Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Pre-Play Review
So, I've been waiting for this game for a long time. My Lunar Rails friends and I have talked about it for a long time. The scale that they used for the game is the exact one I thought it would play at. 300Km/milepost. (blah-blah-blah) Suffice it to say, it seems like a good scale for the map.
This review is based on my impressions leading up to playing the game.
The chips come pre-made. No more sticking little stickers on the chips. +
Some of the chips have globs of lacquer on them that make them not stack right. -
There are more types of chips then could ever possibly fit into the tray provided...by about 6 types. -
Instead of six sketchy crayons coming with the set, a nice set of Crayola washable crayons came with my set. With 8 crayons. Some people like to play with one color pawn and a different color of crayon. +
The ugly, unpopular, hard-to-see brown crayon-brown pawn has been replaced with my favorite color, orange! Win! + Again, there are two additional crayons that came with the set that don't have pawns for them (Purple, brown). I tested them on the playing surface and they seem to draw well, erase easily. +
The set comes with the new money set, which is easier to distinguish between denominations than the old money. The old money set only varied denominations by number/color and are hard to tell apart for us color blind people. +
The color of the map seems more conducive to several colors of the crayons, but is worse for seeing yellow...which is still indistinguishable on the board, for the people that have played the game with me. +/-
Rule book in color. +
More convenient half-page reference sheets for playing the game. +
Game Design:
Nice tri-diamond map. Larger map area. Initially, I wasn't feeling the tri-diamond thing, but I've grown to like it. +
Resources. I liked the resource selection in lunar rails. Some of the resources in this game are drop-dead stupid. Bachelor food? Roddenberries? Come on! I'm not 16. I'm a grown up. -
There are more resources in Martian Rails than in Lunar Rails...which I like. There are seven single-city export resources, which I like. +
This game leans towards being a veritable trivia game of sci-fi sources. Star Trek, Bradbury, Wells, Soylent Green, Total Recall and many others are paid homage to. Martian Rails is a sci-fi work, where Lunar Rails was more of here's the moon: build a railroad and transport stuff...with accurate topography and features with mostly accurate names. This game lacks most of that. Its a little less grounded in astronomy and more grounded in BS Sci-Fi. I might learn to appreciate this quality, but I would have liked to see a better representation of Mars in terms of the surface features. -
There are too many types of terrain, more than any other Empire Builder series game I've seen. Most of them are completely fictitious (and unnecessary) like marsh, canals, forest, jungle, a lake and reservoirs. Some of these seem to have been created for one or two event cards...which just adds to the complexity of the game for first time players, but adds little to the actual game (without playing it yet, again, but I did read the rules in their entirety). Several of these are the same cost...so why not just generalize them into 1 M$, 2M$, 3M$ (If you insist on it for design reasons), and 5M$, +1M$, +2M$ (Again, if you insist). In terms, go back to the basic skeletal terrain system of Lunar rails/Empire Builder. The addition of water on Mars is inaccurate and awful. Not to mention marsh and swamp. I see where the author was going with his line of thinking, but I feel like its going to add to the complexity without adding a lot to playability. Lunar Rails has one plausible source for water (The large southern crater of the moon) and sticks to it as the sole source for water on the Moon. Lunar Rails is more accurate, I think. I'd like to learn something more about Mars, the way I learned about the Moon from Lunar Rails. ---
I like the design and artwork on the game. The adaptations of the system are superior to Empire Builder...but not as good as Lunar Rails. The author of this game put a lot of thought and effort into the game. Its clear. He didn't just throw this together. I would offer he went to far, but he still earned my respect in the scope of his efforts. +
I don't like that there are only 6 major cities. I didn't like it in Empire Builder. Its better than Russian Rails, which has pointless major cities on the map...but its not like the nicely balanced major cities of Lunar Rails. -
There are fewer cities than there are in Lunar Rails, with more resources which make the balance of the resource/city ratio to high, in my opinion. This is a major failing in Russian Rails, too. More cities if you are going to have 32 resources (like in Martian Rails), but only 47 cities. Lunar Rails has 28 resources to 56 cities. Russian Rails has 46 cities and 29 resources...which I found to have too many resources, too. Russian Rails also has four annoying resources that are available on each of one corner of the map, bloating the payoffs for these contracts. I haven't noticed this on Martian Rails...it seems the resource availability makes sense and is fairly well distributed. The original Empire Builder (pre-Mexican map addition) has 51 cities and 26 resources. The 2:1 ratio of Lunar Rails and Empire Builder (Old Version) seems to be optimal. Also, only one settlement in Martian Rails lacks an export, unlike most of the Empire Builder Series...this is a problem, in my opinion. --
The names for the locomotives in Martian Rails are silly. The locomotive cards are distributed differently on the cards than in Lunar Rails, but Martian Rails uses the same five-tiered system which seems superior to the Russian Rails/Empire Builder system of three tiers. +
There are more cards to offset the more resources...which I like. +
The Valles Marinaris seems way smaller in this game than it is in reality. Actually, I just looked it up. It is dead-on in size on the map vs. its known length. +
Olympus Mons seems to be too large on the Martian Rails map vs. its actual width. Its actual width would be about 2 mileposts. On the Martian Rails board, its 5 mileposts wide. Perhaps the outer ring would have been better as a mountain range instead of a volcano range, with an interior ring of volcanoes. Otherwise, I like this topographical feature in the game. +/-
The map board has too many color for the partially color blind (like myself), like three types of canals in similar colors. Add textures to differentiate the lines, please! -
+15, -13. Three starish. Maybe 3 1/2 stars.
