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Dampfross box art
1979 Ranked #5,594

Dampfross

A railway-building game has players draw routes between cities, then race across the completed network for profit. Using a rival’s track costs money, so early construction can become a valuable future advantage.

Family Games Racing Trains Crayon Rail System Network and Route Building

Players

2-6

Play time

Not listed

Age

10+

Complexity

2.18/5

Rating

6.21

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.3/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 4.0/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.7/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 4.0/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.5/5

Deep strategy

See all 5 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

This game was originally designed by a teacher to be used as a learning tool. There are several different editions of this game (originally released in the UK as Railway Rivals), but most feature several different hexagonal maps of real locations, such as Tennessee and Germany.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

This game was originally designed by a teacher to be used as a learning tool. There are several different editions of this game (originally released in the UK as Railway Rivals), but most feature several different hexagonal maps of real locations, such as Tennessee and Germany. Starting from one of the cities pictured on the map, players build track during the first part of the game. Players receive a small bonus for reaching a city before anyone else, but otherwise funds are quite limited. After nearly every city has been connected to someone's rail line, several races are held on the resultant track. The starting city and destination city are determined randomly, and players can use each other's track (for a nominal fee, of course). After all races have been held, the player with largest bank account is the winner. This series of games is very similar to Mayfair Game's crayon rail games series, though they use erasable marker pens instead of crayons.

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Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
No editions imported yet.

Player resources

Rulebooks, player aids, FAQs, and solo resources.

No files imported yet.

Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
2–6
Best with
3–6
Play time
90 min
Age
10+
Complexity
2.2/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

1
David G. Watts

Artists

1
Frank Pfeifer

Publishers

4
Alga Bütehorn Spiele (Buchholz Verlag) Laurin Verlag Schmidt Spiele