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Spiel 2004, Railroad Dice Germany and Railroad Dice Crossing
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18.09.2004
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information for the press: Railroad Dice - Germany
After the surprising success at the Spiel 2003 fair (the complete 1st edition was sold out within one day) of >Railroad Dice - the first rails<, this year at the end of october finally the first expansion will be released.
"Railroad Dice - Germany" is not that kind of typical game expansion which only adds some few more components to the basic edition, but is a complete new game with many new ideas, using components and some of the well known and beloved mechanisms of the basic game.
The state is owner of the whole country and the railwaynetwork. It has been decided to establish five different railway companies in Germany to connect known cities and places. The players are railway managers who have the goal to transport as many passengers as possible by building stations in all parts of Germany and connecting these together through railwaytrack.
In "Railroad Dice - the first rails" the players were responsible for the development of the terrainmap. This changes in "Railroad Dice - Germany", because the game is played on 4x6 prealigned tiles having the same size like the original terraintiles. In addition to the already known terraintypes this expansion adds rivers as a new interesting element with effects on trackbuilding.
During the game players alltogether build a single railroadtrack like in the basic game, again with the same mechanism that all railroaddice are removed from the tile which just have been left by the track. A difference to "the first rails" is, that in such a case, the already built stations are left on the map instead of transferring them onto a miniatureview of the terrain map.
In the basic game players got appointed Director of one of the five companies by having most shares. This changed in "Railroad Dice - Germany" to the appointment of Directorship based on most actually already transported passengers for each company. That is the cause for not using shares anymore in the expansion game.
The former sharesymbol of the railroaddice is used in a game with the expansion-set as "transport"-symbol where each roll adds 1.000 passengers, waiting for their departure to one of the five companies.
This number of waiting passengers is increased at the end of each round about a multiple of 1.000, depending on the amount of already built stations for each company.
In "Railroad Dice - Germany" stations could be built by all players, without the need of beeing Director anymore, like compared to the basic game.
In contrast to that, possibilities of stationbuilding are restricted to special areas on the map, because stations could be built only on colordepicted spaces of known german cities connected to single companies each.
Besides these colored unique spaces other fields exist in many areas of the map as well as in the surrounding neighbouring countries where stations of any color could be built.
The player who just built a station receives two questionmarks and all counters representing passengers waiting for transport for this appropiate company. This amount of passengercounters could be increased just before, by using questionmarks and transportsymbols by the building player.
This is one of the main differences in the whole gameplay of "Railroad Dice - Germany", that player could initiate the gain of passengers themselves during a round by building a station and do not have to wait for the end of the round, where in "Railroad Dice - the firs rails" passengercounters are distributed based on the actual share-/Director-situation.
"Railroad Dice - Germany" ist faster, more dynamic and less complex compared to the basic game.
This is realized among other because of a reduction in stations that could be built for each company by two and a change in the total income of railroaddice from each player per round
In "Railroad Dice - the first rails" it was necessary for each player to be Director of one or several companies with the overall sum of at least five stations to receive an income of more than four railroaddice per round. In "Railroad Dice - Germany" a player i.e. only needs to be in control of one company with a single station to receive one additional die per round as income on top of the usual four dice.
Due to this significant change of passengercounter distribution, it is now more easier for players to get back into the game, in case they should have dropped back some way behind the leader, compared to the basis game.
"Railroad Dice - Germany" is an expansion, produced as a fold-apart map, that fits into the box of the 2nd edition of "Railroad Dice - the first rails", so no additional box was necessary. In addition 20 orange and 40 brown plastic chips are distributed together with the map to double the supply of the basic game.
The first day the game is officially sold will be the 29th of october 2004. Before that it will already be sold from 21.-24.10 at the fair Spiel 2004 in Essen at the booth (hall 5, nr 73) of the Wassertal Spieleverlag.
Additionally all visitors of the Wassertal Spieleverlag booth at the Essen fair will receive a free new product: Railroad Dice - Crossing!
