The Age of Steam list by Michael Webb

Age of Steam is Martin Wallace's great gift to Euro gamers who want to play a train game, but don't have the 4-6 hours necessary to invest in a meatier option like the 18xx series which AoS was inspired by.

AoS was originally published in 2002, and became an almost immediate success. Because of the positive reaction, both Warfrog and Winsome games have since produced several expansion maps to add further life to the game.

As of 2005 AoS is also starting to develop a very healthy fan made expansion community. 3 of these (The Bay Area, Reunion Island, the Moon) were released at Essen 2005 and as of 2006 the expansion releases are accelerating at an alarming rate.

This list is a simple recounting of all of the AoS maps available to date, and is intended as a way for aficionados to debate the relative merits of the various maps as well as to detail the different options available and what they do to the game for those who are looking to pick up the game and an expansion or two.

As I noted above, as of 2006 the sheer number of fan-made expansions is starting to become overwhelming, and it will be my policy from here to add them to the list as soon as a finished version of the map and rules exist in an immediately useable way. There are a number of prototypes available at any given time, but maps will not join this list until they are finished products.

The new Geeklist ordering function is now allowing me to fix the order of this list up a bit. From here on out officially released expansions will always be moved to the top of the list and organized by date of release, while finished fan expansions will be later in the list. I will probably reorganize the fan maps based on 2 player vs. more than 2 player soon.

For reference this is my order of preference for all of the boards that I've played:

1: The Moon (I would only play with a maximum of 4, very tight, more cooperation required)
2: Ireland (3 only, great balance, tight competition)
3: London (4+, tough economy, interesting track building decisions throughout)
4: Bay Area (NorCal for 3, even tougher than the newer map)
5: Northern California (Advanced players only, 4 cap, basic rules, tough map
though)
6: Soul Train (seemed at its sweet spot with 4, nasty, experienced hands only)
7: Disco Inferno (interesting delivery options, 4+)
8: China (seems to support wide scale, again, economy extra tight)
9: PA (Coal Centric map is interesting, but I wonder about replay. 4+)
10: Iraq (Interesting strategy choices, nice tweaks to the system, 3 or 4)
11: Mars (4 only, Martians add some intrigue, as does the wrap, good stuff)
12: Japan (low scale only, map is very tight)
13: Germany (a slight step up over the Rust Belt, foreign terminals are nifty, 4+ required)
14: The Sun (Bizarre map in its own challenge category, 3 or 4)
15: 20,000 Rails Under the Sea (3 players only, unique, tight, strange questions asked)
16: New York Subway (Radical overhaul, but delivery phase is a little soft, 5 or 6)
17: Spain/Portugal (Team play combines well with new role, a bit long though)
18: Golden Spike (team play shakes things up, timing is really different, 4 only)
19: Korea (better with fewer to alleviate chaos, really creative new rules)
20: NE US (interesting "story", speculation is a decent twist)
21: Switzerland (some tight races and high track costs. 3 probably best)
22: France (low scale only, tighter than it appears, challenging in spots)
23: South America (quite vanilla, only minor rules changes, but plays solidly, probably best with 3-5)
24: Rust Belt (vanilla but solidly balanced, nice choke point corridor in NE, best with 4)
25: Eastern US & Canada (needs 6, interesting ideas, but the board play falters by the end game)
26: The Netherlands (6, probably 7 required. Neat ideas, but messy, too many goods)
27: Italy (low scale required, some neat new ideas, but long end game)
28: South Africa (mostly reused ideas, high scale requirement, not enough chokepoints)
29: Scandinavia (low scale only, balance issues with ferry)
30: England (requires high scale, no real choke points, no real wrinkles)
31: Western US (need high scale, goods too plentiful, seems like it has balance issues)
32: Mississippi Steamboats (Unpredictable steamboats extremely frustrating to deal with)
XX: Montréal Métro (3 players only, my design, hence, no rating)

2 player maps:
+ Austria (the best option that I've played so far, good, unique rules)
- Reunion Island (Ok, but the board is too big)
- Rust Belt (1/2 of the map variant, too much space, too easy)