Railroad Revolution

Railroad Revolution was a small embarrassment on my shelf for far too long. I had confused it with another game and left it in shrink, until somebody looking at the collection asked the obvious question. This is what happens when grown-ups with jobs own too many boxes and insist they have a system. Once opened, though, it came straight back to the table. I can see the appeal.

At heart, it is an optimisation game: choices ask for clear thought without turning the evening into an administrative exercise. The flow seems built around that restraint. You make your decisions, try to make them more efficient, and the game keeps moving rather than lingering for the sake of ceremony.

Player interaction is not sold here as a grand table-spanning quarrel, but as the shared pressure to find the better answer within the same game. That suits its length. You do not need to retain an encyclopaedia of openings and routes; you simply need to see a little more clearly than everyone else at that moment.

I would not call it a great game on the level of Nippon or Madeira, and it probably lacks the endless variation needed for permanent residence on the table. But it fits beautifully into an evening after work, and it is the sort of game worth revisiting after the optimal lines have faded. For me, it remains an IBB — an Instant Blind Buy — and quietly excellent.