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Had everyone (me, Dave, Mark, Jason, and Patch) over last Sunday for gaming. Up to bat was my new copy of Empire Builder: Europe (i.e., the new edition of Eurorails).

I have a long history with the ‘crayon rails’ series, having played a good number of Empire Builder games (and a few more on the expanded NA map), a few games of British Rails, many games of Eurorails, a couple games of Australia Rails, and one of Nippon Rails (admittedly, my last game would be ’94 or earlier). Dave’s parents really like the series, so he’s played a bunch. To my surprise, none of the others had ever played them.

Despite using the basic game and the ‘starter’ cards, and trying to nudge people on the start, this led to disaster. Mark and Patch both put themselves into positions of no money and no deliveries, and having to do turn ins for new cards.

Mark was tragic in that he was just a couple million short of a build that would have set him up with deliveries and cash. I’m not sure if he did anything ‘extra’ in his initial builds, or just had them in a ‘non optimal’ order, but it didn’t quite work. A few hand turn ins gave him something he could do, and from there he started growing and delivering properly, with a network in Germany and the Balkans.

Patch ended up trapped with a vestigial network in northern France and Germany and going across a ferry into London. He also ended up with 3 million, and no options, and turned in a dozen hands before we broke for lunch. While talking there, he mentioned the idea of a turn in also granting 1 million just so that it eventually get you unstuck for further options. Dave thought it was a great idea, and so did I once I had a minute to consider it. It’s still far less money than you should be making on a per turn basis, and it helps cut short the “churn phase” which all too often happens right after the initial deliveries, since if you pull something just out of reach you have better odds of getting to it.

Jason actually did well, with an initial network centered in Britain, and ferrying across to France. He didn’t do great after the initial rush, but kept making deliveries and expanding his line, eventually getting into Spain and Italy.

Dave started in Scandinavia, with a solid start, and kept his line going with new deliveries, and methodically building out to the other major cities. The main problem of course was a dependence on the ferries, which slowed down deliveries, but it’s the cost of doing business there.

I put together a fairly strong start, with the opening network running from Munich (I think?) to Kaliningrad. That gave me a decent reserve of money for the next few runs, and I build a bit more in central Europe before being lured to Toulouse for a good run, which let me build out for a run into Spain. In fact, my activity generally ran to big east-west runs that took time to do, but had good payouts. This gave me lots of motivation for a speed upgrade, but I was annoyed when everyone afforded theirs right after me.

The good news was that I was generally managing back-and-forth runs, so I wasn’t doing much deadheading. A big moment was getting to Porto and picking up all three fish tokens. Somehow, even Dave hadn’t realized that was possible. And I wasn’t just getting insurance, I actually had three different fish deliveries. Since there’s closer places in eastern Europe for fish, they weren’t massive contracts, but they were big enough, and three really added up.

Sadly, time was running short after a slow start, and the need for some people to leave was looming. I managed to squeeze us just enough time for two more massive turn ins in Porto and Seville, which just put me over at 203 million.

Afterword

Overall, the presentation of the new set is great. However, we had a lot of line drawing problems. The crayons provided only did a so-so job on the board surface, and there are places (generally around load logos, though with the coating, that shouldn’t matter) where they didn’t want to draw at all. I’m going to have to start testing pens to see if what I have will work.

Mostly it feels like the old Eurorails set. The new “key cities” are a good touch. The Chunnel looks interesting, but the cost kept us all away (I nearly used it to get to London, but thankfully stuck to a normal ferry, since I just didn’t have need to go there).

The ‘starter’ card sets are a good idea, but not well done. They do work together, but it’s not obvious how. I spent several minutes staring at my set and constantly reworking my plan before I came up with what is probably meant to be the opening set of deliveries when used together. So, I can’t say its any fault of new people not seeing what they’re supposed to do with them; it can be really hard to see.