''Iron Dragon'' is a

board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a ...

Mayfair Games Mayfair Games was an American publisher of board, card, and roleplaying games that also licensed Euro-style board games to publish them in English. The company licensed worldwide English-language publishing rights to ''The Settlers of Catan'' se ...

. Unlike the other

Empire Builder The ''Empire Builder'' is an Amtrak long-distance passenger train that operates daily between Chicago and either Seattle or Portland via two sections west of Spokane. Introduced in 1929, it was the flagship passenger train of the Great Norther ...

games, it is set in a fantasy world with dragon-based locomotives. Eden Games licensed the game from Mayfair to produce a Windows version of the game, ''Rail Empires: Iron Dragon''.

Gameplay

The goal of Iron Dragon is to connect seven of the game’s eight major cities with rails and amass 250 gold pieces. Players spend money to build railways and earn money by using them to deliver goods such as dragons, wands, spells, pipeweed, gems, wine and ale. Demand cards indicate three different combinations of good requested, city to which to deliver, and payout; generally longer distances between good production regions and destinations yield higher payouts. Players can upgrade trains for speed and cargo capacity, hire foremen to reduce building costs in various terrain, and even set sail to deliver cargo. Interaction between players is limited to competition for routes, as only one player can own the connection between any two markers, and the usually negative effects of event cards, which affect all players but may harm some more than others.

Reception

Scott Haring Scott D. Haring is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games. Career Scott Haring began working in the adventure gaming industry in 1982. Haring had a long career with Steve Jackson Games, having worked at the company five d ...

reviewed ''Iron Dragon'' for ''

Pyramid A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrila ...

'' #13 (May/June, 1995) and stated that "''Iron Dragon'' carries my highest recommendation."

References

External links

*{{bgg, 130, ''Iron Dragon'' Board games introduced in 1994 Darwin Bromley games Mayfair Games games Railroad board games Tom Wham games