Year: 1999
Publisher: Amigo / Rio Grande
Author: Alan R. Moon
Components: 1 board, 131 trains, 168 cards (shares, tracks, payout cards...), 150 banknotes

ELFENLAND by Alan R. Moon obtained its big success and won the 1998 Spiel des Jahres also because it simplified the previous ELFENROADS (1992), by the same author, keeping the more interesting mechanics and the fairy story setting.
Alan R. Moon went along this “street” more than once: so, before TICKET TO RIDE, he had created another more complex train game. It is UNION PACIFIC, one of the three finalists at the Spiel des Jahres 1999, 3rd at the Deutscher Spiele Preis 1999 and nomination in the multiplayer section of the -at that time newborn- International Gamers Award (2000). Despite its young “age” and all these prizes, the game cannot be found in English anymore. As in TICKET TO RIDE the board shows a map of United States where there is a dense net of railroads to be filled with trains.
But the fulcrum of the game revolves around a more “18xx” concept: the players want to be the first or second shareholder of these colours/railroad companies, so as to take the dividends that are paid four times during the game.
As it can be imagined, who the most money (= points) after the last payment of the dividends is the winner.
At the beginning on the board are posed – in a prefixed manner – one or two trains for each of the ten railroad companies. Beginning from that nucleus the majority shareholders of that colour try to branch its railroad net, laying down trains on the adjoining railroads: the bigger the net of each colour, the more dividends are paid by that colour.
At the beginning, each player receives track cards and shares of the railroad companies, and plays one share before her (in her “book”).
With a game system similar to REIBACH & CO. (1996) / GET THE GOODS (1997) of Moon himself, and that will also be in ALHAMBRA by Dirk Henn, the main deck is divided in more parts in which the payoff cards are scattered and shuffled: when a payoff card is drawn, points are awarded. At her turn, the player chooses between two options as in TICKET TO RIDE: to improve her potential situation (using a track card to lay down a train on a railroad, and adding a share to her hand) or to make her current situation real (playing the shares from her hand to her book).
In the first case the player increases the railroad net in a colour in which she is first or second shareholder (or thinks to reach one of these positions soon). The new added share to the hand is drawn with a mechanic that is Alan Moon signature: she chooses one among some face-up shares – the choice is certain, but everybody knows it – and discovers immediately a new share, or she draws a face down card from the deck. In each case, there is the risk to reveal a payoff card, causing the immediate award of points.
In the case of playing shares, instead, it is difficult to defend against the climb of our companies by other players: it is possible to play unlimited shares of the same colour, or exactly two of two different colours.
Since after a while the colours in which each player can or cannot compete for the majority are clear, the game gives the possibility to exchange your “useless” shares with the ones of one company that has no trains («it has agreements with the other companies» says the setting). It is the Union Pacific itself, the company that gives the name to the game: it starts paying only from the second payoff card on, but with known (and always growing) dividends, and not only to the first and second shareholder, but until the fifth! Moreover, thanks to some bounds (each colour has a different and limited number of shares and trains, and these ones can be laid down only on some among four different types of tracks; on every railroad only a limited number of colours can be laid down), as the games goes on more and more towards the fourth point count, it is entertaining to limit the expansion of the companies in which we will never have the majority.
As the TICKET TO RIDE players already know, the strength points of UNION PACIFIC – the entertaining possibility to block, the marvellous plastic trains and the setting – have been preserved. Those that – with hindsight – can seem unnecessary asymmetries and bounds there aren’t anymore. Most importantly, in UNION PACIFIC it was possible that the hard work of construction and survival of a railroad net of one colour would have gained points for another player that, thanks to the lucky draw of the proper shares, could steal an important majority. The certainty to lay down your own tokens like the trains in TICKET TO RIDE reassures and relaxes a wider public.
A last note: in its turn, UNION PACIFIC was born as a simplification and refinement of AIRLINES (1990), by Moon too, where the various lines had different costs and there was not an (air)line that relied on the other ones.