Martin Wallace's Steam anyone?

So, anybody here plays steam? I was quite amazed when I searched, and Steam was never said in the Eurogames forum. I'm about to pick this one to round up my collection. Anything I buy afterwards, I have to sell/give a game already have.

I really like the core game, rail building on virtually any map. Gameplay that's mostly map related.

So, anyone has any opinion on Steam?

I like it, however I'm the only one in my group who does, so I don't get to play it that often and have not yet tried any of the expansion maps. I only play basic steam and don't care for the variant where you have to bid for turn order and special actions. It adds too much hassle for my taste. The reason the other players don't like it, is the need to basically plan all your deliveries right at the start of the game, since you need as many 5 and 6 deliveries as possible to win the game. Planning the long deliveries in advance can be quite tedious for some, especially so with all the contingency planning necessary in a 4 or 5 player game. With a group prone to AP the game can really bog down. With more experience that may go away, but my group will likely never get to that point.
Another aspect they don't seem to like and I'm not too fond of either, is the lack of varied strategies. You try to get your locomotive level to at least 5, usually to 6 as fast as possible and switch from income to victory point generation once you have an income of 6 or 7, which will usually allow you to finance all the actions you'll have to take during the last few turns. The game then revolves around the tactical decisions that achieve that goal.
This is where Steam really shines. The limited resources at the players' disposal lead to agonizing decisions, since you can't do all the things you want or need to do and at the same time offer opportunities to thwart your opponents' plans. The result is a pretty brutal and tight game.
Although I mostly listed negative aspects I think quite highly of Steam, but it doesn't suit every group. It is a very solid system that offers interesting play and demands quite a bit from the players. The expansions may even alleviate the lack of strategic variety.

I love Steam. One of my top three.

I've played Steam a few times and enjoyed it, but I can't buy it because I absolutely love Railways of the World. Railways plays great and it also looks fantastic on the table which is a nice bonus. They are similar in many ways, but Railways doesn't have the role selection each round like Steam does. You just have 3 actions a turn and can do any of them as long as you've got the money or are willing to take on loans which reduce your point totals at the end. Both have extra maps you can buy, but I think there might be more available for Steam. Either is a great game it just depends on your preferences.

Steam is one of my favourite games, according to BGG I've played it 63 times and I would play it ten times that number if I could.

Truly great game and probably the epitome of passive-agressiveness: Harming other players is self-destructive but if you don't do it, you are bound to lose. It's brutal because actions are worth cash not just because they offer something to you, but because they deny money to your opponents so money is siphoned just being destructive. It's one of those games in which you are completely free to destroy another player but you never do it because it's not worth it. I don't think I've ever played a game in which scores are so close.

The main drawback of this is that the game takes some time to get into it. You need to understand how the auction works, how you can block other players, how important each role is and how to plan long-term shipments to play the "real" game. It's not difficult rule-wise but it does have a very sharp strategic edge. Oh, and it's the worst game you could play if someone in your group has analysis paralysis.

The base game is more typically euro, with an easier economy and roles being a matter of choosing whatever comes more handy. In the advanced games, however, roles are not balanced, some are obviously more powerful than others and it's up to the players to decide how much better each one is by paying. For me it's what takes the game from being a good economic game to being a stand-out of the genre.

Kailes wrote: Another aspect they don't seem to like and I'm not too fond of either, is the lack of varied strategies. You try to get your locomotive level to at least 5, usually to 6 as fast as possible and switch from income to victory point generation once you have an income of 6 or 7, which will usually allow you to finance all the actions you'll have to take during the last few turns. The game then revolves around the tactical decisions that achieve that goal.

Raising locomotive level is an obligation more than a choice. If you don't raise it every turn, you are going to lose.

While I'm not sure it holds there, the issue you mention seems to arise from playing with the base game because you don't have to pay for your locomotives so you get free money to build track with. In the advanced game, raising income prevents you from losing money but you are still going to get the cash to build and bid for roles from loans so you can't just coast through the game after a couple deliveries.

The base game also dulls the role selection because you are forced to vary. In the advanced game you can win by building a poor, but cheap network or by blowing a lot of cash on locomotive and urbanization. Often both, because the best way to win is to play in such a manner that you can use any role (If you don't need any particular role, you are hard to attack and you can profit from cheap, powerful roles more often).

Well, it's good to see a lot of positive comment on it!

Erik, your post raises a few concerns for me, mainly because I have, more or less, decided to play the basic game only. I'll have to dig more into the rulebook. I really don't feel comfortable on bidding for action. How much money do you usually spend when bidding?

Legomancer wrote: I love Steam. One of my top three.

What's the other two? One of them is Rosenberg's?

I hate the auction. My experience with the auction (I played a fair amount of Age of Steam before Steam came out) was that it simply rewarded the leaders. Even AoS's ham-handed "balancing" income adjustments couldn't overcome it. There was nothing less fun than being in an AoS game and watching the auction happening knowing that there was no way you could come out ahead here. I much prefer the selection system in Steam.

My other top 3 games (if you discount my actual #1, Magic the Gathering, because I don't really play it anymore) are probably Power Grid and The New Era.

