gamergirl

When visiting my brother this weekend I was relieved to find he had my copy of Empire Builder–I was concerned I had lost it. I will admit it’s not a game for everyone, but I love it.

Empire Builder is played on a board that is essentially a blank outline map of North America, with ~50 cities filled in and a few natural features such as rivers and mountains, as well as a grid of dots. You, the player, are a railroad baron from the early days of the United States. Your job is to connect up 5 out of the 6 “major” cities with railroad track and earn a hefty chunk of change. You earn money by delivering cargoes and it takes money to build track, so there’s a lot of fun optimization decisions–”Hmm, connecting up my track here will cost 8 million but it will save me almost a full turn on delivering my cargo. Is it worth it?”

It’s one of those games that is easy to learn but tough to master, because you get a lot of ways you can succeed, but some are much worse than others. It does tend to take a while though, even if you play the accelerated version, which I do recommend. If you decide to play, settle in for a good 3-4 hour session. But it’s tremendous fun, enjoyable by a wide range of ages, and you draw your track on the board using crayons. I mean, crayons. Awesome, right?