Railway Rivals
| Designer(s) | 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 David Watts and popularised by Games Workshop in 1985. Players build railways and then run trains along them.
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.
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.
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. In the UK, 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.
...
Wikipedia