I played it this afternoon with my daughter and wife. Had a good time, and a number of questions/comments :)
- How long did it take to play? : With rules explanation, 1.5 hours
- Were there any rules that were unclear? : Yes.
- Ports, any point in connecting to one after the first? There seems to be no reason to do so
- Does the income track stop at 25, or can a company have more than 25 income (we played that it could).
- On the right-hand side of the board there are 3 cubes depicted, a port+1-black cube (resource with no port = 1 income), a port +3 black cube (3 income connected to port) and a mysterious 3 red cube, not sure what the bottom cube means.
- Companies can connect to ports through any narrow gauge (independent) track. Can independents connect to ports through regular track? We played no, but could be clarified.
- Merge Independent: not clear who gets resulting share (we played that the owner of the independent got the share, but does not spell it out in the rules)
- What were the scores? 64-66-69
- Did you feel like there is room for you to improve in the game in subsequent plays? Yes
- Did you feel that you had interesting decisions to make throughout? Initially, with diminishing returns as the track disappeared and we were forced to just sell resources or attempt to push the game-end to counter the person (who won, my daughter) who was gaining more from dividends and pushing ahead.
The south-west of the map was littered with resources but went untouched due to limited track, so one of the end-game conditions was unattainable, (ended with all shares sold, and 2 bonds remaining). No company stayed negative for long, so debt was not much of an issue with the bonds sold. My wife and I felt the trains ran out too soon though, and the gathering cubes/waiting for game end mechanic that replaced it a bit dry.
Oh, and more space was needed for the income track! We did not use the calculation cheat-sheet below it at all.
Thanks for sharing the game with us! 