Legomancer wrote:

I hate the auction. My experience with the auction (I played a fair amount of Age of Steam before Steam came out) was that it simply rewarded the leaders. Even AoS's ham-handed "balancing" income adjustments couldn't overcome it. There was nothing less fun than being in an AoS game and watching the auction happening knowing that there was no way you could come out ahead here. I much prefer the selection system in Steam.

I've played a lot more Age of Steam and Railways of the World than Steam, but I'd argue that all three can have issues with runaway leaders, as well as an issue with whatever a runaway leader's opposite is (runaway loser?). I still love all three of those games, though. I need to drag that out with the co-workers sometime.

Yeah, but I'd argue that there's a difference between sometimes having a runaway leader/loser and specifically including a mechanism for generating one.

I like both Steam (and AoS) and vastly prefer the auction over the role selection as the tighter economy makes things more interesting and less euro-y. However I'd play them any which way. In fact I'm working on a 2p resource exploration map at the moment.
It seems to me that with the kerfuffle between Mayfair and Wallace that any Steam expansions you want might not be around much longer or in great quantities so pick them up sooner rather than later is my advice.

What's with Mayfair and Wallace kerfuffle? I haven't heard anything about this : |

EDIT: Damn, I just read about this. Hmm... which official expansion (#1-#4) are good? I'm looking for the ones for smaller player counts (2-4).

http://icv2.com/articles/news/view/31026/ships-sinks-mayfair-wallace-accord
http://icv2.com/articles/news/view/31016/mayfair-games-designer-martin-wallace-part-ways
Perhaps I'm being a little dramatic about reprints (of the expansions) but I think they'll be less incentivized to keep pushing the series hard when they don't have a relationship to maintain.

From #1 - Belgium/Lux is supposed to good with 2 but I haven't played it.
From #2: I liked California (3), England (3,4) Didn't like China (with 2). From #3 Westward Ho and from #4 South Africa are good for larger groups.
I haven't played the others; I just buy the ones that interest me and substitute AoS maps when necessary.
The AoS map rankings are here which will give you plenty of alternate options.

Sevej wrote: Erik, your post raises a few concerns for me, mainly because I have, more or less, decided to play the basic game only. I'll have to dig more into the rulebook. I really don't feel comfortable on bidding for action. How much money do you usually spend when bidding?

It really depends on the game-state, but the top bid is almost always over 12$. Of course, anyone who is constantly bidding that much money will lose so players tend to rotate and not always go for the top bid. Still, you are going to spend more than 5$ a turn on average unless you are deliberately trying to keep costs down.

I wouldn't particularly worry about it, you can simply play the base game and try out the auction later.

Sevej wrote: EDIT: Damn, I just read about this. Hmm... which official expansion (#1-#4) are good? I'm looking for the ones for smaller player counts (2-4).

They are all very good, but I particularly recommend the second and the third one. The gist of it is that Morgan Dontanville, which was the designer for all four expansions, was a big fan of Age of Steam so he had a lot of foresight when it came to expansions. He drew a lot of knowledge from older expansions and improved on many of their ideas to the point in which most of his maps are complete hits.

Expansion #2 is a great bet. It has a "vanilla with a twist" map in California (3P), a different experience with China (2,3, Pseudo-coop with 4!) and Great Britain (3-4) which is the best map in the series.

I really love Great Britain, it has canals you can move goods through and that you cannot build over until you have Locomotive Level 4 so you have this kind of race to affirm your possition and disarm your opponents before they get obsolete. There's also a new action that allows you to move goods from one port to another which makes the map very fun and interactive, you can always find a way out and you can always find a way to harm your opponents a little. It's also not particularly difficult, the tightness, high construction costs and sense of speed is compensated by a richer early-game.

Expansion #3 has really fun scenario called Westward Ho! which has very few cities on it. Rather, most cubes stay on the board and you need to build to them to pick them up. Different and very fun, it really feels like an scenario instead of it being another twist. Japan is probably one of the best maps for three players: Lots of bottlenecks and a reduced number of cities makes track construction very fun and the map gives you an "Express train" action to compensate by allowing you to move through 7 links.

You can also try out some free maps or adapt some from Age of Steam but you would need to print them and they won't be as pretty as the official Steam maps.

Legomancer wrote: Yeah, but I'd argue that there's a difference between sometimes having a runaway leader/loser and specifically including a mechanism for generating one.

I don't think the auction creates a runaway leader, all my games run extremely close, closer than in any other game I've played. Almost always there's only a couple points of difference between the top and bottom-most player.

If there's a huge difference between players it's almost always because the players don't realize how powerful Locomotive is. I'm always extremely keen on how incredibly important is is when I explain the game because it's not obvious until you are losing by its hand. But people adapt quickly if you point it out, it's almost never an issue on the second game.

I can never find anyone to play this, but I'll never sell it. I remember getting way too invested in the brouhaha between this and Age of Steam (John something). It's sad to think about, when in fact, they both behaved kind of terribly and it's just a board game, and you don't get those hours spent on BGG back, I found out.