For some peculiar reason, there’s a long-standing association between board games and trains, dating back to the first days of popular tabletop gaming in the Victorian era. In fact, it’s such a popular subject for designers that there are well over a thousand railway-themed games to choose from, making it difficult to pick out the cream of the crop. Many of them, as we’ll see, belong to a heavyweight subgenre in which players run the economics of train companies while building track across the landscape. But there’s plenty of lighter fare too, including family-friendly board games and one of the best-selling board games of all time...
TL;DR: The Best Train Board Games
Ticket to Ride
Where else to start than with this legendary title, and its many geographical and mechanical spinoffs? Anyone who's played the card game Rummy will be familiar with its basic setup of collecting sets of matching cards before other players manage it. But in Ticket to Ride, you’ll be cashing in those sets to claim train routes on the board, trying to link up the cities printed on your secret destination tickets to claim big bonus points. But beware: fail to make a ticket route, and you’ll lose the points instead, making this game as much about blocking as it is about trains. This simple but angst-ridden blueprint has proved enormously successful, powering an entire franchise out of the realm of hobby shops and into the mass market.
1830: Railways and Robber Barons
From one of the lightest games on the list to one of the heaviest, 1830 is our entry representing the vast “18XX” subgenre in which players buy stock in railroad companies, attempting to amass a personal fortune. Whoever has the controlling stock in each of the game’s companies gets to mandate its operations on the board, such as laying track and operating trains to make a profit which is shared among stockholders. That money can then be re-invested in stocks of your choice, creating strategic wheels inside strategic wheels. Originating with a game called 1829, this formula has proved so fascinating that it’s spawned almost 300 spinoff games. 1830 is one of the most popular and approachable, but it runs long; for a short introduction, try the Japanese themed 1889.
Age of Steam
Another titan of hobby railroad games, Age of Steam was loosely inspired by the 18XX series but jettisoned the stock manipulation in favor of a simpler, faster game of pickup and deliver. But don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s lost any strategic richness in the process: this is a brutal, unforgiving game in which neophyte players can quickly and easily overspend themselves into economic oblivion for the entire duration. Interplay is equally vicious, with players squabbling over a turn order auction in order to grab the juiciest routes and block their rivals from building. Once you’ve got the hang of it, though, the drama that results from this interplay is second to none, with smart, strategic rug-pulls being rewarded every time.
Railways of the World
If you like the idea of Age of Steam but want something a little more forgiving, Railways of the World is the game for you. It’s got a lighter ruleset and a more open gameplay loop that allows struggling players routes back into the game, at the cost of some of its predecessor's strategic depth. The payoff is a more exciting race where everyone stays involved, and there’s more variety thanks to a deck of bonus cards that come into play differently each game. It’s also more of a looker, swapping the functional board and cubes out for colorful plastic trains that shunt across vast, bright maps of the continent.
Ultimate Railroads
The “ultimate” aspect to the name here isn’t a boast over other train games, but rather an acknowledgement that this is a big-box edition of the acclaimed Russian Railroads series, with all its expansions and add-ons. The game has a focus on strategic worker placement over the route-building that tends to characterize other titles in the genre. Instead, you develop a “track” track on your personal player boards by placing workers on the main board. Some spaces benefit from multiple workers, while others require specialists, and there’s a constant conundrum between spending time getting yourself up the turn order and getting access to the spaces you need.
Colt Express
If you want a train game that really brings trains to your tabletop, then Colt Express features a 3D model of a steam train in place of a board. Players represent Wild West ne'er-do-wells intent on looting the carriages of their valuables. The rootin’, tootin’ and shootin’ unfolds via a deck of action cards that you use to program your moves in advance, before each player implements them one at a time, meaning that if you’ve guessed wrong you could be punching, shooting or looting empty air while your target is fleeing all the way to the bank. But watch out for the automated Marshall, controlled by each round’s event card, as he’s gunning to throw your outlaws off the train.
Wabash Cannonball
You may already know this as a Johnny Cash song, but it’s also a train game, which has an alternative edition called Chicago Express. It’s an attempt to strip the beloved stock-trading railroad formula back to its bare essentials, and it’s astonishingly successful. The result is a game of rich strategy that’s accessible enough for family play. Players are railway tycoons trying to make a mint out of four different companies building track across the Midwest, aiming to reach Chicago. On your turn you can expand one of the railroads, develop a space to make it more economically valuable, or auction off a new company share: that’s the lot. But in addition to the strategic interplay of stock purchases, there’s a tracker that can temporarily stop players taking actions of their choice, a wrinkle that gives the game far more strategic heft than its rules weight suggests.
Next Station London
There are a number of railway titles, known as crayon rail games, in which players draw their routes directly on the board. So it’s only a small jump to connect them with the current craze for quick, simply, roll and write board games and, indeed, there are a number of train-themed titles in that genre. The best of them are the Next Station series: the original, Next Station: London which was nominated for the prestigious Spiel des Jahres awards. Each player gets an identical map of underground stations but starts with a different colored pen, which corresponds to a matching starting station. Cards are flipped to indicate possible stations to connect to, and it’s up to you to chart a path beneath the metropolis, trying to reach tourist hotspots, cross the river and create junctions between lines. But watch out: you can only cross lines at stations, making it easy to box yourself in. A new map was made available in the follow-up, Next Station: Tokyo.
Maglev Metro
Most train games are contemporary or trade in the rich history of railway development and expansion. Maglev Metro, as the name implies, dares to take a peek into the possible future as you’re tasked with creating a commuter system using cutting edge magnetic levitation technology. It cleverly combines worker placement with pick up and deliver, as some of the passengers that you end up toting around can be added to your pool of workers if you get them to your destination. Its other clever trick is that maglev trains only run one way, forcing you into some tricky navigation to get your commuters where they want to go. With its sci-fi theme and novel gameplay, this is a title you’re likely to be playing far into the future.
Transamerica
By this point on our list, you’ll appreciate that the majority of train games involve building routes across a map, but Transameica takes this concept and distils the basics out into a super simple race game. Each player gets a set of city cards to aim for and, from a chosen starting location, simply lays pieces of track on the board each turn, aiming to be the first to connect their target cities. Track is neutral, so you can inadvertently help other players, and vice versa, adding to the drama and strategy of the game. A round ends when one player succeeds in connecting all their cities, and everyone else loses points. Then you re-rack and keep playing until someone crosses the points barrier.
Imperial Steam
Rather than the American-centric maps that dominate this list, Imperial Steam has you running railroads across the Austrian Empire of the 1800s. Starting in Vienna, you must use your limited capital to expand your network by connecting other destinations, at which point you can leverage the advantages of that node on your network. Some provide you with factory space, others opportunities to sell goods or a variety of other goodies. The key thing is that these bonuses are limited, making this into a fascinating economic race where you’re deciding which avenues to explore to expand your empire while factoring in how quickly you can get there compared to other players.
Matt Thrower is a contributing freelance board game and video game writer for IGN. (Board, video, all sorts of games!)
