.
I've always played the standard version, which is, and yeah, it's just the time between turns and the downtime during the game and the amount of chaos and the way some parts of the map get really congested and other parts of the map maybe don't have enough activity and somebody gets run away of the game. I think it's really hard to balance it at that many players. Okay. Yeah, I mean, think about how there's only seven actions up for selection.
I think at six players, you're really stretching the limits of that auction mechanic. Right. Suddenly that first player option starts looking really good because the cost of going around again is exorbitantly high. Or turn order. That's what I meant. Yeah, turn order. Got it. And then you say, oh, yeah, no, I'm just going to play my turn order action now and you guys all get to bid again. Really powerful. Yeah, it's huge. So then what's the actual playing time?
I don't have good data, but it seems from my recent plays, it's about 30 minutes per player. All right. That sounds pretty fair. I don't track play times, but it's really player dependent or player count dependent. Player dependent too. That's very true. That felt like an attack. Shots fired. So I do track time and maybe I should just take this one question up because it seems like it's not much of an opinion question. It's just, okay, this is what the data says.
Over the last 12 to 15 plays, we're averaging a little over two hours with five players and a little over two and a half hours for four players. So that's pretty interesting because that says it's probably also map dependent because the number of things that you have to look at is influenced by how congested the map may be. Yeah. Decision space. That's wild. Maybe you have less decision space in five players. Right. The thing you wanted to do has been taken.
So you just have to do something else. You only have one viable option, even though it sucks. The game is also one fewer round. That's true. Also true. There we go. So it's interesting, but either way, if we're done in two hours, that's a good playing time for this game. A solid win. Yeah. So it's actually in alignment with the box saying it's going to be 120 to 180 minutes. I was surprised. A lot of times I feel like the estimated playing time is grossly underrepresented for experts only.
Yeah. Right. OK. So which edition of the game is the best? And Paul, you can start. Paul's going to give the right answer. So I don't think there's any doubt. Well, it's the 2019 Deluxe edition hands down. I mean, there's a reason I leave it. At the location we usually play at. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I love the map graphics. They're incredibly lucid, which I think increases speed of play and calculation time, honestly.
And I also really like the new boards to track your shares and good cubes in turn order. They're very well laid out. And I honestly hate the plastic trains from the 2008 edition. Yes. And I love the fact that they went back to just the discs that were present in the War Frog 2002 edition of the game. So I think the 2019 edition is also the best. And you backed the recent one, right, that has the acrylic tiles. Yes. I'm all in for everything Deluxe edition on H2.
Also the maps that they added, or not added, but that the large number of maps that they printed for the 2019 edition, I think makes a huge difference. You don't have to be scrounging around trying to find print and play maps or Bezier games maps or whatever. A lot of the best maps are right there and available. Yes. The volumes they release in, fewer number of SKUs means it's much easier for players to expand their collection.
And because of that, the 2019 edition ended for me the debate between Paul and I for Steam versus Age of Steam, because it's such a good edition. And having the variety of maps and fun maps to play, that's what matters most. Yep. All right. So while we're on the topic, why don't we talk about our favorite maps? Which ones do you guys, which one is your favorite? I mean, there are so many, we literally can't cover them all. So pick your favorite. Impossible.
Wait, can we do favorite per player count? Well, we don't have the time. Sophie's choice. Let's go pick your favorite. I honestly don't know what my favorite is. You know, France is the only map I feel like I've fully explored. Rust Belt and Montreal Metro are getting close. Hey, you're listing too many there. I think if I, I don't know. The maps I most want to play are the ones designed by Albin Viard. Okay. We have the moon waiting for us. So I guess I'll pick the moon. All right.
How about you Greg? Well, Paul already mentioned it. I would pick Montreal Metro. I like the three player maps. I like the maps that are really tight. But what makes it so special to me is that it's got a government track and government train. So it kind of gives you that four or five player experience with each turn, somebody different controls that fourth player. Oh, okay. And it's kind of, it's a really fun game. All right. I would go with the France map. I do like the France map quite a bit.
And I remember when we all had the realization that first build was hugely important on that map and got to get into Paris. Yep. We were thinking, oh no, it's Loco and it's urbanization. In fact, Paul, I think that's the map where we learned urbanization was we were overvaluing it early because we were paying for that. And then whoever got first build was actually setting up a better network. And urbanization was just kind of lost auction money that didn't return an immediate dividend.
Yeah. I think the engineer action is also really interesting on that map. And the fact that it gives you the ability to build through mountains rather than building extra track. Right. I mean, that's the great thing about a lot of the expansion maps is they change the special actions. I mean, that's why I noted Alvin Viard because he just goes way off the reservation and flips the age of scene system on its head with some of his maps, like Cyclades or human body. They're not what you expect.
It's no longer a train game when you play some of those maps. Right. What's the most recognizable comparison? So what's the highest ranking game that reminds you the most of age of steam? I'm actually going to say brass brass link. Sure. For me. What? Yeah. Just something you've been talking about steam all this time. Well, she was the same game. I'm sorry. It was the same game. It's it is they change just enough to call it a new game. It's the same game.
