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Union Pacific by Alan R. Moon

UNION PACIFIC by Alan R. Moon art Franz Vohlwinkel publish Rio Grande / Amigo Players: 2-6 (best 3-6) Duration: 60-90 mins. Pace: Quick. Draw a card and add a train, or lay down two cards. Complexity: Medium. Short learning curve. Strategy changes depending on cards picked up and how others build railways and invest. Flexibility a must. Luck: Low. Timing seems very lucky (or unlucky) but player chooses to risk to push luck. Some luck in what cards get flipped up. Tension: High. Scoring rounds can happen any time. Cards obtained from hidden stack can steal lead for players. Vicious: Low. Stealing leads seems vicious, but it's a part of gameplay and the result of good planning. Social: Little. Quick pace and important to pay attention to each others plays requires concentration. Visuals: Good. Really nice board, nice plastic train engines. Some cards (grey, white, black & yellow, orange) hard to tell colors apart. Theme: Medium. Not horribly abstract, and the visuals create a neat sense of building a railraod empire. Great setting for the game. Gamer Appeal: Yes. Addictive. Non-G Appeal: Yes. Addictive. 2 players: Poor. With rules as written, not very good. Replay: Excellent. Each playing allows for wide variation of strategy, and the game is challenging. I've played 30+ times. Good with 3-6 players. Best with 4-6 players.

Gold Game

Quick summary | This game has a small learning curve as you understand the difference between 'building' and 'investing', but the rules are simple and easy to follow if you make a reference card with the two options listed with instructions. In the game, one may either build a new train route and take a stock card, or invest cards. Whoever is first or second in the holdings of a company gets payouts, and gameplay determines how much each railroad is worth (which changes from game to game allowing no surefire strategy.) The problem is you really need to get more stock cards to stay ahead of the other players, but the only way to get money (victory points) is to pass up a building turn in order to invest. Your "simple" decision every turn is utterly agonizing as a player often wants to do 4 or 5 different things, but may only do one per turn. Every playing has you convinced that one different move would have won the game for you. Since players determine how and where  the railroads develop, stratgies much change from game to game and turn to turn! Extremely popular with everyone I'v played it with because of nice graphics, and good strategy without being too hard to learn or having too much downtime.

This page by Yirmeyahu Avery