Railway Rivals

Railway Rivals
Railway Rivals
Designer(s) Glynn and David Watts
Publisher(s) Various publishers
Players 2–6
Age range 10+
Setup time 10 minutes
Playing time 90 minutes
Random chance Medium
Skill(s) required Strategic thought

Railway Rivals is a railroad-themed board game designed by Glynn and David Watts and popularised by Games Workshop in 1985. Players build railways and then run trains along them.

Contents

Gameplay

The game is in two stages; in the first part players draw tracks on the card using washable finetip pens (allowing the board to be cleaned for reuse). Players have a building allowance each turn; building through difficult terrain costs more moves. Players earn money for connecting cities to their railway network, and pay other players for connecting to or building alongside their track.

Once all cities are joined by railway tracks, the second part of the game starts. Players race their trains along the tracks between randomly-chosen pairs of cities; just as in real life, players must pay other players to use elements of their track if they don't have a complete route of their own. The choice of routes raced is random; each city is used one or more times. Money is awarded to the trains that arrive first and second, and the player with the most money when all routes have been raced is the winner.

History

Watts, a geography teacher, originally developed the game as a teaching aid to help students become familiar with the geography of industrialized countries and to try to demonstrate how geography and competition had resulted in lines being developed in some places but not others. He had self-published the game, initially in kit form (hex sheets and colouring instructions) for many years, from at least the early 1970s, before it was released in a boxed set. Trading as "Rostherne Games", Watts sold individual maps, together with brief instructions and the special dice required. Many maps were available, based on Watts' own encyclopedic knowledge of railway history, and each set in a specific geographical area, such as England, Scotland, Leeds to Liverpool, or India. The maps were made of laminated paper, and the Rostherne Games edition of Railway Rivals was both addictive and very cheap. During the height of the UK postal Diplomacy hobby in the 1980s and 1990s, Railway Rivals (with slightly adapted rules to allow for simultaneous building) was probably the second most widely-played game after Diplomacy itself, with several zines (including Watts' own Rostherne Games Review) dedicated principally to Railway Rivals.[citation needed]

In the 1980s, the game was formally published first by Butehorn and then by Schmidt Spiele (from 1981), both in Germany, and won the Spiel des Jahres in 1984. But it was the mass-market Games Workshop edition that brought it to many people's attention. The GW game board was made of laminated card, with a map of Central England on one side and the Western USA on the other; pens, dice and small plastic trains were also included. The game has subsequently been republished under its German name, Dampfross, initially by Laurin (1990) and then by Queen Games (1995). In 1998 Watts sold the rights to all Rostherne Games to Theo Clarke.

Maps

Initially, the towns on the maps were indexed by the 36 numbers 11-66, allowing a town to be randomly generated by rolling two standard dice. Some towns could have more than one index number associated with them; for example, on maps that included London, it was usual for London to have 4 or even 6 index numbers to reflect its size. As Watts' experience increased, map design got more complex. It became standard for a map to have six "special runs" to destinations at the edges of the map, or special classes of town (for example, sea ports). The first digit of a town's number was considered its "sector" and in postal games GMs would ensure that in the racing phase each sector would see one race to each other sector and one to a special run, to ensure a uniform distribution of the races. In the game's late-1980s and early-1990s heyday, Watts appeared to target a more "gamer" than "family" audience, producing maps on larger hex sheets and with 52 towns indexed by cards rather than the 42 given by the towns + special runs. This led to games taking longer to complete; this appears to have been unpopular with the market, as from 1992 on new map designs in general went back to having 36 towns + special runs and using smaller hex sheets. At this point Watts began to make more use of "small towns", towns which shared their index number with one other town and only scored 3 points rather than 6 for the first player to connect to them; this seems to have been a compromise to allow him to encourage the development of historically occurring tracks without lengthening the game.

The original maps are now out of print. Nevertheless, hundreds of after-market maps have been developed for Railway Rivals (including one for Middle-earth), and they can be developed straightforwardly by enthusiasts. It is also interesting to compare the results of games of Railway Rivals with the way that real railways developed in a particular area.

See also

External links


Preceded by
Scotland Yard
Spiel des Jahres
German "Game of the Year" Award

1984
Succeeded by
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Railway Rivals — Dampfross Daten zum Spiel Autor David Watts Verlag Rostherne Games (1973), Bütehorn (1979), Schmidt Spiele (1983), Games Workshop (1985), Alga (1986), Selecta Spel en Hobby (1986), Laurin Verlag (1992), Queen Games (1993) Erscheinungsjahr 1973,… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Cleveland Railway (England) — [v · d · …   Wikipedia

  • San Francisco Municipal Railway — Info Owner City and County of San Francisco Locale San Francisco …   Wikipedia

  • London and North Eastern Railway — The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest of the Big Four railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It existed from 1 January 1923 until nationalisation on 1 January 1948, when it was divided into the …   Wikipedia

  • Welsh Highland Railway restoration — The restoration of Welsh Highland Railway has a colourful and complex history. This article provides the modern history: Welsh Highland Railway LimitedAfter the 1944 winding up of the old 1922 company, a few articles appeared in the railway press …   Wikipedia

  • Southern Railway (Great Britain) — The Southern Railway (SR), was a British railway company established in the 1923 Grouping. It contained notable examples of civil engineering, linking London with the Channel ports, South West England and Kent. The railway was formed by the… …   Wikipedia

  • Baghdad Railway — Chemin de Fer Impérial Ottoman de Baghdad CIOB in red (CFOA route to İstanbul in blue) Baghdad railway circa 1900 1910 …   Wikipedia

  • Meon Valley Railway — [v · d · …   Wikipedia

  • Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway — The Duke of Wellington s train and other locomotives being readied for departure from Liverpool, 15 September 1830 The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L M) took place on 15 September 1830 …   Wikipedia

  • Pontypridd, Caerphilly and Newport Railway — The Pontypridd, Caerphilly and Newport Railway connected the collieries of the Aberdare and Rhondda valleys directly with the new Alexandra Docks at Newport.Using the Taff Vale Railway lines above Pontypridd, it ran on its own metals to Penrhos… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”