I really don't think of that as a different game. You can claim it as the most similar. But to me, you know, it's about like, what kind of gives a similar feel to me of like that slow struggle to build your economic engine and where you your opportunities come and go based on what other players are doing and you have to build a network out to reach things. So for me, brass kind of gives that same kind of feel. All right. Paul, what did you have?
Well, steam and Railways of the World are both in the top 750 or whatever it is. So yeah, Railways of the World. I still play today because it's on board game arena and I own my own copies as well. It basically re-implements age of steam, but it monkeys with the best part of the game, the auction, to be honest. So it becomes all about the rail building, the network building and balancing loans. But I still enjoy it. OK, I'm going to say here and I'm going to choose a non train themed game.
I'm going to go with power grid because it has the same cutthroat network building component. It also requires a calculator as a side component. And while the commodity isn't the same as the pick up and deliver mechanic in age of steam, you're still competing for access to those resources. And interestingly enough, those games are close contemporaries having been released in 2002 and 2004. So let's talk about a less recognizable comparison.
What do you guys have for one that reminds you of age of steam that perhaps is a little off the beaten path? So Paul was mentioning Albin VR and I can't I don't think we can walk away from this podcast without mentioning tramways. I don't want to call it streamlined. It feels like age of steam, but it's very different in a lot of ways. But yeah, definitely age of steam inspired and by a designer that knows the genre really well and it's a really fun game. That's a good call. What would you have?
I had to stick with the title. And so I think planet steam. But seriously, it's vaguely similar to network building because you're trying to build adjacent lots for synergies. But the real reason I picked it is because the planet steam auction creates just as many tragedies as the age of steam auction. Most notably when two players are continuously bidding each other up thinking that they want the same thing when they actually don't. Yeah, nice.
So again, I'm going to zag and this time I'm going to go with a more seaworthy theme. And for me it was container. And there you're not competing for goods the same way that you are in age of steam, but you are bidding for the opportunity to deliver those and it can be brutal. And the two games feel similar in that respect for me as far as the auctions that happen, how really vicious they can be and then trying to get your goods produced shipped for points. For me it's close. Okay, house rules.
How would you improve this game? Any thoughts there? Well, there's already, you know, hundreds of different house rules called expansion maps. Exactly. House rule iron clays. So there you go. So just create your own map and special actions. That's the house rule. Make an expansion. Make an official expansion and call it a house. Okay, that works. Yeah, but I would definitely say you want to play this with poker chips or something.
The 2019 version comes with those little mini poker chips, which probably are okay, but yeah, the plastic chips that came with some of the earlier versions or whatever. Or paper money in the 2002 one. Yeah. I'm thinking of the 2009 release of, but that's not really a rule. That's just playing better. No, that's a rule. It's like making horsey sounds in Yunnan. You got to do it. All right, so if this game is being played at game night, then what do you want to play afterwards?
What's the best double feature game to go along with Age of Steam? It really depends on the player count. I look back at some of the games we've played after Age of Steam and they were most recently Obsession, Roll for the Galaxy, Beyond the Sun, and Great Western Trail. So I don't think it's possible to pin down what the next game is going to be unless you know how many players you have. All right. What would you want that second game to be? Who, me?
Yeah, assuming you had the perfect number of players. Okay, I'll just make it Dune Imperium then. Okay, I'm going home. You guys enjoy. Well Greg, what game would you like to play? Oh, I don't know. I mean, I think I tend to prefer to play something a little lighter after this, but history shows we don't do that. Like you said, we played Beyond the Sun. I don't know that there's a perfect pairing with it.
For me, again, I don't feel like a strong, strong sense of theme, so I play any good, solid mid to heavyweight game after this and be happy. Right. Well, I thought your list of games was interesting because maybe you're playing this game when I'm not around because the last few times that we've played, we played Decrypto afterwards. And if I was to go with a game that in some way tied into Age of Steam, I'd probably pivot off of the auction and just go with modern art.
That's nice. But Decrypto, I wonder if you're playing this game without me. Well, right. One of us isn't around. All right. If you like fill in the blank and it could be a mechanic, it could be another idea of a game, then you're going to like Age of Steam. And I'll jump in here and say that if you like mid to heavyweight, pick up and deliver style games. So splotters like Indonesia would be another candidate for here.
If you like that kind of mechanism and weight, then I think you're going to like Age of Steam. What do you guys have, Greg? I have if you like network building and high stakes auctions, I think that those are the most interesting aspects of the game, trying to connect to the resources you want and trying to outwit other players in the auction. That's the essence of this game to me. What would you have? I think you need to like cutthroat competition along with network and route building.
Yeah, absolutely. So if you don't like fill in the blank, then you're not going to like it. I realize you could say the same thing twice and it would apply. Did you have a different answer for this one? I would say if you don't like slow economic growth and having to optimize things and settle for less often, you won't like this game. Yeah, I agree. I had unforgiving financial models. This game kicks you when you're up and it kicks you when you're down. You know, hashtag dirty laundry.
