The Emu Bay Railway Company

Vital Stats:

• Players: 3-4 (untested with 5)
• Play Time: ~1 hour

Description:

Emu Bay Railway Company is a cube rail game about the history of rail in Tasmania.

Cube Rail games are abstracted train games that usually use cubes instead of train pieces or track tiles to represent the laying of track. Games like Chicago Express and Irish Gauge are cube rail games. They tend to have players have shares in companies, and take actions for those companies - balancing their own needs against the needs of the other players.

Emu Bay is a cube rail game that restricts player cash quite severely, and adds debt, and some smaller operations to merge with into the mix. The goal is that most games won't end in bankruptcy, but that it's an ever present threat.

After the start of the game, each player takes a turn making an action - auctioning a share, merging a company, building track, issuing a bond, taking resources, or paying dividends. Each action is fairly simple. Paying Dividends is the way that players get money, but also results in increasing amount of debt becoming due! Timing debt and dividends is important in this game.

A few conditions will end the game. Two of all shares being sold, most resources being taken, most track being used or running of bonds will end the game after the next dividend round, as will a stalemate or bankruptcy. Players can push the game to the end when they think they are going to win!

Components:

You're going to need the following in addition to the printed components

• 12 Red Cubes
• 5 Blue Cubes
• 8 Green Cubes
• 9 Yellow Cubes
• 29 Other cubes
• Poker chips or paper money 

The cards only have one side at the moment. A later prototype will add the files to print the 'deferred' side on the cards that need it. For now treat the blank side as deferred. 

If you have the board game 'Irish Gauge', it provides sufficient trains (in slightly different colors) and additional cubes to play this game.

The print itself it very small:

• 1 A3 page (which you may divide into two pages)
• 2 pages of charters, that need to be cut out
• 8 tokens to cut out
• 8 setup cards printed over 1 page
• 23 cards printed over 3 pages, which are easily cut out with a guillotine, rotary cutter, die cutter or scissors.

It took me ~10 minutes to prepare my copy.

Tabletop Simulator:

A Tabletop Simulator mod is linked, so you can play this even if, like me, you're locked down due to COVID!

Status:

This has had a reasonable amount of solo plays, but is still in progress. The rules and map likely have minimal changes. The numbers - such as costs and debt, are likely to change some more.

I am currently seeking feedback particularly with:

• How tough it was to juggle debt
• How much money your companies were making
• The clarity of the rules