Though I agree you have to be careful not to run out of mo-ney, I often find I am able to spend 10 on a train upgrade during the initial building, either to bring a third load or to add 20% to my speed (especially if that means I'll reach one of my first two destinations a turn sooner and get money to extend my track). A problem you didn't mention: Given that trains eventually move 16 and some areas are solid mountains, you have to plan ahead (often several turns) to make sure you start building track early enough that you don't run out of track. I.e., if you reach the end of your track, you may be able to build only 10 mileposts more and will lose 6 movement. Planning ahead may also save you a dollar by letting you build from two directions to join your track in one of the rare plains mileposts. The wraparound map is definitely a mindbender. I've found routes that follow the edge of the map a little ways, flopping back and forth (using different colored dots, of course, per the rules). Because there are so many ways routes can go, and track is so expensive, I think it's even more important than in the other games of the series that you be prepared to use another player's track, especially once you have enough to connect 7 major cities. I don't play with the random events. I will note that having meteors strike further from the cities would often be boring, since when the events hit the current player (at least) is guaranteed to be at a city. It seems to be part of the design that random events are worse for the player whose turn it is. (If you're making deliveries, you must be doing well, so the game tries to balance it by beating on you?) And since it hasn't come up in a while, I'll take this opportunity to plug my random deck generator at www.icynic.com/~don/rails. Lunar Rails is one of the maps supported. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 10 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com