Rolling Stock Players Guide

Contents
1 Learning the game

1.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2 Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3 Setting up the training game . . . .
1.4 The first turn . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.5 The second turn . . . . . . . . . . .
1.6 The remaining turns . . . . . . . . .
1.7 How the game ends . . . . . . . . . .
1.8 Who has won? . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.9 The short game and the full game .
1.10 Easily missed or misunderstood rules
1.11 Special notes for 18xx players . . . .
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2 A word about playing time
4
4
4
6
7
10
14
16
17
17
17
18
19
3 Variants
3.1 Deals and negotiation . . . .
3.2 Secret private money . . . . .
3.3 Pre-selected companies . . . .
3.4 Open companies . . . . . . .
3.5 Pre-selected open companies .
3.6 Share redemption . . . . . . .
3.7 Two-player variant . . . . . .
3.8 Epic six-player variant . . . .
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21
21
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22
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23
23
23
23
4 Strategy
25
4.1 Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.2 Strategic roles and patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.3 Your turn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5 Designers notes
6 Overview of companies
6.1 Red companies . . .
6.2 Orange companies .
6.3 Yellow companies . .
6.4 Green companies . .
6.5 Blue companies . . .
6.6 Purple companies . .
37
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40
40
40
40
41
41
41
7 Credits
42
7.1 Playtesters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
7.2 Corporation symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Chapter 1
Learning the game

This chapter is an introduction to the game Rolling
Stock. It is written in a casual and easy-to-understand
way, with a lot of examples, figures, and helpful explanations. Read it first to learn the game.
Later, when you need to refresh your knowledge of
the rules or you want a precise answer to rules questions, refer to the canonical rules (the smaller booklet
delivered with the game). Those rules are supposed to
be the single and complete source of truth. Thus,
all the examples and explanations in this introduction
are meant as a help to understand the rules but not to
add or change any rules.
Once you have understood the basics of the game,
you will probably enjoy reading the remaining chapters
of the Players Guide, featuring practical playing tips,
strategic hints, variants, background information, and
more.
1.1
therefore lacks a more concrete representation of transportation networks, as you might know it from similarly themed games.)
As more and more newer companies are brought
into the game, older companies become less profitable
and have to be written off eventually. Corporations
have to struggle to stand the test of time.
In the end, the richest player wins the game, measured by the added values of privately owned companies, shares of corporations, and cash.
Thematically, the game starts in the 1830s in Prussia. The private companies initially available are early
Prussian railroad companies. Throughout the game,
the scope widens. First to Germany, then to Europe.
The vast majority of the companies are still railroad
companies. At this point, the game ends if you play
the game type called training game. (As the name suggests, this game type is meant to get familiar with the
game, its rules and basic strategies. It is not really a
complete game yet.)
Overview
Rolling Stock is a card game for three to five players.

The players take the role of investors. They buy private companies, which they may later turn into corporations or sell to already existing corporations. In addition, they can trade shares of those corporations. The
player with the most shares in a corporation becomes
its president and controls its actions. Corporations
may own any number of those formerly private companies (that were sold to them by players or were used
as the seed to found a new corporation). Companies
owned by corporations are called subsidiary companies.
Corporations can even buy subsidiary companies from
each other.
Note the nomenclature here: Corporations could
also be called public companies. However, to avoid
confusion, we want to keep the meaning of the word
company narrow and will not use it for corporations
(but for the subsidiary companies they own).
Subsidiary companies owned by the same corporation may create synergies with each other, increasing
the income of the corporation. These synergies can
be seen as a quite abstract representation of transportation networks. (Rolling Stock has no board and
Once you have played one or more training games,

you are ready to play the real game. You can choose
between the short game and the full game. Both types
of games feature an additional set of companies representing container ports and airports. The full game
adds a set of spacefaring companies on top of everything else.
1.2
Components
The game contains two booklets: One is titled Players

