Railway Boom takes you back to the early days of Japan’s railway industry during the Meiji era, where players connect cities and manage resources to build their own economic empires. The game is built around three systems: engine-building with five types of cards, creating a railway network, and transporting goods across it. You get cards through open auctions, bidding with different types of resources, but those same resources are also what you need to buy more cards and take extra actions, so every bid is a careful calculation. Each turn asks you to balance quick gains against a long-term strategy that pays off big at the end of the game. Four goals out of 18 are chosen each game, which reshapes strategies and gives the game huge replay value. It was designed by Hisashi Hayashi (Yokohama, Bomb Busters), developed by Simone Luciani, and illustrated by Ian O’Toole.

Gameplay Overview: Railway Boom plays over four rounds, each with six phases, and four of those phases start with an open auction. In the Train Phase, you bid wood to pick locomotives and buy carriages. In the Expansion Phase, you bid money to place stations and grow your railway network. In the Development Phase, you bid technology for cards with instant, once-per-round, or permanent effects. After collecting income, the Operation Phase lets you load your locomotives with cargo and spend coal to send your trains out, matching carriages and goods for the best combos. Each round ends with a bid for objective multipliers, which can make or break your final score. At the end of the game, you score your objectives, any leftover resources, and the length of your railway. It’s a crunchy, satisfying economic game where every resource does