Age of Steam Expansion: Halloween & Washington DC
Age of Steam Expansion: Halloween & Washington DC Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Halloween (1 Player)
Unless the changes below are stated, all of the base game rules apply.
Components
- 12 orange cubes (pumpkins)
Setup
Black cubes represent witches and orange cubes represent pumpkins. Choose your colour and take all of the track markers / player discs in that colour. Return all track markers / player discs of other colours, the purple cubes, the yellow cubes, the new city tiles E and F, and the track tiles to the box.
Choose a difficulty (Easy, Normal or Hard) and check the table below.
| Difficulty | Unneeded | Pumpkins | Other cubes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 4 | 8 | 16 |
| Normal | 6 | 10 | 14 |
| Hard | 8 | 12 | 12 |
Bag: From the 16 black cubes, 20 red cubes and 20 blue cubes, randomly remove the number of "unneeded" cubes shown in the table above and set them aside out of the game. Put the rest into the bag. However, no more than 4 black cubes may be removed in this step.
Map: First, place the number of pumpkins shown in the table above beside the map, and return the remaining pumpkins to the box. Next, randomly draw the number of other cubes (black, red and blue) shown in the table above from the bag. Combine them with the pumpkins for a total of 24 cubes, and place them randomly, 2 cubes each, into the 12 coloured houses (that is, the black, red, blue and orange houses). The grey houses work like the towns in the base game, and have no cubes at the start.
Goods Display: Randomly draw the 36 cubes (black, red and blue) remaining in the bag and place them on the 1st and 2nd levels of all starting cities (leave the 3rd level empty), and on the 1st and 2nd levels of the new cities A, B, C, D, G and H. (Cities E and F are not used, so skip them.) The bag should now be empty!
Designer's Recommendation
If you take a photo of the setup, you can retry if you fail to clear the game. (Hard mode is very difficult!)
Clear Condition
Remove all pumpkins from the map (that is, make it so there are no orange cubes left on the map) and the game is cleared.
How to Play
Issuing Shares
You can issue at most 15 shares during the game. Shares may be issued at any time before the Pay Expenses phase.
Action Selection
The following actions cannot be used: Priority Shipping, Priority Track Laying, and Turn Order (Pass Rights).
Track Laying
- Houses are connected by links. Each link has one Jack-o'-Lantern (pumpkin lantern) drawn on it. When you make one link between two houses, place one piece of your colour on that Jack-o'-Lantern.
- The number of links you can make in one round is 0 to 1 link.
Laying Cost
- $5 per link connecting two houses.
Action: Urbanise
Place 1 new city tile on a grey house. From then on, that house is treated as the colour of the new city.
Action: Engineer
In this round, you can make 0 to 2 links instead of 0 to 1 link.
Goods Transport
Pumpkins cannot be transported by the normal method. When you move a witch to a black house, you may move 1 pumpkin from the house the witch is moving from, or from a house along the way, to an orange house along the way. Moving witches and moving pumpkins does not raise income.
Note: As usual, if a house of a colour contains a cube of that same colour, that cube must be moved to another house of the same colour. This also applies to pumpkins.
Example:
Your witch moves from the red house, through the grey house to the left, to the blue house above, and there picks up a pumpkin. From there, the witch and the pumpkin move together to an orange house, where the witch smashes the pumpkin. Then the witch passes through the red house and finally arrives at the black house. This requires a locomotive level of 5 and does not raise income, but since one pumpkin is gone, you are closer to clearing the game!
Apart from this route, the witch could also have picked up a pumpkin from the red house, but you cannot move both pumpkins in one transport!
Goods Replenishment
Action: Production
Take 1 witch of your choice from the goods display and place it in any house on the map (a grey house is also fine).
Washington D.C. (3-4 Players, 4 Recommended) - 2021 Revised Edition
Unless the changes given here are stated, all of the base game rules apply.
Map Explanation
The Washington D.C. map is divided into 3 zones:
- City centre (the grey area of the map diagram): all hexes inside the boundary of the District of Columbia (the inside of the diamond formed by the 3 thick lines and the Potomac River).
- Boundary (the thick lines and the river; the white area of the map diagram).
- Suburbs (the green area of the map diagram).
Components Needed
4 grid lock markers are required (they are not included with this map). Anything that is easy to tell apart from the rest can be used, such as the black side of a track tile, or the small cars, coins and similar pieces included in games such as Rush Hour.
Setup
Place 3 goods on each of the 4 cities in the city centre, and 2 goods on each of the 8 cities in the suburbs.
How to Play
Track Laying
- You can lay only 0 to 2 track tiles.
- Interstate 495 (INTERSTATE 495, also known as the Capital Beltway):
- Each of the 4 "495 hexes" is adjacent to only 2 hexes. One player cannot occupy both of these 2 adjacent hexes.
- Track cannot be laid on a 495 hex.
- A link running from a city or town to a 495 hex is treated as a completed link.
Laying Cost
- Track:
- City centre: $5 per single track.
- Boundary: $4 per single track.
- Suburbs: $3 per single track.
- Town (a named hex with no city number):
- City centre: $3 + $1 per track connected to the town.
- Suburbs: $1 + $1 per track connected to the town.
Action: Engineer
Lay 0 to 3 track tiles instead of 0 to 2. However, "buy 2 and get 1 free!" That is, if you lay all 3 track tiles, the cheapest of them is free.
Goods Transport
This map has 4 495 hexes. These 4 hexes are directly connected to each other by an invisible highway "ring road" that surrounds the outside of the map, and are treated as effectively the same hex. When you move goods to a 495 hex, you must "teleport" those goods to another 495 hex (truck transport). No additional locomotive level is needed for this, because a 495 hex is not a city or a town. For the same reason, teleporting goods from one 495 hex to another does not increase anyone's income.
However, if grid lock has occurred on a 495 hex (see "Grid Lock" below; "I have not forgotten the traffic jams of Washington D.C.!"), goods cannot be transported to or teleported to that 495 hex. A 495 hex with no grid lock can still be used.
Action: Production → Emergency
In the source, "Production" is struck through in this heading; the action is the Emergency action.
For 1 of the goods transported in this phase, you may use a 495 hex where grid lock has occurred (see "Grid Lock" below).
Advancing the Round Marker
Grid Lock
If any track is connected to a 495 hex, roll dice as follows and check the results.
- 4 players:
- Rounds 1-3: Roll 1 six-sided die.
- Rounds 4-5: Roll 2 six-sided dice.
- Rounds 6-7: All 495 hexes become grid locked.
- 3 players:
- Rounds 1-4: Roll 1 six-sided die.
- Rounds 5-7: Roll 2 six-sided dice.
- Rounds 8-9: All 495 hexes become grid locked.
First, remove all grid lock markers currently on the 495 hexes. Next, for each die result, place 1 grid lock marker on the 495 hex that bears the matching number. (If you roll 2 dice and get the same result, there is only one number, so only one hex becomes grid locked.)
Unless an Emergency action is selected in the Action Selection phase, a 495 hex that is grid locked cannot be used in the next round (see "Goods Transport").