TransAmerica Board Game First Impressions

“The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad.”

~ John Moody

TransAmerica is a very simple railway game. Each player has a set of 5 cities strung across the US that need to be connected by rail. Players place either 1 or 2 rails each turn. The game ends when the first player completes a connected route between his 5 cities. The player who can make the best use of the other players’ networks is generally victorious.

Well, that’s the game, my work is done 🙂

The board is set up with the different cities with the North, South, East, West and Central areas in a different colour for each. Each of these sets of cities has a deck of cards and each player will end up with one of each city, secret from the other players.

How this happens was a point of great controversy around the table 🙂 Random draw or draft? We drafted, so we could try and craft a ‘better’ route, maybe this is less random than just dealing them out. Where the difference of 1 ‘stick’ is the difference between winning and losing it should really be up to you to make that happen…

Gameplay

So TransAmerica is a very simple game, starting with the first player you take turns to place a station (those wooden cylinders, at least I think it’s a station) of your colour. Then you go around the table placing 1 or 2 tracks anywhere on the board as long as a ‘legal’ route can be traced back to your station from that track.

As players play tracks you’ll end up connecting to other players’ routes. You can piggyback off them and add onto their track. But again, you need to be able to track a route back to your station.

Tough Terrain

As you can see, some tracks over the mountains, water etc have double lines. These count as using 2 pieces of track, which is one full turn…

A good part of the game is from the ‘Vexation’ expansion where you have track pieces in your colour…

You have 3 at the start of the game and you can place these instead of a generic black piece. Only you can use these bits when building a route so you can try and place them to cut people off.

Once a player has finished their routes the game ends. You gain points for each track piece you’re short of finishing your routes. After 3 rounds, the player with the least points wins.

TransAmerica Summary

Firstly, ending the game when one player finishes their route is pretty poor. The player that won was second in turn order. But, both 3rd and 4th would also have finished if there were even turns.

But, as simple as TransAmerica is it’s pretty fun. It’s like Ticket to Ride without the scoring and card drafting. The addition of that little expansion seems quite important and for 3 little wooden bits, it adds a lot.

I only had time to play one round before having to get my bus. But still, good fun and I’m looking forward to trying a full game one day.

Jesta ThaRogue