Stephenson’s Rocket First Impressions

Stephenson’s Rocket see you build tracks and connect them to stations, towns and cities.

This is NOT a friendly game.

Seven different rail companies are expanded by players over the game. Each time you extend a rail, the other stockholders can veto your action, but it might cost them their shares.

Stephenson’s Rocket Summary

You’re extending train lines, investing in industries and building stations but this isn’t really a train game.

Not like Age of Steam which is a REAL train game if that makes sense. There you are route building and investing but it feels like a financial-style game. Stephenson’s Rocket is a more mechanical game.

It’s actually closer to Mini Rails but obviously more complex. There you are also cooperatively building routes while screwing each other over.

The game is simple and the mechanisms are a quick teach. The scoring is not.

There are not many actions and easy action is straightforward and quick… turns are quick.

But scoring, control, merging etc is a nightmare. There is a lot to teach, and a lot to track and it only gets worse as the companies merge.

A LARGE part of the game is negotiation and diplomacy. You need to steer companies you can score into decent locations on the board. If you have no interest in that company, you’re ll want to steer them away.

The negotiation part only works as well as the players make it work. In a game, 1 player convinced everyone to stop me from gaining 2 points, so they did. My pleas of “but they’ll get 15” fell on deaf ears. That player won.

So what was the point?

The game wasn’t played in the right spirit for me and it has Alpha gamer and King Maker written all over it.

Maybe it’s just too mean for me, but it does seem like a good idea for a game.

Jesta ThaRogue