Although I’ve played Airlines many times, I’ve never got around to trying Union Pacific so I set out to remedy that this week. Six of us set out to make our fortunes buying up railway stock.

In UP, players are building train routes across the USA for 10 train companies and buying up shares in those companies. There is also an 11th company, the Union Pacific, in which you can buy shares but no routes are built. You are basically trying to gain stock majorities in those companies in order to gain dividends that are awarded four times in the game to the highest and second highest shareholders in those companies. Whoever accumulates the most in dividends by the end of the game is the winner.

The UP stock gets very valuable in the middle- to end-game and, after a slow start when no-one bought UP shares, once they started to be snapped up there was a deluge. The first dividend saw John take a slight lead by being able to gain first and second majority in one of the biggest companies. Timing is everything in this game. Predicting when the next dividend is going to be called and slapping down stock just in time will often see you do well. Mark K kept missing out, while I scored well especially in the third dividend. However, by that time, I knew Nige had the UP majority sewn up and he took no chances by declaring his remaining interests immediately after the third dividend. John did likewise, moving him into second place in the UP, and then proceeded to draw the final dividend card. When the tallies were made, John and Nige were tied but I had just held on thanks to my good third round scoring.

Union Pacific is a good game and is very similar to Airlines. Those of us that had played both had a slight preference for the earlier game (Airlines) as I think it is slightly more streamlined. However, UP does add an interesting extra element and is very nicely produced. Definitely one to play again.