If you don't like that sense of I've made an unrecoverable error and I just can't find my way out for the rest of the game, you will experience that at some point in Age of Steam. It may not be every game, but there will come a game when you realize that things have gone terribly wrong. You're at max loans and you know, you can't afford to lay track. And that's one of the things I like about it is it's demanding, but you have to like demanding games.
So did this game replace a previous one for you? So for me, this is probably a better place to talk about how I didn't really like this game the first time I played it. It was okay. It found it enjoyable, but like I much preferred some other games I played around the same time, Railroad Tycoon, Union Pacific. I had a lot of fun with those.
It wasn't until I grew just a little bit more as a gamer and appreciated that tight economic engine and that kind of riding on the edge of barely being able to stay afloat that I really came to appreciate this. So for me, it replaced, I would say things like Railroad Tycoon and Union Pacific. Paul? Yeah, I mentioned it earlier. This game basically replaces Power Grid for me. Power Grid is quite similar, but I don't really care for the catch up mechanisms being designed into Power Grid.
If you want to play well, you have to sandbag certain turns to get the jump on everybody. Whereas Age of Steam, it's being balanced by the players and the auction and the milkshake drinking. Yeah, I had a answer similar to Craig's. So I said it muscled Railroad Tycoon slash Railways of the World out of my rotation. In fact, I hardly even think about those games anymore. So Age of Steam definitely replaced those for me.
Although I'm glad to hear that you're still playing Railways of the World on board game arena. I may have to give that a shot. Awesome. We'll have to get a group game together. Yep. Has this game since been replaced? And if so, by what? It's replaced itself with the Deluxe Edition. Yes, multiple times. First with Steam and then with 2019. Deluxe Edition. Okay. Yeah, fair. So then moving on to soundtrack. What music would you like to listen to while you're playing this one?
What did you guys have for this? This was tough for me. It was pretty easy for me. I would like to listen to the works of Philip Glass. He's associated with minimalism. Okay. And his music is built from repetitive phrasing and shifting layers. And I think that really describes the game of the Steam. So for those interested, you can start with soundtracks to The Illusionist or The Hours of movies that have come out.
Okay. Yeah, I think when I was doing my search for what might work well for me, I ran across The Illusionist. But what I ended up going with was the composer Abel, forgive me here, Abel Krasniowski. He did the soundtrack to the Penny Dreadful series and he's got some other stuff. I ran across this playlist on Spotify that was an Age of Steam galvanization playlist, but it also in parentheses said it was Victorian ambient romance, which I love that.
But yeah, that composer Abel Krasniowski, his music just has that kind of, there's a sense of that age of industry in there of like, you know, kind of a drive, a very repetitive drive going on through the music. But it's relaxing still and I like it. Okay. I'm looking forward to listening to some of that. For me, I want the music to be environmental and not distracting. And Spotify has a feature where every track has a radio playlist that contains similar songs to it.
So my starting point was a song called River Crossing from the True Grit soundtrack that was composed by Carter Burwell. And if you start there and then you select its radio playlist, you get a lot of similar songs that have the same era, tempo, composition. And I think it would work well with an industrialist game like this one. So things for us to all chase down. Yeah, I should start putting track links in the show notes for this. All right. We're almost done. Rating on a scale of one to 10.
How do you guys rate Age of Steam? It's a 10 now for me. And that's largely because of the Deluxe Edition, the clean, precise graphics and the volume packaging that we already talked about. Nice. Greg, what do you have it down as? Yeah, the Deluxe Edition brought it up to a nine for me. It's not quite a 10 because there are some of those maps, like, I mean, frankly, Rust Belt that just don't connect with me that I feel like are more of a slog than a fun experience.
But most of the time, yeah, I really enjoy this game and I'm always eager to try a new map. OK. I also had it down as a nine. The one thing that holds me back from calling it a 10 is that I feel a sense of impending doom each time this game comes off the shelf because it's just so unforgiving. But once I'm in it, I'm having a good time and I'm enjoying it and I'm trying to overcome those challenges. But there's just something that there's a little trepidation each time it comes up.
So the best it's going to do for me is a nine. All right. Finally, is this game replayable and how soon would you want to revisit it? Greg, go ahead. It is absolutely 100% replayable. Yeah. I mean, it's a really intense game. There's a lot of fun experiences on any of the maps. But if you're getting a little bit tired of a map, there's 150 more that you can go play and many of them readily available. Yeah, there's just so much to experience here and it's a lot of fun. I agree. Paul?
Yeah, it's an emphatic yes. That's why I leave my coffee place we game at. So if we could play every week or almost every week, I'd be very happy. Wow. Okay. I mean, I think it's replayable, but I couldn't play it every week. I mean, some game nights need to be doom free in my book. Well, but there are some maps that feel a little lighter to me, but I get what you're saying.
You know, yeah, that one, especially once you're kind of behind the curve and trying to figure out a way to slow down whoever's running away with it while still doing well yourself. It's impending doom is a perfect phrase for that. So the next week, we're going to be talking about a game that is contemporary time wise, but it's definitely a lot lighter and all cards. So I'm looking forward to that. Guys, thanks for being here and available today. That was a lot of fun. Thank you. My pleasure.
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