The definitive roll and write train game
America, shortly after the first transcontinental junction in 1869.
Railroads are developing all over the vast expanses of the wild west, and business is booming. It is a time of adventure, progress, and opportunity. The transcontinental junction was a great milestone in American history, a first step that reshaped a whole continent.
In SteamRollers you are a railroad entrepreneur building a network of tracks and a fleet of train engines to secure freight delivery contracts before your opponents.
The central board has a map with the goods available for delivery. You have a personal play sheet with the same map, on which you draw your rail network and keep track of your engine fleet. When you make a delivery, the goods are removed from the central board and you earn points for cities and towns crossed. Once three cities on the central board have been emptied from available goods, the game ends. You then collect points for your deliveries, your engines, your network, and a few bonuses.
SteamRollers is a fast and fun roll and write game. The active player rolls all the dice, then in turn each player picks a dice and uses it to either draw rail, improve his engine, do research, or make a delivery. Once each player has picked and used a dice, the next players rolls the all dice and so on.
The central board has the goods goods available for delivery, and each player has a play sheet.
The dice are rolled, and in turn each player uses one of the dice
You can use a dice to draw rails on your play sheet. The white dice determines the region, the black dice the kind of rails you can draw.
You can use a dice to improve your engine. The number indicates the box you can check. The number of checked boxes is your engine power. In this example, the white dice is a 2, and that checkbox is free. The engine now has a power of 3.
You can use a dice to make a delivery. The number indicates the source of the delivery, and the cube colour indicates the destination city.
In the example, we deliver a cube from region 1 (yellow). It's a blue cube so it must be delivered to city 5 (blue). There are three steps to cross (city 4, town and city 1), so we need an engine power of at least 3 to make this delivery. Each step earns the player one point, so this delivery is worth 3 points.
Then a second delivery, a yellow cube from region 2 to region 1, also for 3 points.
Click here to download the player pads file - to print more player pads yourself
FRENCH VIDEO REVIEWS:
The team behind SteamRollers :
Currently I'm working as a programmer in Brussels. One of the great thing about Brussels is its vibrant board gaming community. Several times a week, I get to play great games with great people. One of my favorite genres are train games like for example Age of Steam, which was a big inspiration for SteamRollers. This is my first game design to find a publisher but hopefully it’ll be the first of many.
Benjamin started for publisher Editions Dupuis on the Alter Ego series, for six albums between 2011 and 2014. These were very well received and Benjamin was offered to work on the new season of Michel Vaillant, where he specializes on the cars and backgrounds. Benjamin is now considered a reference artist in realistic European comic strips, and gladly accepted the opportunity to explore a different setting and medium for SteamRollers.