Guide (you are reading it right now), the other is the
actual rules (written in a very concise and formal way
comes in handy if you are looking for precise answers
to your most delicate rules questions, but definitely not
suitable for learning the rules).
There are five turn summaries, describing the ten
phases of a game turn. Hand out one to each player.
4
+$1
+$1
+$2
+$2
The 45 company cards are the core of the game. They

come in six colors. To assist color-blind players, each
color has a geometric shape assigned to it: Red ( ),
orange (), yellow ( ), green (D), blue (7), purple ().
Each company has a unique face value, printed in
the upper left corner. The face value is used when
calculating the book value of a corporation (see section 1.5.9) and when calculating the wealth of a player
at the end of the game (see section 1.8). It is also the
mimimum bid in auctions (see section 1.4.3), and since
it is unique, it can be used to identify the company (like
a serial number).
The numbers printed in parentheses to the right
of the face value define the price span the company
can be sold for to corporations. In the upper right
corner, youll find a circle with a +$ amount. This
is the income of of the company. In the middle between the face value and the income, you can see the
name of the company and its abbreviation. Name, abbreviation, and face value are each unique. So you
can refer to the Societe nationale des chemins de fer
francais as the Societe nationale des chemins de fer
francais or the SNCF or the 24. Whatever you
like most. The colorful boxes on the company card
tell you something about the possible synergies with
other companies. They will be explained later (section
1.5.8).
The back of each company card shows a cost of
ownership (starting from no cost up to $6). The cost
of ownership printed on the back of a company card
has nothing to do with the cost of ownership of the
company described on the face of the same card. When
you set up the game, you will build a deck of face-down
company cards. The back of the top-most card in that
deck determines the current cost of ownership applying to all companies whose color matches one of the
colors in the central rectangle on the back of the card.
A more detailed explanation of the cost of ownership
will follow later (section 1.6.8).
+$4
+$4
+$16
+$16
+$8
+$8
Furthermore, you will find 60 round double-sided synergy markers (see figure above). There is something
missing in the box, however: play money. Please use
play money from another game or much preferred
poker chips. The synergy markers and the money are
meant to be unlimited. In the unlikely case that you
run out of these components, find other means of tracking money and synergies. (Even a small set of poker
chips should easily be enough for the game, most likely
you will not need more than 100 $1 chips, 100 $5 chips,
and 50 $25 chips. As a last resort, you might even use
real coins as play money, 1 real cent translates into
$1 in the game.)
Rolling Stock is a card game, so there are obviously
cards, 196 of them. Lets look at them in detail.
1.2.1
Player order cards
There are five player order cards. They are used to

randomly determine the initial player order and later
track the player order throughout the game.
1.2.2
1.2.3
Company cards
Price Span
Face Value
Abbreviation
short game
Full Name
cost of ownership $6
Colorblind Assistance
Base Income
If there are no unowned private

companies le at the end of
a turn, ip this card.
$24 ($12-$30) SNCF
Socit nationale des chemins

de fer franais
Front
+$2 BD
(12)
Synergy Boxes
+$4
(22)
FS
(37)
(26)
(29)
(32)
HA
CDG
(47)
short game

e end of the next turn is
the end of the game.
Back
The colorful cards that have a cost of ownership on

both sides are the game end cards. There are three of
them, one for each possible type of game: the training
game, the short game, and the full game. Only one
game end card is used in any given game, depending
on the type of the game. The game end card is used
as the bottom-most card of the company card deck.
SBB DR RENFE
(43)
Game end cards
(56)
Symbol cards
showing you the maximum payout per share. The upper left and upper right corner show the next lower or
next higher share price, respectively. The table in the
lower half is used to adjust share prices, as explained
later. The front and back of each share price card are
basically the same, just another part of the table is
shown (as it is too large to fit on one side of the card).
1.2.7
All 10 Shares Issued
Foreign Investor
Subsidiaries
Private Companies
Finally there is the foreign investor. The card contains

quite a lot of text, explaining the actions of the foreign
investor, a kind of dummy player. The card is also
used to arrange the assets of the foreign investor, similar to the symbol card of corporations. His money goes
to the right of the card, his companies in a horizontal
row below it.
The rules will often prompt you to turn a card
vertically or to turn a card back horizontally. The
standard (and default) orientation of a card is called
horizontal (i. e. if the rules dont state anything else,
a card is oriented horizontally). If you turn the card
by 90 degrees, its orientation is called vertical. Vertical orientation marks a special state of a card and is
mentioned explicitly in the rules wherever it applies.
(Note that the player order cards are printed in portrait orientation rather than the usual landscape
orientation. Still their normal orientation is referred
to as horizontal and their special orientation as
vertical.)
Share cards
1st Share
President
2nd Share
1 Share Issued
There are 100 share cards, 10 for each corporation. The
shares are represented as smaller cards, featuring the
symbol and color of the respective corporation. The
shares are numbered, with the 1st share marked as the
presidents share.
1.2.6
1.3
share price
Share
Price
$22
$24
share price
Share
Price
$20
$22
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per share
Share
$7
$0$99
$0$119
$18 $0$39 $0$59 $0$79
$20 $40$43 $60$65 $80$87 $100$109 $120$131
$18
$0$139
$0$159
$0$179
$24
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per share
Share
$7
10
$0$199
$24
$44$47 $66$71 $88$95 $110$119 $132$143
$20 $140$153 $160$175 $180$197 $200$219

