Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
Martian Rails is a railroad building game set on a fictional planet Mars.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Commodity Speculation
Buy or influence goods whose values change before they are sold or scored.
Network and Route Building
Create connected routes that improve reach, delivery, control, or scoring.
Pick Up and Deliver
Collect goods at one location and transport them to another for rewards.
Crayon Rail System
Draw transport routes directly on the board to build a connected network.
Line Drawing
Draw lines to connect, divide, trace, or claim parts of the play area.
Hexagon Grid
Use a hexagonal map where each space connects evenly in six directions.
Read the full game description
Martian Rails is a railroad building game set on a fictional planet Mars. Simultaneously, the game allows a world of canals and noble savages, a cold high altitude desert globe, a nearly airless planet, terraforming, nanotech cyberpunk and everything in between from 100+ years of science fiction stories set on Mars. The game further captures the mood of those stories and the feel of the planet. The game uses a further refinement of the wrap-around mechanism used in Lunar Rails to simulate travel across a 3D opposed to a 2D map. Having to think in 3D wraparound mode adds additional "brain-burn" to the Empire Builder franchise... sometimes the shortest distance between two points isn't the obvious straight line. See crayon rail games for more crayon fun.