Union Pacific
Union Pacific is a simple, but challenging, railway themed game for 2-6 players. It's an Alan Moon design and is published by Amigo and Rio Grande games.
Back in the USA
The backdrop is a map of the USA with a blank rail network for players to fill. There are 10 different railroad companies each with their own colour, starting location, number of shares, number of trains (little plastic beauties) and permitted track types.
Small is beautiful - and grey
For example, the smallest railroad is the grey coloured Wyoming & Western. Its network must start in Casper. There are 6 shares available and 7 trains. Compare this with the largest railroad: the green coloured El Paso & Rio Grande. Its network must start in El Paso. This railroad company has 18 shares available and 23 trains.
Acquire on rails
To win you need to end the game with the most money. You get money four times during the game when any player draws a dividend card from the draw pile (of share cards). The dividend cards are put into the draw deck in a way that guarantees they will be spread out, within limits. But the exact timing is random and will always catch at least one player out.
Show me the dividend
The dividend you get depends on whether you are the majority or runner up shareholder in a railroad company and how many trains the company has on the board; the dividend is $1 million for each train on the board plus $1 million for a nominal station. The majority shareholder gets that dividend amount.
The runner up gets half that amount. Acquire players will recognise this scoring approach as
will
players of Airlines, the previous Moon design on which this is based. The attraction of Union Pacific is that
it has taken the scoring and the railway theme and added a few quirks. (I am not sure if these are any different from Airlines, though.)
You will have gathered that while the larger dividends come, potentially, from the larger companies, the larger companies have more shares kicking about. So, there's more room for a challenge for that dividend. By the same, er, token, if you have only 1 or 2 shares of the smaller railroad companies, that may be enough for a dividend but the dividend is likely to be smaller. Clever.
To put it all together you need to understand one more part of the game and then see what a player can do in a turn.
Tracks of my tears
As well as the share cards, there is a deck of track cards. The map has four different types of track space. These are colour coded (sort of) as plain, black, white and mixed. To play a train on a space you must play a card with that type of rail track. But, as a further restriction, every company, apart from the green El Paso crew, is restricted as to what track spaces it can use.
Start your engines
Players start with 3 track cards and 5 shares including 1 Union Pacific share. This is another element to the game you must master for success. More in a moment.You start your turn by drawing a track card. Then you may either build or invest.
Build me up
To build, you play a track card and then put down a train. You can play any coloured train. (Subject to the rules about what companies can go where and what track card you play.) Another part of the fun is that train networks need to connect to grow. So, by clever placement you can cut off a company or restrict its growth. After building like this the player draws a share card (he may trigger a dividend). then he may, but does not have to, swap a share card for a Union Pacific share and take it into hand.
Invest in the network
If you invest you may, with certain restrictions, play share cards face up. This is another good recycle of a familiar mechanism. (Reibach and Co?) Only face up shares on the board count. So, not only do you have to develop your network but you have to draw the share cards and get them down on the table. The words "resource management" spring to mind!
Part of the Union
Which brings us back to Union Pacific shares. This company exists but has no trains. There are 20 shares. As seen above, when building, players may burn another share card - a tough decision - to get a Union Pacific card - to hand but not in play. This company pays no dividend the first time but builds escalating, fixed, dividends (to 5 players, not 2 like other companies) in later rounds.
First among shareholders
A player who gets the first dividend in Union Pacific will finish near or at the top. And that is probably the greatest challenge to the game's popularity. 
If you take the Union Pacific shares out of the system the luck seems to balance out. But, for some reason, the Union Pacific shares always seem in our playings to be the biggest influence on the winner. Now that may be intentional, but it
tends to dispirit those who lose out on the Union Pacific struggle. And because there are only
20 shares you can generally see a scramble in the early turns. It means you can be half way in to the game and know who is on target to win.
The other weakness of the game is that player interaction is restricted. You upset the other players by the cards you draw and the trains you place and that's it. But, the upside is that it plays fast. Even with 6 players we have finished inside 2 hours including an explanation of the rules. And the restricted interaction doesn't seem to get in the way because the focus tends to be on planning.
End of the line
In summary: a good, but not great game. It's easy to play, ideal for the family and still has enough technique to be a challenge. But to take it to the next level I recommend you look at some of the Union Pacific variants out there on the web. Some do deal with the damn pesky Union Pacific shares. But your playing tastes may vary so you should try it out if you like Acquire or similar or light train games.
Ellis Simpson
21 February 2003