Railroad Dice - Crossing is a orange colored, so called complex railroaddice, with on side of track replaced with a crossing and
an additional rulespage with information about how to use this new die in Railroad Dice games.
Every visitor of the Essen fair booth 2004, who buys one of our Railroad Dice products receives for free (as long as supplies last) one Railroad Dice - Cross.
In addition to this we give away for free at 4pm every day 500 single of these oranged colored dice at each fair day to visitors of our booth (as long as supplies last).
We're looking forward to meet all of you at the Spiel 2004!
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Interest in Railroad Dice still strong
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17.09.2004
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After a long, long time, finally an update is made. Yes, that was planned different, but the Invention and production of new games had more priority, so
it was a little bit slower "over here" than expected before. We'll see, if this changes somehow during the next weeks again.
Just a short information to all fans of Railroad Dice out there, that the game is still selling very well. Each week new players of Railroad Dice are added,
which was the cause the we felt confident enough to really release the first expansion like planned before. If the sale continues to be strong with the expansion
as well we hope to release october 2005 the big expansion for Railroad Dice with new dice including switches and turnouts, staatsbahnen rules and many other more
complex elements as well.
After a long waiting period we finally updated our list of distribution partners, which is still
here at www.wassertal.de to find.
Tomorrow you'll find here all details about Railroad Dice - Germany and a free surprise for all visitors of our booth at the Messe Essen fair, so we are looking forward
to see you again here.
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Railroad Dice finally available again!
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09.04.2004
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It looks sooooo great! ;-)
The well informed reader knows what i am talking about. The game with these unique railroaddice is finally deliverable again.
All of you, who know the first edition with this sweet dicebox, will definetely miss it (like we do it ourselves ;-)), but the overall increase in quality of
this production is astonishing. The game looks fantastic, all colours appear like they should and all the card board elements are very well die cutted and solid like i expected them to be now.
I am sure you "hear" my enthusiasm out of these words, so we could inform you that all (already paid for) orders will be delivered during the days around easter.
...here you could have a look at a picture of the new box (by clicking on it a new very big image of the box opens):
...and here one of the additional dice:
...okay, a set of only twenty is a little bit smaller ;-):
Here are the details about the exchange tiles for owners of the first edition:
As written below you will send us your Uberall-Fahrten companycard of the first edition together with a self addressed envelope with enough postage on it, while we will send you back 13 new big Tiles in the same quality of the 2nd editon release.
The envelope must have enough postage on it, so the following conditions are valid:
- 150g weight
- 100mm x 100mm x 24mm width x length x height
(or as well possible 200x100x12mm width x length x height)
Finally the hint, that you may get Railroad Dice possibly at the retailer of your choice right now , what you could check
here at www.wassertal.de in an overview of our distribution partners.
You'll find high resolution images of Railroad Dice (i.e. for reviews) from now on in our downloadarea.
We wish all players of Railroad Dice happy easter and many questionmarks as well ;-)
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Wassertal Online-Shop launched
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04.03.2004
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After a long period the waiting is finally over. Delivery of 2nd editon of Railroad Dice - The first rails is about to beginn very soon.
To support that, the
Wassertal-Online-Shop is available from now on, so all customers have the possibility to preorder
our games. Estimated start of delivery of all items is 12.04.2004. All preorders for games and separate single Railroaddice as well, will than
immediately be delivered to you.
Here some details in advance:
2nd edition: Railroad Dice - The first rails
- same good dice quality like in the 1st edition
- more thick card board elements (1,5mm instead of 1mm)
- more solid screens
- a more robust box with standard size
- full four-color printed rule book (included in german and english in every game)
In addition you now have the option of buying 20 single Railroaddice in a small polybag for 5,- Euro each.
As we are at the moment still talking with different stores and resellers, no definitive information about the availability of
Railroad Dice - The first rails through retail or mail order business could be made. As soon as there are any news ,
we will inform you on this seperate page about it.
