Age of Steam Expansion: Pack Ice & Solar System
Age of Steam Expansion: Pack Ice & Solar System Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Solar System (3–4 Players, 4 Recommended)
Each city is read as a planet and each town as a moon. Planets orbit the Sun once per round. All base rules apply except the changes listed here.
Setup
The Sun is always a yellow city.
Prepare a pool of 20 disks: 4 each of black, blue, red, yellow, and purple. Draw disks from the pool at random, one at a time, and place one on each numbered planet. (Translator's note: the colors of these disks represent the city colors of the base game.)
Then place goods on every space of the Goods Display, as in the base game. Place 3 goods on Earth and on Mars (the white planets 3 and 4, on the orbit closest to the Sun), and 2 goods on each of the other planets.
Playing the Map
Track Laying
The ellipses around the Sun are the orbits of the stars, and show the various positions of planets and moons.
Track is laid by placing disks on the circular spaces on the map. The spaces where disks are placed each represent a link. There are two kinds of link:
- In-orbit link: A link on a planet's orbit. Each costs $6. Only one player may build a link on an in-orbit link space, meaning only one disk can ever occupy that space.
- Inter-orbit link: A link connecting two different orbits. Each costs $3. An inter-orbit link space may hold up to p−1 disks, where p is the number of players (the disks are simply stacked). The same player may place more than one disk on a single inter-orbit link, to monopolize it.
In this phase, each player may choose one of the following:
- Build one in-orbit link.
- Build up to two inter-orbit links.
Diagrams: examples of a planet, an in-orbit link, a moon, and an inter-orbit link.
Action: Engineer
The Engineer action lets the player build one in-orbit link and one inter-orbit link.
Goods Transport
When goods are transported, each link traversed requires one locomotive level.
An unurbanized (unplanetized) moon counts as a colorless city.
End of Round
Move each planet disk on each orbit (together with any new city tiles) one space clockwise. Goods do not move. Skip moon spaces that were empty from the start.
Example: the first orbit (the innermost orbit) has two planet spaces and two moon spaces.
- If neither moon has been urbanized (planetized), swap the disks on the two planet spaces.
- If one moon has been urbanized, move the disk and the new city tile one space clockwise. Empty moon spaces are skipped.
Diagrams: the two cases above, shown on the innermost orbit.
Pack Ice (4–5 Players)
The entire hex represents pack ice. Each round, new blue disks are added along the edge of the ice, so the pack ice cracks and certain areas become harder to access. All base rules apply except the changes listed here.
Setup
Place 2 goods in each city. Place 1 good on each supply hex (a hex with a star drawn on it).
This map has one round fewer than the base game.
Set the blue disks aside. Blue cannot be used as a player's disk color.
Playing the Map
Track Laying
Blue disks represent melting ice and cracks in the pack ice. The cost to lay track on an ice hex is $2.
Track cannot be laid through a line that has a blue disk on it (see End of Round below).
Action: Urbanization
Only white hexes may be urbanized.
Goods Transport
Goods may be transported across a line that has blue disks on it (the cracks left by melting ice). Each blue disk traversed during transport requires one additional locomotive level. Unfortunately, even if the extra levels are spent, income increases only by the normal amount.
End of Round
The last player to take a turn in the current round takes 3 blue disks and begins cracking the pack ice.
- Each disk must be placed on an edge of a hex that is drawn with cracks (the jagged lines).
- Each disk must be adjacent to another blue disk or to the sea.
- The exception is inland cracks that begin "naturally." Only these may have a blue disk placed even though it is not adjacent to the sea.
- The 3 disks must be placed as close to each other as possible. A new, separate crack may be started only if this is impossible.
(Translator's note: the cracks do not have to continue from the blue disks placed in the previous round. As long as the rules above are followed, the first disk may be placed freely.)