$154$167 $176$191 $198$215 $220$239
$24
$26
$48$ $72$ $96$ $120$
$26
Front
$144$
$168$
$192$
$216$
Setting up the training game
Your first game will be a so-called training game. Its

a bit too short to count as a real game, but it is well
suited to learn the rules and basic strategies. Almost
all players will make severe strategic mistakes in their
first game. It is very frustrating to play through one
of the longer game types if you have unintentionally
ruined your position early in the game. With fast players, a training game will only take about 90 minutes.
Beginners, however, usually play slower than that.
Set up the training game following these steps:
Share price cards
$20
+$5
Starts the game with $4 in treasury.

Phase 5: Buys as many private companies as possible,
in ascending face value order.
Phase 6: Offers private companies for maximum price.
If more than one corporation wants to buy the same
private company, the corporation with the higher share
price has priority.
Phase 7: Closes private companies with negative income.
Phase 8: Earns $5 plus normal income from private
companies.
There are 10 symbol cards. Each features the symbol

and color of a corporation in a central box, together
with the text All 10 Shares Issued. A symbol card
is the central component of the corresponding corporation. Its shares (see below) are put into the central
box. The money it owns is placed right of the symbol
card, and its share price card (see below) to the left.
In a horizontal row below the symbol card, you line up
all the companies the corporation owns as subsidiaries
(which might be as few as one).
1.2.5
Foreign investor card
Treasury
Treasury
Treasury
Treasury
Share price
price
Share
1.2.4
$240$
Back
There are 32 white share price cards. These cards are

used to mark the current price of each share of a corporation. They show the share price in the center. Left of
the share price, some share price cards feature an IPO
box. Right of the share price, youll find another box
1. Each player should have a turn summary handy

throughout the game.
2. Place the money in a central position on the table, easily reachable for everybody. This cen6
tral area is the bank. Initially, it contains all the

money in the game, but later, it will also contain
shares.
11. Now do exactly the same with the yellow companies: Shuffle them, draw one more than there are
players, and place them face down on the company deck (i. e. on top of the green companies).
Return the remaining yellow companies to the
box.
3. Give each player $30 from the bank.

4. In a three-player game, the player order cards for
position 4 and 5 are not used. In a four-player
game, the player order card for position 5 is not
used. Return the unused player order cards to
the box. Shuffle the remaining player order cards
and deal one random card to each player. The
players reveal their cards, which define the initial player order. You dont need to change seating order as the player order will change often
throughout the game.
12. Repeat for the orange companies, but draw six

companies in a four-player game and (all) eight
companies in a five-player game. (In a threeplayer game, there are four orange companies, as
usual.)
13. Finally, do the same with the red companies, using the normal numbers again (one more company than players). You have now created a deck
with the red companies on top, followed by the
orange companies, followed by the yellow companies, followed by the green companies, followed
by the game end card.
5. Set the ten symbol cards aside, separately. On

top of each symbol card, into the central box,
place the 10 shares of the corresponding corporation. Sort the shares, with the 10th share at
the bottom and the 1st share on top.
14. From the deck, draw and reveal a number of company cards equal to the number of players. Place
them next to the deck. These companies are now
in the offering. They are all available for auctions
in the first turn of the game.
6. In another area of the table, lay out the 32 share

price cards in a long, sorted row, starting with
$0 and ending with $100. Most tables will not be
long enough for this row. Feel free to break the
row, e. g. into four rows of eight cards each. But
keep in mind that it is effectively still one long
row.
You are all set to start the first turn of the game.
1.4
The first turn
Each turn runs through ten phases (although in some

turns, nothing might happen in particular phases). Refer to the turn summary to get an overview. The
right-most column of the turn summary indicates who
makes decisions in a particular phase: PRIV means
that the players act as private investors. CORP means
that the players act as presidents of the corporations.
(The president of a corporation is the player that currently holds the presidents share of that corporation.)
AUTO means that no decisions are required. The
game plays itself in those phases.
7. Pick one player who will be in charge of executing the actions of the foreign investor. (There
are no decisions involved. That player only has
to make sure that those actions are executed according to the rules and not forgotten.) Place
the foreign investor card in reach of that player.
Place $4 (from the bank) into the treasury of the
foreign investor (i. e. to the right of the foreign
investor card).
8. Place the blue and purple companies and the
game end cards for the short game and the full
game back into the box. They are not used in
the training game.
1.4.1
Phase 1 issue new shares
There are no corporations yet, so no shares can be issued. In turn 1, nothing happens in this phase.
9. In the following steps, youll build the company

