A Quick Analysis of Age of Steam : Ireland
Age of Steam : Ireland comes into a two map expansion, produced by Warfrog in 2002. This expansion was number Expansion #1 and is the first of four official expansions released by Warfrog/Winsome Games LLC. There are only 2,000 copies of this expansion in the world, due to short-sightedness of Winsome and Martin Wallace on the popularity of the game. Incidently, there are only 3,000 copies of the 1st and 2nd edition of the Age of Steam base set in existance. This, coupled with the game being in the top ten of boardgamegeek ranking for donkey years, contributed to the sky high prices of the game and its expansions. Furthermore, the rift between Martin Wallace (AoS game designer) and Winsome Games have provoked price hikes on every available copies on sale. The announcement of the 3rd edition of Age of Steam didn't help either, as it will be produced by Mayfair games and will introduce a number of major changes that made the game evolved more into Railroad Tycoon than the Age of Steam that we know and love.
Based on the 2 plays of the Age of Steam Expansion #1 (Ireland/England) I clocked in so far, I can safely say that Ireland map is designed for 3-4 players in mind, while the England side of the map is designed for 5-6 players. For this article, I would presume that you already know how to play Age of Steam and since this article is about the Ireland map, I will leave out the England map for now. It will be covered in future articles.
There are several notable changes to the rules for the Ireland map. I have listed them out below.
a) Locomotive Action - This action has been changed to upgrading your locomotive twice but at the cost of moving goods (forfeit both move goods action during the move goods phase).
b) Deurbanization Action - There are no New Cities, so urbanization is not used. Instead, Deurbanization allows a player to remove one cube from any one city and put it back into the bag. This action must be performed at the beginning of the deliver cubes phase and is done twice (two cubes per round).
c) One Round Less - There is one less round to play when playing with Ireland map.
d) Brown Cities - Each brown city starts with a predetermined number of cubes. There shall be no more cubes appearing in these cities throughout the game. Cubes can pass through these cities but cannot end their movement there (Brown Cities are considered colorless).
e) Ferry Links - Ferry Links can be built to several (five) off-board locations. These links cost $6 to build and you can only build one of these per round. Building these links counts as one of your track lay and counts as 1 v.p. at the end of the game. All yellow, red and blue cities can only be accessed by ferry links.
That's it. Those are the rule changes for the Ireland map. Now we get nitty and gritty, analyzing each and every aspect of this map.
First up.
Deurbanization
This action, in my opinion, is the most powerful action in the game. This not only allows you to remove another player's 5 link delivery cube (and you get to do it twice too) but also force the other players to deliver cubes using your link, since all the other cubes have been deurbanized.
Ferry Links
Costing $6 to build a ferry link can be quite pricey, especially in the first round. But the only way you can access the yellow, red and blue cities is by building a ferry link. Each offboard city is linked by only 1 ferry link, except for the Blue/Red city, of which, two links can be built. So far, I have never seen anyone won by not building a ferry link. Ferry links are very important, especially in the late game.
Brown Cities
There are quite a number of brown cities on the map. The rest are colored cities, there are 10 of these colored cities in total (5 of them are off-board cities, 2 of them will have no new cubes place on them as they are not numbered). The Brown Cities are not numbered and instead have 2-3 cubes each at the start of the game. Once the cities dry up, there will be no more new cubes appearing in these cities. Cubes cannot end their movement here but can pass through these cities. These cities are not that important but are still needed as once all of the colored cities are taken up, you are forced to build into these cities.
In order to play this map really well, you must understand several things. That one : Deurbanization is very improtant and is usually the first pick (ask phuah or aanemesis). Two : Locomotive is a lot weaker in this expansion (AyHeng should know). And Three : Always build ferry links when you have the chance to. You might regret later if you don't.
That is all for this installment of The Zen of Boardgaming. Any feedbacks or ideas are appreciated.