While wandering through a game store yesterday, I was surprised to find that Lunar Rails is finally available. I managed to find a second player, and we dove in for a test run.

The biggest difference between LR and the rest of the crayon rails games is the map shape. The game takes place over the entire surface of the moon, so it doesn't use a simple "flat" map. The lunar map consists of two circles representing the near side and far side. A series of labeled, colored-coded dots is used to aid in figuring out where a milepost on the edge of the near side connects to the corresponding edge of the far side. It didn't take us very long to get used to it.

There are some events which work a little differently from the other Mayfair rail games, and a couple of entirely new ones. Meteor strikes have replaced river floods. Meteor strike cards give a direction and distance - for instance, 3 mileposts to the northwest. The next demand card is drawn, revealing three cities. The player counts three mileposts to the northwest of each city and erases all track connected to those mileposts, as well as any track connected to mileposts adjacent to those mileposts. (That's harder to describe properly than it is to do in the execution). Any train on those mileposts suffers loss of turn and loads.

There are cosmic rays and solar flares, which force each player in his next turn to shelter his train in a city. If a city can't be reached, loss of turn and load(s) occur.

There are three boom/shortage cards. These are an improvement over the heating oil shortage in Empire Builders. Each event gives players the opportunity to deliver one of a list of commodities to any major city, without the need for a demand card. The first player to do so receives 20 M, and the event is discarded. The event will hang around for 3 turns, almost ensuring that someone will be able to use it.

The locos are Iron Dragon style - starting with 10 movement and 2 capacity, working up through 4 upgrades to 16 movement and 3 capacity, with upgrades costing 10 M.

The map is very mountainous. Payoffs tend to be rather high, but so are track costs. There are also craters, rills, alpines, and a few other features. Historical landing sites are mentioned.

There are a few new commodities, but everything works normally - there's no special cargos like the pilgrims in India Rails.

We enjoyed the game in our first playing, though the real test will, of course, come with more players.