Well, thats all I can think of off the top of my head. I'll play it and amplify the review material later to reflect playability.
Final Review:
Well, I've been playing this game since it came out. Here's my opinion of the game:
The playing scale is perhaps too large. The scale makes the cities too numerous. It seems like the actual playing surface is slightly smaller than Lunar Rails. The cities are too evenly spaced and contracts are largely uniform in terms of value. Unfortunate. Lunar Rails contract values fluctuated wildly. There was a good balance between high dollar value contracts and low dollar contracts for most of the commodities. Not as skewed and biased as Russian Rails Contracts (Thank Goodness!). Still, there aren't enough empty areas of the board. There always seems to be a city close by, unlike Lunar Rails that has "wastelands" lacking cities. There is only one "joke" city that has no exports, Ares University (Or Skyhook after sabotage in Space Event card). While Lunar Rails has several.
There are too many commodities that could be pared down. As in my pre-play review, I would say too many of the commodities are too fanciful and science fiction-y. I get the connection to Science Fiction Novels and Movies, but more realistic commodities seem more attractive to me. For instance, in Lunar Rails there is Helium Isotope 3. To save a boring, lengthy explanation, Helium Isotope 3 is a science fiction commodity for fusion reactors. 100 years from now, it is likely that He-3 will be a commodity that is bought and sold. Zorinta from Martian Rails, on the other hand, is a science fantasy commodity. Some are great, like thoats and rayguns. Blue Beer and Pulcho are fanciful, but not necessary. We call them beer and wine. Or make Blue Beard jokes. Memnomnia Gum is fun, but certainly not as realistic as hydrocarbons will likely be found on many bodies (like Titan in our own solar system). Oil is a source of energy everywhere. I don't know what Memnomnia Gum is. As with Lunar Rails, unfortunately, there are too many duplicates of similar commodities that could be replaced with other different commodities for more variety. In Lunar Rails there are Scientists and Tourists. Whats the difference? Just a name. In Martian Rails, there are Tourists, Colonists, UN Peacekeepers, Green Martians and Red Martians. People trying to go from Point A to Point B. Consolidate them down to passengers and be done with it. Add some other commodities that aren't basically the same with the extra "space" created. I'm sure the Game Designer might disagree with me, he put a lot of work into the game, like I said before. There are just too many people going from Point A to Point B, not enough indigenous biological species (just thoats and fish) or mineral resources.
The event cards are largely uninteresting and there aren't enough ones that destroy track. Some are quite good though. The Repellatron Bridge or event...Read more›
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Discover the curious civilizations and wild lore of the wondrous, neighboring red planet Mars. Celebrate one of the mankind's most vital and enduring passions: railroads. Use your initial investment to build track. Then pick up commodities where they are grown, mined, or manufactured and deliver them to a lucrative place of demand. Complete a delivery and make the money you need to buy larger, faster trains, and expand your railroad empire. Win the game by building and operating Mars' most effective railroad empire!With over a million variations, Martian Rails never grows old. You decide where to lay your tracks. Your only obstacles are rival tracks and Mars' great mountains, canals, deserts, and jungles. So, dominate a whole new planet. Capture the pioneering spirit on the sands of Mars and learn to build an empire. Whether you share Martian Rails as an evening with friends or as a rainy day activity with your family, you'll always find it captivating!After enjoying this great game, you can explore one of the many other award-winning Empire Builder(tm) games, including titles as diverse as China Rails(tm), Australian Rails(tm), and Eurorails(tm).Martian Rails contains:- 1 markable game board- 2 decks of colorful cards (180 total)- 94 color load chips- 1 pack of money- 1 pack of crayons- 6 train pawns- full-color rules
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