Here’s a quote from my original review of Age of Rail: South Africa, published last year by Capstone as the fourth game in their Iron Rails series of “cube rails” games:
“I think the only part of this game I don’t really love is the map layout. In each of my plays, experienced train gamers look at the situation for blue and purple and realize that they are not great places to seed initial capital. Johannesburg is undeniably sexy, so [everyone is] racing to connect to ‘Jo-Burg’ with their track building actions…The first couple rounds of Age of Rail: South Africa have proven to be remarkably ‘samey.’ The red, orange, and purple investors always build track in the same directions.”
While I still enjoyed Age of Rail: South Africa (this is the new version of John Bohrer’s 2011 release South African Railroads), my plays after the review went up followed a path similar to those initial review plays. The meat of my love for the design is tied to the action selection system, but I didn’t love the map.
Good news friends, especially if you are me: Age of Rail now has two expansion maps, set in La Pampa (Argentina) and Allegheny, Pennsylvania. (These maps were provided to the original backers of the game, so while these are new to me, they were included for those who signed on early.) And this is my favorite kind of expansion, the kind of thing that all successful “system” games should be doing—push out new maps as often as possible to shake up the options. (The two new maps have essentially no rules changes, so if you haven’t checked out my original review to learn the system, now is a great time to refresh your memory.)
If you have enjoyed other Bohrer action selection train games or just want to get a one-hour Euro-style route-building game to the table, Age of Rail and these new maps are a must.
La Pampa
So, one can imagine my excitement when I saw the layout for La Pampa, the first of the two expansion maps for Age of Rail: Allegheny and La Pampa. The five railroads available at the start of the game? Save for the blue line (Norte), the other railroads can all begin operations in one of at least two exits from the starting city location of Buenos Aires. And, when the black railroad shows up on the La Pampa map (here at Cordoba, in the middle of the map), it will only have a few choices in the direction it can legally expand.
These two changes initially appeared to be minor, but now that I have a play of La Pampa under my belt, I can confirm that this changed how the initial options really shook out. I love that purple might have to build along the southwestern seaboard…or, they might have a chance to build right into the middle of the map on their first turn. If Blue is seeded well enough at the start, it could really be juicy by its second or third turn. This is a big change for what I saw out of the Blue railroad from the base game, after watching Blue mostly flame out early.
There is one change to the Development system with the La Pampa map—Buenos Aires always has to be the most valuable city on the map. That means all railroads (since all railroads start in Buenos Aires) get a minor bump three times during the game, whereas other Metro Areas may develop more slowly. Also, there are five Metro Areas on the La Pampa map, whereas the base game’s map had only two.
These changes, and a fresh routing system with a number of smaller Settlement locations that can be built up to really boost the value of connected railroads, make La Pampa a very handsome alternative to the South Africa map.
Allegheny
Of the two maps included in the expansion, I thought Allegheny did a slightly better job of amping the excitement in the initial auction.
That’s because all five of the starting corporations can make big money right out of the gates. In fact, overall corporation income was a little higher with the Allegheny map than across my other plays of the base game map of South Africa as well as La Pampa. Purple (here known as PRR) and Blue (C&O) were hotly contested corporations, but I found that all five featured viable ways to make a good starting income. This led to one player getting a share of Red (B&O) in one of my plays for a very cheap price, who later ended up winning because no one else believed it would be valuable until it was too late!
The routes on the Allegheny map are also intriguing. Pittsburgh is the signature “Metro” location here, and three of the five railroads can conceivably reach it on their very first build action. But every route has a way to reach pay dirt around the map, and there’s a lot of sniping early on as corporations get in each other’s way. The early game in Allegheny is very strong, and when combined with the extra boost to everyone’s income potential (the development locations outside of Metro areas are also very valuable), there seemed to be many more opportunities for a nice payday.
My only concern with the Allegheny map is that it is too large…or maybe it is that I’ve not yet seen a corporation build into the far west portion of the map (including St. Louis and Chicago). There’s plenty of ways to make money and create chaos near the starting locations, and when building through Cincinnati, and even Detroit, there are enough ways to boost income and not run into much traffic when building north and west out of Pittsburgh.
I am not sure if that’s a flaw or not, because it’s never really come up. But it does feel strange to have so much real estate that goes unnoticed.
I was not initially convinced that the offboard locations on the Allegheny map would be of interest, but I’m glad to say I was wrong. In each play, a corporation has built out at least one location to exhaust the cash in its treasury to create a handsome one-time payout for shareholders, especially when the corporation’s president had multiple shares in the business. I wish that at least one of the offboards here could boost the Value of a company, to make it a destination worth pushing for over the other offboard locations. But, I appreciate that this map offers a slight change to the rules from the base game.
It’s a Must
The expansion maps for Age of Rail do exactly what I wanted them to do—offer a change-up over the base game map with essentially the exact same ruleset but different paths and starting locations for the five initial railroads.
While I prefer Allegheny just a hair over La Pampa, both have a chance to hit the table whenever this comes out for a night of cube rails with friends. And I’m still shocked at how easy it is to teach and table the Age of Rail system. On a recent night where one player had never played any of the Iron Rails games (including my favorite, Iberian Gauge), I taught Age of Rail with the Allegheny map in about seven minutes. The play took a little more than an hour.
If you like other cube rail games with an action selection mechanic (such as Chicago Express), I think it is best to just buy both Age of Rail products together—the Age of Rail: South Africa base game and this expansion. I’m already hoping for more maps!
Age of Rail: South Africa—Expansion Maps: Allegheny & La Pampa details
- Designer: John Bohrer
- Artists: Ian O'Toole
- Publishers: Capstone Games
- Release Date: 2025
- Player count : 3 - 6
- Time range : 60 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Action Drafting, Auction/Bidding, Stock Holding, Victory Points as a Resource
- BGG Geek Rating: 7.4875 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
- More articles about Age of Rail: South Africa—Expansion Maps: Allegheny & La Pampa.
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