Pyramid Review
TransAmerica: One Step Ahead
Published by Rio Grande Games
Created by Franz-Benno Delonge
$24.95
One of the three finalists for this year's Spiel des Jahres Game of the Year award was TransAmerica. This latest boardgame from Rio Grande Games is about laying the first railroads across America in the 19th century. The aim is to lay a network that connects five different cities before anyone else can and avoid losing points. The player with the most points after a number of rounds will be the winner.
Designed for two to six players, TransAmerica is, like all titles from Rio Grande, beautifully packaged and equipped. The box contains:
- One game board
- 85 track pieces
- 35 city cards
- Six start markers
- Six locomotives
- One starting player card
- One set of the game rules
The board depicts all of the USA in full color, bar Florida south of Jacksonville. There are 35 are marked in five different colors, and divided into Northern, Eastern, Southern, Western, and Central regions. A regular triangular grid connects all of these cities. Where the lines of this grid cross mountain ranges or rivers, a double line marks the location of a tunnel or a bridge. At the top of the board is a scoring track that runs out of the engine house on the right hand side to the numbers 12 and down to one at the far left-hand side. There is a barrier immediately to the left of the "one" scoring space. The cards show the cities on the board and correspond to their colors. There are . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: September 27, 2002
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