Empire Builder is a railroad board game centered on the construction of railroad track and delivery of goods. It was designed by Bill Fawcett and Darwin Bromley and released in 1982 by Mayfair Games. The original game was set in the United States and Canada. This was replaced with a new version encompassing all of North America, including Mexico. A number of spin off games have been released since, expanding the game's geography to other countries and fantastic landscapes. These games are collectively known as "the Empire Builder series". Empire Builder games are sometimes called Crayon Rails games because players mark their tracks on the board with wax crayons. Most of the titles of the series are available in the Mayfair-authorized computer gameEmpire Builder Pronto.
Gameplay
The gameplay in Empire Builder begins on a map of North America. Players take turns to create their own railroad routes by drawing them on a laminated board with washable crayons, then pick up and deliver commodities along them according to the "demand cards" they draw. They receive income based on delivered goods. Whoever is first to connect together six of the seven major cities on the map and get $250 million wins the game.
Reception
In the September 1982 edition of Dragon, Gary Gygax gave a favourable review, saying, "Empire Builder is the best boardgame to come out in a long time. In my opinion it is the best available, being more complex and challenging than the simpler sort and not as tedious and complicated as those at the other end of the spectrum." Eleven years later, in the December 1993 edition of Dragon, Allen Varney considered Empire Builder a classic that "rewards careful strategy and offers lots of replay value." In the October 1994 edition of Pyramid, Scott Haring complimented Australian Rails, saying that both this game "and its brothers don't have the romantic thrills of other games -- there are no armies to defeat, no damsels to rescue, no dragons to slay. But it's a great strategic game, requiring brains and planning to win. And in my opinion, it's every bit as satisfying to survey a well-planned rail network and to count the earnings as it is to plant your foot on the belly of a slain dragon and count its gold. Every bit."
Awards
In 1991 the Eurorails set won the Origins Award for Best Modern-Day Boardgame of 1990. In 1995Australian Rails won the Origins Award for Best Modern-Day Boardgame of 1994.