deck. Start with the game end card (marked with
training game). Place it on the table where it is
easily visible for all players (somewhere next to
the bank). Turn the face with the lower cost of
ownership ($3) up.
1.4.2
Phase 2 form corporations
There are no privately owned companies yet, so nobody can go public. In turn 1, nothing happens in this
phase.
1.4.3
10. Shuffle the green companies. Without looking

at them, draw one more company than there
are players (four in a three-player game, five in
a four-player game, six in a five-player game).
Place them face down on the game end card
(i. e. with the cost-of-ownership side up). Return the remaining green companies to the box,
again without looking at them.
Phase 3 auctions and share

trading
In current player order, starting with position 1, each

player performs exactly one action. However, the
player order is cyclic, so after the player last in player
order has taken their action, loop back to player 1, who
will now take exactly one action again. Proceed with
player 2, and so on. Repeat this cycle until you meet
the end condition described below.
7
$5
$5
share price
Share
Price
$16
$18
$18
$5
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
Share
share Price
price
$45
$31
$31
$9
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$0$89
$0$134
$0$179
$0$224
$0$269
$135$149 $180$199 $225$249 $270$299
$100
$100
$330$
$30
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$275$
$90
share price
Share
Price
$220$
$73
$0$242
$0$323
$0$404
$0$485
$0$161
$0$242
$0$323
$0$404
$0$485
$73 $0$161
$81
$162$179 $243$269
$243$269 $324$359
$324$359 $405$449
$405$449 $486$539
$486$539
$81 $162$179
$180$
$100
$180$ $270$
$270$ $360$
$360$ $450$
$450$ $540$
$540$
$100
$81
$81
$165$
$110$
$90$99
$100$109 $150$164 $200$219 $250$274 $300$329
$60
$41
$55
$16
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per share
Share
$55
$45
$50
$24
$0$129
$0$155
$24 $0$51
$0$51 $0$77
$0$77 $0$103
$0$103
$0$129
$0$155
$26
$26 $52$55
$52$55 $78$83
$78$83 $104$111
$104$111 $130$139
$130$139 $156$167
$156$167
$31
$56$61
$31
$56$61 $84$92
$84$92 $112$123
$112$123 $140$154
$140$154 $168$185
$168$185
$34
$62$
$34
$62$ $93$
$93$ $124$
$124$ $155$
$155$ $186$
$186$
$28
share Price
price
Share
$14
$0$29 $0$44
$0$44 $0$59
$0$59 $0$74
$0$74 $0$89
$0$89
$14 $0$29
$15
$30$31 $45$47
$45$47 $60$63
$60$63 $75$79
$75$79 $90$95
$90$95
$15 $30$31
$32$35
$32$35 $48$53
$48$53 $64$71
$64$71 $80$89
$80$89 $96$107
$96$107
$36$
$36$ $54$
$54$ $72$
$72$ $90$
$90$ $108$
$108$
$18
$18
$20
$20
$11
$11
$3
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per share
share
Per
Share
$8
$8 $0$17
$0$17 $0$26
$0$26 $0$35
$0$35 $0$44
$0$44 $0$53
$0$53
$9
$9 $18$19
$18$19 $27$29
$27$29 $36$39
$36$39 $45$49
$45$49 $54$59
$54$59
$20$21
$20$21 $30$32
$30$32 $40$43
$40$43 $50$54
$50$54 $60$65
$60$65
$22$
$22$ $33$
$33$ $44$
$44$ $55$
$55$ $66$
$66$
$11
$11
$12
$12
share price
Share
Price
$10
$26
$26
$15
$15
$9
$9
When
When aa corporation
corporation takes
takes this
this card,
card, itit is
is declared
declared
bankrupt
bankrupt immediately.
immediately. Remove
Remove its
its subsidiary
subsidiary companies
companies
from
from the
the game.
game. Return
Return its
its cash,
cash, its
its shares,
shares, and
and this
this card
card
without
without compensation.
compensation.
(Shares
(Shares are
are available
available for
for newly
newly founded
founded corporations.)
corporations.)
share price
Share
Price
$11
$12
$12
$3
$20
$20
$6
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
share Price
price
Share
$31
$10
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$34
$34
$0$95
$15
$0$31 $0$47
$0$47 $0$63
$0$63 $0$79
$0$79
$0$95
$15 $0$31
$16
$32$35 $48$53
$48$53 $64$71
$64$71 $80$89
$80$89 $96$107
$96$107
$16 $32$35
$36$39
$36$39 $54$59
$54$59 $72$79
$72$79 $90$99
$90$99 $108$119
$108$119
$40$
$40$ $60$
$60$ $80$
$80$ $100$
$100$ $120$
$120$
share price
Share
Price
$18
$6
$6
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per share
share
Per
Share
$9
$9 $0$19
$0$19 $0$29
$0$29 $0$39
$0$39 $0$49
$0$49 $0$59
$0$59
$10
$10 $20$21
$20$21 $30$32
$30$32 $40$43
$40$43 $50$54
$50$54 $60$65
$60$65
$22$23
$22$23 $33$35
$33$35 $44$47
$44$47 $55$59
$55$59 $66$71
$66$71
$24$
$24$ $36$
$36$ $48$
$48$ $60$
$60$ $72$
$72$
$12
$12
$13
$13
$1
Max
Max Payout
Payout
Per
Per Share
Share
$0$9
$0$9 $0$14
$0$14 $0$19
$0$19 $0$24
$0$24 $0$29
$0$29
$10$11
$10$11 $15$17
$15$17 $20$23
$20$23 $25$29
$25$29 $30$35
$30$35
$12$
$12$ $18$
$18$ $24$
$24$ $30$
$30$ $36$
$36$
Share Price
$5
share Price
price
Share
$55
$60
$60
$18
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
share price
Share
Price
$100
n/a
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
In turn 1, the only actions available are pass and

