Steam Power

Steam Power is Martin Wallace’s magnum opus Age of Steam simplified to become a family game. Well, not exactly. Indeed much is simplified, but some elements in Steam Power are just different. Some are a little like Brass. 

In Steam Power, you build your own rail network. You also build factories. Every city allows one specific factory type. When you build a factory, you place five goods next to it. Anyone can use these goods for fulfilling contracts. Your factory will score points at game end only if all its goods are used up. Your railroad network doesn’t score points directly, but they give you access to factories. When you fulfil a contract, you can use any goods accessible by your network for free. You can use goods outside your network but you’ll need to pay for using your opponent’s railroads to bring these goods to your network. 

The game ends when a player completes his 11th contract. You score points for completed contracts, fully utilised factories and major cities you connect to. During game setup, two unused city tiles augment the values of specific factory types. This creates variability from game to game.

Network building is competitive. You want to claim territory and access to cities. Access to major cities does give you points, but it is access to factories which is more important. You get to use goods at these factories for free. You are not limited to build factories within your network. You can build in others’ networks if you foresee there is demand for your goods and your opponents will be willing to use your goods even when they know they will be helping your factory score. 

This is a very clean design. Building factories is free. Building tracks is free as long as you avoid hills and mountains. You don’t use cash often, and this cuts down a lot of tedium. There is much board play. You have to analyse the distribution of goods production to decide how best to start and grow your network. There is a race to expand your network. There is also a race to fulfil contacts. You must watch your opponents and make sure the game ending doesn’t catch you off guard. 

Steam Power is quite a different beast from Age of Steam. It is lighter and the pace is brisk. It is not as unforgiving but it is still competitive. This works as a family strategy game. This deluxe edition that I played is very pretty and welcoming. 

Age of Steam: The French Riviera

On 29 Aug 2020, I joined an Age of Steam session organised by boardgamecafe.net. Age of Steam is Martin Wallace's classic, a game about starting your own railway business, and trying to get to break even point before going bankrupt. There are many expansions for Age of Steam, and The French Riviera is one designed by Alban Viard. The map is the south eastern part of France, along the Mediterranean coast. We did a full 6-player game, which is not for the faint of heart. We had five experienced players and one new player, Sook Yan. 6-player games are scary because the competition is intense. If not managed well, you can go bankrupt. This is a game about borrowing money from shareholders to run your business. You need to pay dividends every round. You are effectively borrowing more money every round to cover interest payment, and for the new money borrowed, there is already interest to pay at the end of the same round. You are digging an ever deeper hole for yourself. 

Notice the lighter hexes along the coast. It is more difficult to build tracks here, because only the player with the Engineer role may build tracks on these hexes. There are many cities along the coast. They have goods to be delivered, and they accept deliveries, but unfortunately access to them is restricted and hotly contested. There are many towns inland, but towns don't produce goods to be delivered nor do they accept goods. They will need to be urbanised to becomes cities first. With 6 players, it is impossible for everyone to be making deliveries in the first round. Someone will have to go with no income increase. One player playing Engineer will be able to secure a delivery route to or from a coastal city. One player doing Urbanisation can create a new city and do delivery to it. The other four will need to fight for what's left, which is not a lot.  

The photo above was taken in Round 1. Sook Yan (blue) won the Engineer role, and built a track to the city at the bottom right. She also started a track from a red coastal city at the lower left. Dennis (red) did Urbanisation at the upper right, placing the blue city B. 

Heng (purple) was the long-term planner. He built many short tracks, which was the ideal way to play. The tracks themselves would score more points, and also you want deliveries to be done via many stops. The more stops there are, the more you earn. It is not about how far you go. Heng did not deliver goods in the first round. He planned ahead to start delivering in Round 2. I (green) started at the lower right. Jeff (black) started in the middle, blocking my way. Sook Yan (blue) also blocked me from expanding towards the centre. I was a little stuck and had to start a new track at the lower left. Tim (yellow) initially started in the middle. In Round 2 he won the Engineer role, and started new tracks at the bottom left. Dennis (red) continued to dominate the upper right. 

From left: Sook Yan, Tim, Jeff, Dennis, Heng. It's pandemic time, so it's face masks all the way. 