As announced elsewhere, we produced in addition to the 2nd edition 150 sets of new "big" gametiles (five company- and all eight big terraintiles). As long as our supplies will last we will give one set for free, for just the payment of postage and packing costs, to all owners of the first edition. Final details about it will be announced as soon as the exchange tiles have been delivered to us by the producing company, after we calculated the postage for the self-addressed envelopes depending on the alltogether weight .
General procedure will be: you will send us your Uberall-Fahrten companycard of the first edition together with a self addressed envelope with enough postage on it, while we will send you back 13 new big Tiles in the same quality of the 2nd editon release.
If you intend to order something now and are owner of a first edition copy, we may send you the exchange tiles together with your order (without the need for a self-addressed envelope), if your Uberfall-Fahrten companycard of the 1st edition has been delivered to us ((Wassertal Spieleverlag, Baererstraße 3, 21073 Hamburg, Germany) already. If you like us to do it that way, please leave an appropiate comment in the "in addition"-area of your order, so we know that we should wait with your delivery for as long as your company card reached us.
Finally some information about the rules Version 2.0, which are available already right now for download here in advance. The rules have been restructered and been made "nicer" a little bit to view with some smaller corrections fixed.
One change in the rules should be pointed out here explicitely: the game will from now on end in a tie, until each railway company has built at last one station. Using this rule it is not possible for one player to collect all his income of railroaddice behind his screen early in the game to end it through an empty bank, while beeing himself director of a company who is in lead of amount of stations already built.
...soon it will be available again. Yeaaaaaaah!!!!! ;-)))
More information (among others about the new autumn release Railroad Dice - Germany) will follow shortly.
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Finally update!
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22.12.2003
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In the future fewer update promises, which cannot be held!
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14.12.2003
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Just a short info here, since it does annoy us exactly the
same like all visitors of our Homepage.
The long announced
updates of the website are still not yet available, although
several dates have passed already.
Therefore a very big
SORRY to all fans of Railroad Dice!!!
The Wassertal Spieleverlag
is still in its first year since establishment and definetely underestimated
the processes involved, so that is was unfortunately not possible to
professionally parallelize as much as possible. Therefore in the past weeks nearly
most work time was invested into finalization of the production
of the second print run to make Railroad Dice available again as fast as possible.
Therefore the work on this website was reduced to a minimum, what was really annoying
to everybody visiting the site without finding any substantial news or addons, allthough
they have been promised.
We learned from that and will no more promise short actualization dates and try to find
a more realistic update cycle which can continously be realized in the future.
We hope that we annoyed not too many of the Railroad Dice fans out there and are looking
forward to a successfull year 2004 with Railroad Dice and many other beautiful games of our
company.
Keeping the above things in mind we do not announce another date for the big actualization of
this website, after which the new and better update-cycle will beginn.
We wish you all still about two beautiful advent weeks!
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Big Update on sunday, 30.11.03, 18 Uhr (GMT+1)
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28.11.2003
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There will be
- informationen about the second edition,
- a Railroad Dice Tutorial,
- a french translation of the rules and FAQ
- pictures from Essen,
- Reports about Railroad Dice by the press and all over the net and as well
- a very short look at the actual Development of the first Railroad Dice expansion!
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Download of german rulebook Version 1.2 available now!
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02.11.2003
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Finally the german rules of Railroad Dice Version 1.2 are ready for downloaded here as well.
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New version of english rules and FAQ available!
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31.10.2003
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While many customers from the fair in Essen at least start about now to beginn playing the game for the first time
we'll try to give you as much information as possible on this website to make the first games as smooth and easy as possible.
So we have a new english edition of the rules available here, written by Derek Carver (thank you again!). At the same time we are clarifying
the german version of the rulebook as well, which will be also available for download tomorrow or at last the day thereafter. The second edition of Railroad Dice will of course include these two updated rulebooks.
