Win Your Next Rail Baron Game

by Steve Okonski

Win Your Next Rail Baron Game Rail Baron is now the oldest, continuously published board game with a railroad theme, and remains one of the most popular. This Avalon Hill (now Hasbro) game is even the inspiration for other train games, such as Mayfair's Empire Builder and Eurorails. In Rail Baron, each player moves his train along railroads to randomly chosen destinations. Upon arrival, the player can purchase one of the 28 historical railroads on the US map. Players vie to assemble a network that provides access to most of the important destination cities while preventing opponents from doing likewise. This article discusses various strategies for winning, and assumes you are familiar with the game.

Destination Probability

Assembling a good railroad network is essential to winning Rail Baron; many factors must be considered when purchasing RRs. One of the most important is the probability of the destination cities that are served. For example, due to the way the destination chart is arranged, New York is much more likely to be a destination than Fargo. Therefore, it is more important that your RRs serve New York than Fargo. The four most probable destinations are: San Francisco/Oakland, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The four least likely destinations are: Fargo, Chattanooga, Shreveport and Charlotte. In general, the probability of each city is vaguely proportional to the size of its population.

If you add up the probability of all destinations served by each railroad, you'll . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: May 7, 1999

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