The veterans tended to be better concentrated, in order to plan for longer deliveries. Heng (purple) at the upper left, Tim (yellow) at the lower left and Dennis (red) at the upper right. Jeff (black) dominated the centre, which was a good thing because if many people had to borrow his tracks for east-west deliveries, he stood to gain much. I (green) was supposed to be a veteran, but my network was messy. I had two disjointed networks, and I was not quite able to set up any good long distance deliveries. Sook Yan's (blue) network was a little like mine - disjointed too. 

In a 6-player game, the bidding phase is tense. It determines turn order for the round. It decides who picks roles first, who builds tracks first, and who delivers goods first. Turn order is crucial. If you are behind, you may not get the role you desperately need, you may not be able to build where you want, and that lucrative goods cube you are planning to deliver may be snapped up by your opponent. When the bidding phase concludes, only 1st and 2nd place players pay their full bids. Everyone else only pays half, except the last player who pays nothing. Paying the full bid and paying just half is a huge difference. Sometimes you make a higher bid hoping to win 3rd place and thus pay only half. However you might "accidentally" win 2nd place and end up having to pay full price, which can be painful. 

One special power in the game is the passing power during bidding. It lets you sit out of the bidding just once. Normally when your turn comes, you must either bid a higher amount than the previous highest bidder, or drop out. If you drop out, you take the remaining lowest position. If you up your bid, you continue to compete and hope others drop out before your turn comes again. The passing power is handy because after you sit out for just once, you will likely see quite a few other people dropping out. So you can earn a decent position without spending a single cent. Usually this passing power doesn't sound too sexy. In a 6-player game though, it can save you a lot of money. Picking it is setting yourself up for a strong position in the next round. 

Sook Yan (blue) and my (green) positions on the board did not look so good. So when other players needed to borrow other people's tracks for delivering goods, they preferred to help either Sook Yan or me. It's always preferable to help the trailing players if you are forced to help someone. I benefited much from this. I hadn't realised that my tracks were that well positioned. Certainly when I built them, they did not seem like choke points. I think it was the goods production that created new opportunities for my tracks. When others helped me by giving me just a $1 increase in income, it didn't feel like much. However these gradually added up, and I found myself having a strong income. My delivery capacity grew slowly. Even towards game end I was only making 3-step and 4-step deliveries (max is 6-step). 

We started breaking even about 70% into the game, and I was among the first batch to achieve this. I quickly halted issuing shares, preferring to be frugal. Each share issued would cost me 3VP at game end, and I wanted to minimise this penalty. Eventually it was all the small boosts that others gave me which won me the game. I was surprised how things turned around for me. I didn't do so well in the early game, and had expected to come in 3rd or 4th at best. In a 6-player game, leeching off other people can be super effective! 

At game end, the board was almost full! We were scoring the tracks now and for ease of counting we removed the player discs once the corresponding tracks were scored. 

Age of Steam Deluxe Edition (2019)

Age of Steam is Martin Wallace's magnum opus and a classic. I bought it many years ago, and bought a few expansions too. A deluxe version was released in 2019, and I managed to play a copy. So here are photos of this very nice deluxe version.

7 Feb 2020. We played the Switzerland map. This was the first time I played this map. One unique aspect is all rail tracks are the same price. In the normal game, simpler tracks are cheaper, and complex tracks more expensive. I guess one way to look at this is this makes the game easier to learn because you don't need to worry about the different types of tracks. This map is tough though, because tracks are expensive, despite the flat rate.

The red borders are impassable. So are the grey mountains. These add to the challenge too.

The three side boards are designed following the flow of a game round. I find this helpful in teaching the game. This is the first side board. It covers the first three phases of a round - issuing shares to raise money, bidding for player order, and selecting your special action.

This is the second side board, and it only covers one phase - building tracks. Normally the price differs depending on the type of track tile you want to place. In the case of Switzerland, the price is fixed so you can ignore most of this board.

The third side board covers goods delivery, income, expenses, income reduction and goods growth. The markers at the top indicate each player's train capacity, i.e. how many links he can move a cube.

The money is designed to look like poker chips, which is nice. The size is much smaller than standard poker chips.

The red lines are tricky. After you place track tiles onto the board, they are easily blocked. So you must check carefully when you plan to build tracks. In this game I miscalculated once because I didn't realise there was a red line where I was planning to extend my tracks.