In addition the first rules questions have been asked in the forum. We transfered these and their answers to an FAQ which will be extended as as soon as other questions occur. So everybody gets the chance to read all questions and answers from the forum, nevertheless they've been written there in german or english.
That's it for today. Further updates will follow shortly.
Finally something about the future: we hope to know more about the second edition sometime about the end of next week. As soon as the next steps have been decided you'll read here about it, including possible release date and pricing information.
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Railroad Dice = unfortunately sold out!
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27.10.2003
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Straight back of the Spiel 2003 in Essen, here only few short words
before further information will be put online during the next days and
weeks.
After the enormous success on the fair Railroad Dice will be reproduced again shortly
and we will hopefully eliminate the fact that the paper-elements in the game
tend to bend a little bit. As soon as Railroad Dice is available again, it
can be ordered directly here over this website. To what
extent it will be available over retailers will be determined during the next weeks.
Have a look on this site during the next weeks where we will cover all of these news
with regularly reports.
Beyond that we like to present variants of the railroad dice game which players might already
invent using the custom railroaddice and make them so available to all players in the world through
this website.
Who would like to be informed as soon as Railroad Dice is available again
should please write a mail to us
and tell us if he is a final consumer or retailer and in how many copies (first of all independently of the price, which for the final
consumer will be not more than 35, - Euro) he might be interested.
This noncommittal feedback would help us to find the correct number of copies for a second production run.
The in such a way received addresses are neither sold nor used for spam or other purposes like that. They will be just
just used to inform you about the availability of Railroad Dice in the future.
Your mail is no order, just a propsal for information!
That's it for now as very fast first feedback after four
wonderful fairdays.
Finally still some information and messages in references:
a) In the rule book the reference is missing to the fact on page 6
that if a player is not a director of a company, and even did not loose
this director title during the previous round, that he will always get
an income of four dice behind the screen in his turn!
b) In the rule book on page 12 the small mountain is unfortunately
90 degrees wrongly to the left in the first row of the illustration,
as all players of Railroad Dice in Essen already recognized. Naturally the mountain
must attach to the previous mountain, so that the terrain tile may be put in
such a way.
(... concerning the rule book ...which actually was meant to be in complete
color... there is a whole other story which will be told some other time!)
c) The completely colored pdf rule books in german and english will be
made available fo download during this week and will then be further extended
by the piece with references and additions. Parallel to this a FAQ will be added to
the website which anwers frequently asked questions about the Railroad Dice.
d) On the first day of the fair author Jens Kappe refused to sign his invented games at first
, without knowing what was the concrete reason for such a decision. The fad
was removed from him be the booth crew and inspired customers at short notice, so
that then everything was signed which was not fast enough to run away...
...sorry to those he still rejected before! Please forgive him this now gone foible.
e) Emails to Wassertal or Jens Kappe will be answered during this week one after the other. Please
be a little bit patient if you are expecting an answer. Thanks.
That's it for now. In a short time more. Many more;-))! Definitely!
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The waiting is over, ...soon!
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19.10.2003
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Only a few day left until the opening of the fair in Essen.
Unfortunately we did not update the site as often as we planned to do it.
Sorry for that!
We underestimated the work before such a fair, as it will be our first time. So hopefully we learned a lot for
next years preparations.
Nevertheless we hope to meet you all at our booth in Essen! We will update the site with all already mentioned (including rules download
and tutorial) and many new things (strategy, tips, variants, etc.) bit by bit after the fair.
Until after Essen, bye!
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Update delayed for a week and short info about the reservations
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30.09.2003
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Unfortunately we have to shift the actually for this sunday planned
update of the website with a small Tutorial of the first
rounds from Railroad Dice for one week, on coming Sunday. So please everybody,
return then to be among the first to get some information about the
different actions within Railroad Dice - The First rails in detail.
Then briefly some current information about the status of the reservations:
At present no longer as many reservations of the game are comming in
daily as it was at the beginning of the announcement, so that we
could have Railroad Dice for all those available in Essen, which can not yet be present
already on Thursday, beyond the first fairday hopefully.
