tabletoppingboardgames 
Some eurogames are all about building engines. This one’s literally about getting them moving. In Movers & Shakers, you play as railway magnates in Bengal during the 19th century, when industrialization was starting to speed up. It’s currently up on Gamefound from Quined Games and will be number 29 in their Master Print Series.
You’re trying to build a railway business that actually runs, shipping goods between Benares and Calcutta, investing money, and using the rail network better than everyone else. It sounds like another train euro, but to be fair, this one does something different. It’s all about shared logistics. Everyone manages their own company, but the trains themselves are a common system that anyone can use or move.
👥 1-4 players, ages 14+
⌛ Playing time: 60-120 minutes
📝 Designers: Nuno Bizarro Sentieiro & Paulo Soledade
🎨 Artwork: Andreas Resch
🏢 Publisher: Quined Games (prototype copy provided)
Check out the Gamefound campaign by clicking here
A bit of history
In the late 1800s, Bengal was one of the most important railway regions in British India. The East Indian Railway Company opened the first eastern route from Howrah to Hooghly in 1854, and before long, the whole area was connected by lines moving coal, tea, and all sorts of goods.
In the game, you’ll be moving freight between Benares and Calcutta in both directions, just like those historical routes. It’s a smart setting for an economic game. It’s busy, industrial, and gives you a good reason to push little trains across the board.
How it plays
The game is played over two rounds. That sounds short, and it is. You get six turns per round, so every move matters. There’s no time to drift.
On your turn, you play a card to your company board. Each slot gives you a different type of action depending on where you put the card. You do what’s written on the card and also the effect of that slot. It’s not hard to follow, but the choices are tight.
There are two types of cards, load and movement. Each one has its own effect, but where you place it on your company board decides what kind of company action you’ll trigger: development at the top or logistics at the bottom.
You’ll load crates, move trains, deliver goods and invest money. And here’s where it gets interesting. Anyone can move any train. That means sometimes you’re pushing an opponent’s goods forward just because yours happen to be in the same train. At first it feels wrong, but it’s one of those things that suddenly clicks.
Trains always move clockwise, from Benares to Calcutta or the other way around, and once they arrive, you unload the crates, earn some money later, and bump up your performance. Bigger cars move you further up that track.
After everyone’s played their cards, you get to the administration phase. That’s where you check who shipped the most overseas, collect money from deliveries, adjust the market by lowering all your market markers to match the lowest one, and then invest your profits. You can use investment tokens to raise your assets and set yourself up for end-game scoring.
At the end of the second round, you total up your assets, deals, performance and investments. Your lowest asset also adds extra points to each investment token. It changes how you score. You may not want to go all-in on one thing, but instead keep your company steady across the board.
How it looks and feels
We played a prototype copy, but even at this stage, it looked and felt good. Andreas Resch’s art gives it a warm, grounded look, showing Bengal’s rail lines and rivers in soft colours. Everything’s clear and tidy, even with a lot going on.
The trains are great. Each engine and car physically connects, so when you move a train, it slides as one piece. It’s small, but honestly, it adds a lot. The cards are simple and easy to read, with icons that start to make sense after a few rounds. The player boards are double-layered, which I always appreciate because nothing slides around.
If you know Quined’s production style, you can probably imagine what the final version will feel like. Heavy box, chunky wood, no nonsense.
Our experience
We played it several times, with two, three, and four players. It scales fine, but three or four is definitely the sweet spot. That’s when the rail network feels alive and the table talk really starts.
The first game was a bit of a mental workout. You have to unlearn the idea that you only move your own trains. You can load crates into anyone’s cars, and they can move yours. Sometimes it helps you, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s weird at first, but once you see how shared movement makes timing everything, it really clicks.
One thing we really liked was how the trains can actually push each other forward. When a train moves into another, it pushes it forward, and that one might push the next. You can set up small chain reactions or get caught in someone else’s. Sometimes that’s great, sometimes it ruins your plan. Either way, it’s funny when it happens.
There are shortcuts near each city, and you might need them to avoid giving other players free deliveries. They don’t cost money, but they do cost movement steps, so using them too often slows you down.
The cash flow system also deserves a mention. You don’t collect coins, you track your income on a scale from 0 to 10. Every time you wrap around, you get an investment token. These are crucial for endgame points, but the balance between having cash and locking it into investments can be tricky. You can’t convert it back once it’s invested, so timing matters a lot.
You’ve also got contracts and deals to worry about. When you finish a contract, you take the reward, draw two new ones from the same stack, keep one, and fill it with crates right away. The deal tiles only pay off at the end, so it’s one of those things that feels slow at first but suddenly becomes important when you’re counting points.
What we think
In my opinion, the most interesting part is how every train ends up being shared between players. You’re not building your own isolated machine. You’re part of one big system where every move changes the table. It’s clever for sure, though sometimes it feels more like a puzzle that’s working against you.
I also really liked how the investment grid works. It’s where you spend your tokens to boost your assets and pick up small bonuses along the way. You’re basically turning your cash flow into long-term value. You can’t just focus on one thing though, because your lowest asset adds extra points to every investment at the end.
It’s fair to say it takes some ideas from Panamax, especially the shared movement and logistics feel, but this one plays a bit more compact. We usually finished in about two hours and it still felt like there was plenty to think about.
I get that it won’t click with everyone. There’s a lot to think about each turn, and people who like quick, snappy euros might find it heavy on calculation. You often need to consider how your move might help others, and that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But if you enjoy shared logistics, timing puzzles, and those small “oh no, that helps you too?” moments, it’s worth checking out.
For us, three or four players was perfect. Two felt more controlled, but with four, the whole rail line turns into a bit of a race that no one fully controls. It’s fun, a bit tense, and you’ll definitely have moments where someone moves the train you were about to use and you just have to laugh.
The game will also be coming to Board Game Arena soon, so you’ll be able to try it digitally if you’re curious. And if you want to read more about the game, check out the Gamefound page.
📝 We played a prototype copy provided by Quined Games.