These two pre-printed stretches of tracks are tunnels. They are initially not in play, and take effect only by a certain round. This is yet another unique aspect of the Switzerland map. The white circles are towns. You can connect tracks to towns. Towns can be upgraded to become cities (coloured hexes). You may deliver cubes to cities but not to towns.

In the first half of the game we only developed the northern half of the map, where there were more cities and towns, and goods too.

Julian (yellow) connected to that multi-coloured city, which was a good thing. These cities accepted multiple types of cubes, which was convenient. When delivering goods, it is not necessary to use only your own tracks. You may use tracks belonging to other players, just that for these stretches, they will be getting the income growth and not you. Ainul (red) had a short track linking the blue and purple cities near each other. That tiny little track did much business in our game because I kept using it. It was a critical link between the eastern and western halves of the rail network.

I (green) was planning to connect to that multi-coloured city at the bottom left, but Julian (yellow) beat me to it.

In this photo you can see why I (green) had such a big dependency on Ainul's (red) strategically placed track. It was right in the middle of my long delivery route. I gave him much business.

Tracks need not be completed within the same round. You can build halfway and continue next round. Blue and red both currently have half built tracks.

Heng (blue) had issued 15 shares, which was the max, and could issue no more.

One scary thing about Age of Steam is Income Reduction. Every round, your painstakingly built income level drops. This happens as soon as your income exceeds 10. The higher your income, the more it is reduced. This mechanism is explained as inflation. I think it is there for game balance, and to keep you on your toes. Sometimes you intentionally hold back just to avoid the penalty. E.g. you may choose to strive for income level 20 instead of 21. At 20, it will be reduced by 2 to 18, but at 21, it will be reduced by 4 to 17! There is still a difference. For that round, you will earn $1 more, before the income reduction is done. Sometimes that does make a difference.

We started developing in the southern half. The northern half was getting saturated. Many towns had been upgraded to cities.

Cubes (goods) become more and more scarce as players deliver them. As the game progresses, some cubes become less and less attractive because players want to go for the long distance deliveries. Some deliveries are not lucrative at all. There is a mechanism which adds goods to the map. This goods growth is done once per round, and there is some randomness in which cities would produce goods. You know what's coming next at each city, but you don't know whether each specific city will produce, and if it does, how many. Goods for this goods growth phase come from a side board, and there is one player action which allows you to replenish goods on that side board. You draw cubes from a bag and decide where to place them. You may not get the colours you want. Even if you do, and you place them at your preferred cities, those cities may not produce and the goods would remain in the queue. This mechanism is the only aspect in the game where you have some randomness (die rolls).

In this photo, some cities had run out of goods, and some previously depleted cities now had new goods added.

Lugano in this far corner never had anyone building any train tracks for it, so the goods here never got delivered.

The white discs are towns, and they are the same thing as the white circles printed on the map. It is just that when you build tracks to the towns, you need to use the white discs to represent them. Later if you upgrade the town to a city, you remove both the white disc and the track tile under it, and place a coloured hex instead.

My table - Heng, me, Julian and Ainul.

The other table - Tim, Jeff and Kareem.

The other table played the Panama map.

They played much more quickly than we did, and managed to play a second map - Vietnam. Those black hexes are flooding I think.

in photos: Age of Steam, 6 Nimmt / Category 5, Through the Ages

4 Jun 2014. I bought four 2-player maps for Age of Steam quite some time ago, but had only played one of them. I took some days off work recently, and took the opportunity to play these 2P maps with my wife Michelle. This is the Antebellum Louisiana map. Only three types of goods are used - red, blue, black. The map starts with only two cities and no towns. One special rule for this map is you can spend money to build towns, which can then be urbanised to become cities. The two starting cities are so far apart that it's not feasible to build one long track to link them up. Intermediate stops are needed.

I issued shares aggressively to gain cash, and I spent them on bidding for turn order, grabbing the urbanisation action, building towns, urbanising them to become cities, and picking goods to deliver. I did this in the first two rounds, and then realised I had made a grave mistake. I had issued too many shares and spent too much money, and I was not making enough profit. I ended up in the embarrassing situation of borrowing money to pay interests. That of course led me into a downward spiral, and eventually I went bankrupt! Disgraceful! In the mean time, Michelle simply piggy-backed on the new cities I built, building tracks cheaply, and still being able to deliver some goods. She reached the breakeven point, so she could do nothing and still win, because I was already digging my own grave. She only had to wave and smile while I crashed and burned.

