Game Review - Empire Builder

Empire Builder
Number of Players	2 - 6
Play Time	180 minutes
Ages	12 years and up

It is time to review another train game.  More specifically it is time to review another game in the Empire Builder series.  This time it will be the most recent addition of the game that started the series, Empire Builder.

In the game the players own railroad companies that are competing to build rail lines and move freight from one city to another based on a set of demand cards that they have.  Once a demand on a demand card is completed the player discards it and draws a new one from the deck.  Included in the demand card deck are a number of disaster cards which include things like derailments and river floods which impede the player’s progress to victory.

When the game was first released back in 1980, it only included the United States.  As time went by, the game expanded to include first Canada then Mexico.  The current edition of the game includes cosmetic changes and changes to the contract deck to make the deck more balanced.  Please note that they claim to balance the contract deck in every new edition of any game in this series.  The only one I could ever tell that this happened it the most recent edition of Eurorails.

The cosmetic changes that they made are in the load chips.  In previous editions the loads were printed in black and white on stickers that the players would then have to add to the chips before they played for the first time.  In the current edition, they provided chips that were preprinted but also color coded.  The colors were by load types:  green for plants, black for livestock, purple, for minerals, and orange for finished goods.  This is a welcome change because it makes it easier to identify the loads in the bank you also do not have to spend the time before the first game adding the labels to the chips yourself.  The only problem is that the quality of the printing is not all that great.  In many cases, it looks like they did not wait for the chips to dry before they put them in the box for shipping.  There were instances where chips were stuck together and the printing was blurry and not centered properly on the chip.  A little better quality control on the part of Mayfair would take care of these issues.

The game play is still the same, the player moves their train on the board, and then builds any additional track they need before passing the turn.  The game can be slow for players that are new to the game, mostly because they are not familiar with where the loads originate from.  I always recommend that new players play with the fast start rules to help speed the game along.  In the case of Empire Builder those fast start rules are the starting money increases from $50 million to $70 million, there are 3 build turns at the start of the game instead of two, the train speed increases from 9 to 12 for Freight and Heavy Freight and 12 to 16 for Fast and Super Freight, and the Tax Card is ignored.

I find Empire Builder to be an enjoyable game.  I like the free form building of track and find it enjoyable to see the different ways the people build out their track.  I recommend this game as the first on the people who live in the United States try because it should be the geography that they are most familiar with and it is the no frills version of the game.  There are no special rules that one needs to know when playing Empire Builder. 

I always recommend that you play with someone who is experienced with the game and is an able teacher of it the first time you play.  Doing this will help you learn the game more quickly.