Nothing can be promised naturally still, since nevertheless
daily 2-3 orders reach us with still scarcely
three weeks up to the beginning of fair, but the chances rise with
each day, which would make us also happy, to put not up already on
thursday evening the "sold out"-sign.
However the advance reservations will continue and whenever we will sell
the last Railroad Dice game on the fair: the exhibition booth will remain
occupied until the end of the fair, so that everyone who would like to play the game
before purchase (and if it is only the possible second edition) will have a chance
to do so.
Until next Sunday.
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Railroad Dice Box and short retrospection into the developmentphase of Railroad Dice
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22.09.2003
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Today we'll present you the first picture of the square Railroad Dice box.
You could see it as usually through manuell selection in the Railroad Dice menu or directly
here.
Further there are now some photos and comments from the long
development phase of Railroad Dice, where the game play and components were transformed
and changed more than one time, until it became finally the version,
which will be introduced to a larger public for the first time now during the Spiel 2003.
We now already wish you much fun with the trip into development history! You'll find these
information likewise in the Railroad Dice menu or
here.
The reservations of Railroad Dice began very well. We had to
disappoint unfortunately many, which only could fetch their game on
Friday or Saturday, since we do not take reservations for these days.
Today there are still games left, so we can further on take reservations
for thursday retrieval. You'll find details about the process of reserving a
copy further down in the previous message.
The next pieces of news to Railroad Dice will follow on coming Sunday
in form of a small Tutorial of the first rounds of a game.
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Very big interest in Railroad Dice - reservation now possible!
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16.09.2003
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What a rush!
Since the start of the Website and the beginning of the reporting
in the "Neuheitenvorschau" on Spielbox-Online,
the short notion of our publishing house on the FAIRspielt site
and some little advertisement, company founder Jens Kappe has at present no more time to invent new games but
keeps answering questions around the clock about the company and the first game Railroad Dice.
Railwaygame fans from around the whole world are interested in the Wassertal debut feature. A little bit annoying is the fact at current
time, to already know that the demand for a game like Railroad Dice has been estimated completely wrong; unfortunately now at short notice close to the fair nothing more can be changed.
However now already the decision is made, that there will be a further
edition of Railroad Dice, which can be printed then hopefully fast
directly after the fair. The production time of the special dice
will become then probably rather the temporal bottleneck. However
nevertheless all will then be in time
for distribution up to the beginning of the Christmas business.
Then it will also be possible to directly purchase the game from this website.
Enough of the future, back to the forthcoming fair: The Wassertal Spieleverlag
has itself decided to award fans of the first hour, as obligatory
reservation for purchase of Railroad Dice - the first rails
are accepted from now on. So all those, which decide already now for a such
purchase will get a copy in Essen, if they make it to fetch and pay the
game in the course of thursday.
It was already mentioned in the forum
only scarcely 300 copies of Railroad Dice will be produced in the first edition.
The final price is unfortunately not certain at the current time yet. It will
most probable be however in a range between 30,- and 35, - Euro.
So those of you, who are at the current time ready to pay up to 35,- Euro for
Railroad Dice - the first rails, may immediately book the game in advance,
by writing a mail to us, where you
briefly informally write your wish to reserve a copy and give us your name and finally
choose your desired language of the guidance of play
(there will be only one copy of the rules in the game, so you have to decide if you want english or german rules).
The game will then be reserved for you up to the end of the fair-thursday (23.10.03).
All then yet not fetched and paid before-reserved games will go into free sales starting on
friday morning. For fetching your reservation, please bring a copy of the "reservation affirmation"-mail with
you.
We look forward already to each individual visitor, who comes to our booth!
On next sunday there will be the next update on this site with newest
information around Railroad Dice. Up to then!
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Wassertal site ONLINE!
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13.09.2003
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No old news available... ;-)
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