My (green) income level dropped back to zero because I did not have enough cash on hand to pay dividends, and when I went negative, I was out of the game for being bankrupt.

I asked for a rematch, this time on the 1867 Georgia Reconstruction map. This map uses 3 goods types too, and also starts with two cities. What is unique here is there are some unfinished tracks which players can claim by finishing them. In this game I focused on developing the area between the two starting cities. At this point two towns have been urbanised to become cities A and C.

Most of the competition was in the corridor where the two starting cities were located, on the right side. Later when we expanded to the left side, it was not for making money. It was only for scoring points. There were no cities on the left where we could deliver goods. Michelle and I were on par in delivering goods and making money. However she (red) did much better in building more tracks and longer tracks. Eventually she won the game with a comfortable margin.

The red goods on the red cities were mostly untouched. The two red cities were right next to each other, so there was not much incentive to deliver the red goods. Such a one-route delivery would only increase profitability by $1. Now I had just built a new track from the red 123 city to the town on its lower left. This new track opened up new opportunities. I could deliver a red good in a roundabout way, all the way to the blue 456 city and then back to the other red city just next door. This was good for me, but unfortunately it was equally good for Michelle. She could do similar deliveries. So this move didn't help me gain on her at all.

8 Jun 2014. I taught my children and my niece to play Category 5 (6 Nimmt / Take 6). This is an old classic from Wolfgang Kramer, probably 20 years old.

12 Jun 2014. I think Chen Rui (7) doesn't quite get the longer term strategies in Category yet, e.g. it is not just about playing a card that won't get you into trouble now, it is also about making sure the other cards left in your hand which you will eventually have to play won't get you into trouble (or at least not too much trouble). She took many cards from the table (which is a bad thing).

On the other hand, Shee Yun (9) when playing this game kept saying she needed to think carefully. I'm glad that games are triggering her to strategise and to plan.

Chen Rui asked her elder sister for help, but when Shee Yun picked a card for her, she picked a wrong one by mistake, causing Chen Rui to take more cards. Oops!

Feeling defeated.

13 Jun 2014. There was a period when Michelle and I played Through the Ages intensively. During the recent holiday I brought it out again, and it was still as great as ever. Michelle and I play a peculiar peaceful variant. In the official peaceful variant, aggression and war cards are removed from the game. In our version we don't attack each other, but these (now useless) cards stay in the game. I suppose we keep them just in case. If at some point one of us decides to break the truce and attack, then the option is available. It is a little absurd - we are setting a rule which we may break. In practise, I think Michelle only broke the peace once, in one particular game where she was trailing by a wide margin. I don't remember whether that attack won her the game. Probably not. But at least she felt better. I think we should just use the official variant.

In this particular game, we did a lot of colonising. Michelle founded four colonies (dark green cards, upper left). I had three (lower right). I had a good start, while Michelle struggled in the early game, because she was a little rusty, not only in Through the Ages but in boardgaming in general. However she did better and better by mid game, and soon commanded a strong lead. Her empire generated more science and more culture. We competed in military strength and neither of us managed to stay on top for long. Near the end of the game, I built the First Space Flight wonder (purple card, lower left), which gave me 33VP's. It catapulted me to the front, and won me the game. I was surprised how many points it gave me. By mid game I had been expecting to lose because overall Michelle was doing better than me.

Age of Steam: Korea with 5P

Fri 27 Sep 2013. I went to OTK (Boardgamecafe.net) because Jeff was doing a Martin Wallace night. He has been doing such themed game sessions frequently for the Friday night sessions, e.g. outer space theme, Kickstarter games, GMT games. Allen was thinking about getting Age of Steam. I have a copy, so I suggested why not try it before deciding. When we arrived, Heng was there, and the three of us decided to try the Korean map. The map in the base game is probably a bit too big for 3 players - not competitive enough. While setting up and explaining the rules, Ivan arrived. I asked whether he was interested to join us. He said yes. He has played Steam before, so we only needed to explain to him the few differences. Then as we were about to start, Jeff arrived, and wanted to play too. I couldn't recall whether Korea was suitable for 5 players. I knew it was a tough and tight map, but I couldn't find anything in the rules that said it could only support up to four. I was too lazy to switch to a different map, now that everything had been set up, so we decided, what the heck, let's just jump in. We'd know soon enough whether anyone would go bankrupt. It would be a fun experiment.

