"So let's get together and play-test this game," Jake said.

"Sure, when do you want to do it?" I asked.

"Next week would work," Jake replied.

"Who are getting to test it with us?"

"Well, we'll get the Thorne brothers over here."

"Ryan & Ken? That should be enough. Who's running it?"

"Well, I took it with me on vacation and read it, but Sherrie wasn't too keen on me working while we were there, so I don't remember exactly how to do it. But Ryan's had the game for a couple of weeks, so he's likely to have a handle on it."

"Good," I said, and left it at that.

Flash forward a week and there I am, at Jake's waiting for the Thornes. When they finally did arrive we of course had to wander to a convenience store first and generally mess about, as all gamers do, before settling down and playing. Jake had taken the legs off of his dining room table for storage purposes. We pulled out the tabletop and laid it on the floor. Feeling slightly Japanese, we sat on the floor around the table. Ryan pulled out the set and handed it to Jake. I was impressed; here was a complete miniatures game contained in a box. I was eager to start playing.

Before I go on with the events which will unfold shortly, allow me to explain that I have never played a miniatures game before. Sure I'm aware they exist, and that games like Warhammer and Battle Tech are extremely popular. And I suppose if you consider Fasa's Star Trek combat simulator to be a miniatures game, then I have participated. But for my money, I still have no idea what to do in a "regular" miniatures game. That being said read on…

So I turned to Ryan and asked, "how do you play this game?"

"Hell if I know," Ryan replied.

"But you've had the game for weeks," I countered.

"Yeah, but I never read the books."

"Great. Does anyone know how to play this?"

"Well I read it on my vacation," Jake said, "but I don't remember that much about it…"

"Has anyone ever played a miniatures game? Maybe you can tell us where to begin…"

The blank stares answered my question, and told me what I needed to do…

With a mighty sigh which comes after reading 3 core rule books from three different games in a week, I said, "let me see it… maybe I can figure this thing out enough for us to play it." Wrong idea. One of the aspects I've praised Pinnacle Entertainment for in their Deadlands series is that they don't waste space explaining what role-playing is, or what a GM is required to do. They assume if you're buying the game, you must have some prior knowledge regarding RPGs. The same philosophy was realized when I started scanning the "rule book" Yes there were lots of rules of engagement, rules of combat, etc; but no starting point. No "this is how you play" section. A half an hour passed. Jake & the Thorne brothers punched out all of the little cardboard pieces and assembled the cardboard buildings.

Now we aren't completely daft, we would look at a piece, a card, a cutout, and we knew what it was for. It was the actual playing of the game which was eluding us. After 45 minutes of reading and re-reading, I said with great exasperation, "I don't have a clue how to play this!"

Terrific, another wasted evening. We looked over what was in front of us.

"Well the buildings are kinda cool" I said, "but you could build up some better ones by gluing wood onto old milk cartons…" Which took me back to my childhood and a really cool wood cutting toy I used to have.

"Yeah," Ryan added, "I really like the detail on the figures. They are large enough anyone can paint them without too much difficulty, but detailed enough to let someone, who knew what they were doing, really do something cool."

"Well, from what I just read, this set has everything," I said. "It looks like it could be a lot of fun."

"Yeah, if we just knew how to play it," Ken added.

We all agreed and looked on.

"I've got Star Wars Monopoly," Jake said.

"Get it out!" we all shouted.

So in the end, if you're a fan of miniatures games and you want to try something new, pick up The Great Rail Wars from Pinnacle games. If you've never played this sort of thing before, take a lesson from us and find out how you do it before buying the game.

As for Star Wars Monopoly, It's a lot of fun, even if you've never played Monopoly before.

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Game Review: Great Rail Wars (miniatures)