Prussian Rails – Trains, Shares and the Fine Art of Not Helping Your Opponents (Too Much)

Prussian Rails takes you to 19th-century Prussia, where trains were criss-crossing the countryside and investors were looking to get rich off them. In this game, you’re not building a railway empire. You’re an investor, quietly buying shares in various companies, nudging them to expand, and hoping that someone else builds the track that bumps up your income.

If that sounds dry on paper, well, it kind of is. This isn’t a flashy game, and it doesn’t try to be. But it has its own kind of charm, especially if you like careful timing, shared incentives, and that moment when you profit off someone else’s hard work. It’s a game that rewards patience more than big, dramatic moves.

👥 3-5 players, ages 14+
⌛ Playing time: 90-120 minutes
📝 Designer: John Bohrer
🎨 Artwork: Todd Sanders

🏢 Publisher: Rio Grande Games (review copy provided)

How It Plays

Each player starts with a bit of cash, scaled to the player count. No one owns a company. Instead, you buy shares in up to eight historic railway companies. These include the Preußische Ostbahn, Niederschlesische, Sächsische, Bayerische, Main-Weser, Badische, Köln-Mindener and Berlin-Hamburger. Each one has a home city, its own income level, and a rule that sets it apart from the rest. One builds more track than usual. One can’t spend much money. One doesn’t pay anything until it connects Berlin to Hamburg.

The game begins with an auction where one share of each company is sold, one after the other. The money from each auction goes straight into that company’s treasury. This is important, because it’s the only way companies can afford to build track. From the start, you’re deciding not just what income you want, but which companies you want to support financially.

On your turn, you choose one of three actions. You can pass. You can auction off a share from a company’s treasury. Or you can expand a company you have at least one share in.

Expanding means building track across the map. Most companies can lay three cubes of track per turn, though some are slower or faster. All track has to connect back to the home city. The cost comes out of the company’s treasury, not your pocket. Plains cost two, hills cost three, mountains cost four. Cities can hold multiple companies, but each one beyond the first pays an extra stacking fee.

Building into a city increases the company’s income, which also bumps up the income of everyone who holds a share in that company. But the biggest moment is when one company connects directly to another. That triggers a dividend payout for all companies based on their current income. The one that triggered the connection pays double. Timing this right is key.

The game ends when all companies are directly connected to at least two others, or when it’s obvious that this isn’t going to happen. At that point, whoever has the most money wins.

The Look and Feel

There’s no polite way to put this. Prussian Rails looks plain. Some would call it clean. Others might say functional. It’s not ugly, but you’re not going to sit back and admire the components either. If you like sharp visuals or detailed artwork, this one won’t impress you.

The mounted board shows a hex-based map of Prussia. Terrain is colour-coded, cities are marked clearly, and it’s all easy to read. Wooden cubes represent track in eight colours, one for each company. Share cards match the colours and feature simple vintage-style train drawings. It gets the point across without being distracting.

Player income is tracked using coloured disks, and each railroad’s income is marked with a track-coloured cube. Both are recorded on tracks printed directly on the board. Turn order is determined by a bag draw, where players with lower income get more discs and thus a better chance of going earlier. It feels a bit odd at first, and sometimes a bit unfair, but it does shake things up now and then.

All of the special company rules are printed on the board, which is genuinely useful. You don’t need to keep checking the rulebook to remember which company builds more or skips the city penalties.

Paper money comes in four denominations. It’s monochrome and features trains. Not much else to say there. It works fine.

If you like clean, legible design and aren’t bothered by a lack of atmosphere, the production does its job. If you like to be immersed in the setting, this game probably won’t do that for you.

Our Experience

When we first played Prussian Rails, it started off quietly. Everyone was figuring out how auctions worked, how track building connected to income, and how dividends actually triggered. It took a bit of observation and patience. But once the core loop clicked, things started to move faster.

By the second game, players were timing share auctions to fund companies they had invested in. Sometimes they auctioned shares not to sell them, but to give the company cash to expand. It’s a clever little cycle. You fund the company, it builds track, its income goes up, and you earn more. Of course, if others also have shares, you’re helping them too. That part never stops being tricky.

There were moments when someone expanded a company they had a minor share in, just to trigger a dividend that benefitted them more through a different investment. It’s the kind of play you don’t expect until someone does it to you, and then you start watching everyone’s holdings much more closely.

The board develops at a steady pace, no matter how many players are involved. There’s no fighting over space, since any company can build wherever it likes, but that doesn’t mean your choices exist in a vacuum. The tension comes from timing and the knock-on effects of each move. The interaction is low-key but constant. You’re not interfering directly, but it’s hard to ignore when someone else profits from something you just built.

The turn order system deserves a mention. It favours players with less income, which can help level things out. But sometimes there are a few consecutive rounds where someone doesn’t get drawn at all. That’s frustrating, even if it balances out over time. It’s not a huge problem, but worth being aware of.

What stood out to us most was how different each game felt depending on which companies took off early, how players valued certain shares, and when connections were made. The map stays the same, but the player decisions are what shape the game.

Final Thoughts

Prussian Rails is a very specific kind of game. It doesn’t pretend to be exciting. It doesn’t wow you with production. What it does offer is a tight, thoughtful economic puzzle where timing, positioning, and reading the table matter more than anything else.

If you’ve played games like Chicago Express, Irish Gauge, or some of the more approachable 18xx titles, you’ll recognise some of the ideas here. It’s not quite as punishing as the heavier stuff, but it still rewards forward planning and being able to adapt when someone makes it impossible to connect in quite the way you’d hoped.

The game plays best with four or five. At three, it’s still solid, though things tend to move a bit more calmly and with less pressure from other players. The rules are easy to explain, but the decisions can be sharp and unforgiving. It’s not about knowing what you can do, but figuring out when it’s worth it, and whether you’re helping someone else more than yourself.

We do have a few criticisms. The turn order draw can leave someone without a turn, which isn’t ideal. The game also looks and feels a bit dry, even by train game standards. And if your group needs theme or dramatic turns to stay engaged, this one might fall flat.

But if you enjoy economic games where the tension comes from shared incentives and timing, there’s a lot here. It’s the kind of game where you make subtle plays, feel clever for a minute, and then realise someone else just made more money off your move than you did.

You don’t need to own shares in every company. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. What matters more is stopping someone else from running away with a company unchallenged. That constant balance between cooperation and competition is what gives the game its edge.

Prussian Rails isn’t for everyone, but for the right group, it hits a nice sweet spot. It’s short enough to play in an evening, but dense enough to reward repeated plays. And you’ll probably still be thinking about that one dividend payout on the drive home.

📝 We received a copy of Prussian Rails from Rio Grande Games for review.