One of the good things about Essen is catching up with Martin Wallace and the Warfrog crowd; one of the bad things (not really) is having Geoff Brown trying to persuade you to buy the latest Warfrog game. This year was no exception but I was happy on this occasion to give in without too much of a fight, because Age Of Steam looked pretty promising. We got our first chance to try it out this week and I was pretty impressed. This is a train game about developing a rail network in the North East United States and shipping goods between the developing cities to make money. And a tricky job it is too, because money is only available by issuing shares in your company and weighing up how few shares you can issue to provide the working capital you need is finely balanced. Too little cash prevents you from getting the more lucrative special actions and developing your network. Too much and you are paying out too much in expenses at the end of the year, as well as limiting your end of game victory points.

The 5 player game is played over 7 rounds, each of which involves in sequence issuing shares, bidding for player order, selecting a special action for the round, building track, shipping goods, collecting income/paying expenses and resupplying the cities with goods for shipping in future turns. The player order bidding can be critical and with cash being extremely tight, some agonising decisions are required. As you ship goods you are rewarded with an increase in income per turn and it is this earning capacity which translates at the end of the game into victory points, with adjustments for the number of shares in issue and the efficiency of your rail network.

In our game, we had a big competition between four of us in the centre and East. Mark G went it alone west of the Mississippi and benefitted from a plentiful supply of blue goods for shipping between Minneapolis, Des Moines and Kansas City. Meanwhile, around the Great Lakes, I cut Nige off from Chicago and he stopped me from developing North and East of Michigan City. At the end of round 2, Mark K and Nige misjudged their finances and were unable to pay their expenses out of cash. Both lost ground on the income track - definitely not recommended. Running out of time, we agreed to stop at the end of round 4 with me ahead on the income track but behind Mark G when the share issues had been subtracted. Nige was a bit behind but had a nice network in the North which would have benefitted him in later rounds.

All in all, a very good game which we all believe we would play better after this initial learning game. We all made significant mistakes, especially allowing Mark G such a free hand in the West. This could turn out to be my favourite of Martin Wallace's games.