Last night I had a bunch of friends over and we played Jeremiah’s copy of Steam. Steam is a reworking of the game Age of Steam, both by Martin Wallace.

Steam is a pick up and deliver game where you build track between cities or towns. Once you have connected cities together, you claim the track between them as your own. You can see several tracks claimed by the coloured locomotives on the tracks below.

After the tracks are in place, you can deliver the goods that are on the cities to get points or more money to finance your railway.

The board shown here is the America expansion board from Age of Steam. Even though the games have important differences many of the expansion boards work with both games.

I was smack in the middle of the winners, which is a kind way of saying I was in third place. I think that Steam will take several more plays before I can understand the dynamics of the game.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the game very much and look forward to playing it again.

If you are thinking of buying a train game, this would be a great addition to your collection. I wouldn’t recommend it as the first train game, though, as it can be a bit of a brain burner. You might want to start with Ticket to Ride: Europe or Railways of the World: The Card Game, which are both fine games with many interesting strategies.