Munich at the end of the 19th century: the new tramway is successful and needs expansion. New routes are introduced, stations are built, and existing routes with high demand are reinforced with additional trains.

Meanwhile, the technological progress requires some major changes: trains pulled by horses are replaced with steam-powered ones at first and later with electrical ones. Both players are competing for heads of a company.

In the end, though, there can only be one tramway company. Who will manage to defeat their competitor?


Components

  • 16 Tramway Cards
  • 8 Conductor Cards
  • 112 Station Cards
  • 4 Terminal Station Cards
  • 2 Overview Cards
  • 1 Scoring Pad
  • Rule Book

Object of the Game

The player who scores the most victory points during 10 scorings and any extra tours wins the game.

To achieve this goal, you will be building and expanding tramway routes by playing and collecting card-columns in ascending order (see step 2).

In order to score a column, you will need to purchase a Tramway Card and assign it to (see step 1 and Scoring) or 8 stations in a column (see "Extra Tour").


The Station Cards

Each of these cards can be used in three different ways. When playing a card, you must decide which way you want to use it:

  • as a station of a particular color (column), or
  • as a passenger of a particular color (row), or
  • as 1000 marks to pay for new trains


Setup

  1. Thoroughly shuffle the Station and Conductor Cards together and place them as the draw pile in the middle of the table, face down with the money side facing up.



  2. Sort the Tramway Cards by value, and place each group of cards on top of each other in ascending order so that the 4s (Electric) are at the bottom, the 3s (Steam) in the middle, and the 2s (Horse) are on the top.



  3. The player who most recently used a tram becomes the start player. As such, draw 12 cards from the draw pile and place them as your money pile in front of you, without looking at the front sides of the cards.



    They represent 12,000 marks that you can only use to purchase new trains. Your opponent receives 15 cards from the draw pile, i.e. 15,000 marks to start with. They also may not look at the front sides of these cards.

    Then each player draws 6 cards from the draw pile into their hand. You can use your hand cards in any of the three available ways (as passengers, stations, or money). Be sure to keep your cards secret from the other player.

  4. Make some room on the table for the display of passengers. Place the 4 Terminal Station cards in a column such that there is room for another 4 cards as a row next to each Terminal Station card.

  5. You will also need some room in front of you for the card columns you will form to represent your routes. (It does not matter whether you play your cards on top of or next to each other.

    These use the terms "row" and "column" to differentiate passengers of a route and stations of a route, respectively).

  6. Finally, the start player takes the Scoring Pad and a pen (not included). He will be responsible for keeping track of the scores. Then the game begins!




Game Play

You take turns. On your turn, you carry out the following actions in the given order:


1. Place Passengers

You must play 1 or 2 cards as passengers.

Add each card to the appropriate card row in the middle of the table next to the "Terminal Station" card of matching color. If you play 2 cards, they need not be of the same color but in the row of that color. Conductor Cards can be added to any row.

Please note! As soon as the fourth passenger is added to a row, all columns of that color must be scored immediately.



2. Place Stations

You can play any number of cards from your hand in front of you. Place cards of different colors in separate columns, each column representing a route. In each column, the cards have to be played in ascending order of their values, though you may skip values.

If you cannot add a card to an existing column, start a new one. A column is complete when you add a Station Card of value 10 to it.

You can add Conductor Cards to any column that is not complete, placing them next to the column. Conductor Cards are not worth any victory points. Their only purpose is to facilitate Extra Tours.

You can add any number of Conductor Cards to a column. As soon as you add the eighth card to a column (regardless of whether it is a Station or Conductor; the Tramway Card does not count), you immediately trigger an Extra Tour.

Please note! You can have multiple columns of the same color, but each of them requires a Tramway Card!



3. Income

You may place any number of cards from your hand on your money pile to increase your capital. Each card represents 1,000 marks.


4. Purchase Trains

You can purchase one or more of the available Tramway Cards by paying the depicted costs. You can only use the cards in your money pile to pay. You cannot use cards from your hand or from your card rows or columns. Place the used cards in a discard pile.

Once purchased, you must immediately assign each Tramway Card to one of your columns that does not already have a Tramway Card. Once assigned, you cannot re-assign a Tramway Card. This new Tramway Card is required if you want to keep new columns.

You do not replenish the supply of Tramway Cards right away, but only at the end of your turn.



Example: There are two horse trains and a steam train in the supply. Since you started 2 more columns this turn, you will need 2 new tramway cards.

You would really like to acquire 2 steam trains for this, but there is only one available. So you buy that one and a horse train, moving 15 cards from your money pile to the discard pile.


5. Draw New Cards

If you have any card columns in front of you without a Tramway Card, remove these cards and place them on your money pile. Finally, draw cards from the draw pile and put them into your hand until you have a hand of 6 cards again.

As soon as the draw pile is empty, both players must discard half of their money pile (rounded down). Then shuffle the discard pile to form a new draw pile.


Scoring & Extra Tours

As soon as one of you adds the fourth passenger to the row of a Terminal Station card, a scoring takes place immediately. Both of you must immediately score all of your columns matching the color of the completed row.

To score a column, add up the values of the cards in the column and multiply the total with the value of its Tramway Card. Use the Scoring Pad to write down your scores.

Then discard the 4 passengers of that row. Do not discard your columns!

As soon as you add the eighth card to a column (only counting Conductor and Station Cards), you must immediately score that column. Write down the score under the "Extra Tours" category of the Scoring Pad.

Each column can only have one Extra Tour scoring. Adding a ninth or even more cards to a column does not trigger an Extra Tour scoring again.




Example: The fourth passenger has been just added to the blue Terminal Station card (not pictured), immediately triggering a scoring of that color. Player A has one blue card column with cards 1-2-5-6 and a steam train (value 3), which is worth 12 points.

Player B scores a total of 24 points with two blue columns, receiving 10 points for the conductor-2-3-4-7 with a horse train, and 14 points for the 3-5-8-10 with another horse train (value 2).


End of the Game

The game ends immediately after the 10th regular scoring. Extra Tours are not considered as a regular scoring and cannot trigger the endgame (you cannot score an Extra Tour while triggering the endgame).

Then add up your scores from the regular and your Extra Tour scorings. The player with the highest score wins.

In the rare event of a tie, the player with the bigger money pile wins. If still tied, play again to determine the winner.


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