The Korean map is tough because building tracks on hills costs $3 extra, not the $2 extra in the basic rules. This $1 difference is a big deal. And Korea has many many hills. The few plains will be hotly contested and will be claimed quickly. The other important difference is that the demand of cities fluctuate. What a city demands depends on what cubes are on it. In the basic game, every city has a fixed demand for one particular colour. In Korea, a city may demand many types of goods (if it has many different coloured cubes), or it may even accept no goods (if it has no cubes). The demand changes when cubes are shipped away by players, and when cubes are added during the production phase. This demand fluctuation makes planning more challenging. You can easily get screwed by your opponents' goods delivery actions.

These are the tracks built in Round 1. Allen (blue) bid and paid for 1st player privilege. He built on plains, in the south east (upper right of this photo), and also in the centre. Jeff (black) went next, and built tracks mainly in the centre. I think he was hoping to keep his options open, giving himself many possible directions for expansion. Ivan (yellow) was third, and also had the Urbanisation action. That gave some flexibility. He built city E, and he started his railroad company in the south west (lower right). I (green) didn't have many options left, especially due to how the initial cubes were seeded. I wanted to make sure I could deliver something in the first round. I built in the north. Heng's (red) options were worse. He decided to build in the north east. Our networks were connected, which meant we had to compete head-to-head right from the start. I shipped away a purple cube in White City 1, which screwed him up because that meant he couldn't deliver the purple cube from White City 2 to White City 1 anymore. In Age of Steam, every little bit of income in the early game is crucial.

From left: Heng (red), Jeff (black), Allen (blue), Ivan (yellow). When you see people standing up to see the macro view and contemplating their moves so seriously, you know this is not an easy game.

From left: Allen (blue), Ivan (yellow), me (green), Heng (red). I think everybody was thinking "I'm screwed"... (photo courtesy of www.boardgamecafe.net)

On the Korean map there are two special links between Inchon, Suwon and Seoul, the three grey hexes connected to one another. Placing an ownership disk between two hexes is considered building a link between them, and this costs $2. I (green) made use of this, and later in the game it helped me tremendously in making long-distance deliveries. Plus, they are cheap too. I tried to expand southwards, but didn't manage to get far, because I was blocked by Jeff (black). Jeff himself was badly hemmed in too, blocked by Ivan (yellow) who was expanding northwards from the south.

Allen (blue) did not get much competition. I think it was partially because it was hard to try to compete in the south east. There weren't many cities available. Ivan (yellow) did try to block him by establishing a second network along the eastern coast.

Heng (red) connected to Pyongyang in the north. His had little space for expansion, and he was threatened by Ivan (yellow) creeping up along the eastern coast too.

Game end. Heng (red) grabbed the initiative and blocked off Ivan's (yellow) advance towards White City 2 in the north east. After a few twists and turns, I (green) managed to reach that city, and even managed to make a long distance delivery using that city. Jeff (black) eventually did manage to expand towards the south. Allen (blue) mostly stuck to the south, happily making money without being threatened much by others.

End game score. The company incomes were close throughout most of the game. We all struggled and we kept issuing shares. Towards the end I managed to make some long distance deliveries, which helped to push me slightly ahead. I always remember Age of Steam as being about these long deliveries, so I was a little puzzled why others weren't upgrading their trains. I was the only one with Level 6 trains. In hindsight, I think they were less aggressive in upgrading because it was hard to find opportunities for long distance deliveries. If they upgraded their trains too aggressively, they might only end up paying more maintenance fees and not really making use of their tech. The Inchon-Suwon-Seoul links helped me a lot.

I (green) won the game with more than 50VP. Allen (blue) and Ivan (yellow) had the same score, and Allen won by tiebreaker (cash). Jeff (black) and Heng (red) were both quite badly hemmed in, and came in 4th and 5th. Heng issued shares up to the limit of 15. Korea is a tough map!

In conclusion, it is possible for 5 players to play the Korean map, just that it will be brutal. Ideal player count is probably four.

Also see Jeff's account of this game.