start an auction. (The share trading part of this phase
is still missing in turn 1.)
Pass is a very simple action: If you take that action,
you (basically) do nothing. As a reminder that your
last action was pass, you turn your player order card
vertically. Passing does not prevent you from taking a
different action next time you are up. If you take an
action different from pass, but you have passed before,
turn your player order card back horizontally.
If at any time during this phase, all player order cards are turned vertically, the phase immediately
ends. In other words, the phase ends once all players
have passed consecutively. Even if passing itself does
not prevent you from taking another action next time
you are up (see above), the phase might end before
you have the opportunity to do so (which happens if
everybody else passes, too).
Start an auction is the other possible action. If you
take that action, you pick one of the companies available for auction. You place a bid at least as high as the
face value of that company. If you dont have enough
money to do so, or if there is no company available
for auction, you cannot take this action. Once you
8
9
$13
$13
$4
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$22
$22
$6
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
share price
Share
Price
$34
$11
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$37
$37
$0$107
$16
$0$35 $0$53
$0$53 $0$71
$0$71 $0$89
$0$89
$0$107
$16 $0$35
$18
$36$39 $54$59
$54$59 $72$79
$72$79 $90$99
$90$99 $108$119
$108$119
$18 $36$39
$40$43
$40$43 $60$65
$60$65 $80$87
$80$87 $100$109
$100$109 $120$131
$120$131
$44$
$44$ $66$
$66$ $88$
$88$ $110$
$110$ $132$
$132$
Share
Price
share price
$20
$10
$0$21 $0$32
$0$32 $0$43
$0$43 $0$54
$0$54 $0$65
$0$65
$10 $0$21
$11
$22$23 $33$35
$33$35 $44$47
$44$47 $55$59
$55$59 $66$71
$66$71
$11 $22$23
$24$25
$13
$24$25 $36$38
$36$38 $48$51
$48$51 $60$64
$60$64 $72$77
$72$77
$13
$26$
$14
$26$ $39$
$39$ $52$
$52$ $65$
$65$ $78$
$78$
$14
Share
share Price
price
$12
$7
$7
Share
share Price
price
$60
$66
$66
$20
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$50
$0$164
$0$219
$0$274
$0$329
$0$109
$0$164
$0$219
$0$274
$0$329
$50 $0$109
$55
$110$119 $165$179
$165$179 $220$239
$220$239 $275$299
$275$299 $330$359
$330$359
$55 $110$119
$120$131
$66
$120$131 $180$197
$180$197 $240$263
$240$263 $300$329
$300$329 $360$395
$360$395
$66
$73
$132$
$132$ $198$
$198$ $264$
$264$ $330$
$330$ $396$
$396$
$73
$55
$55
share price
Share
Price
$14
$14
$4
$24
$24
$7
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$41
$41
$12
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
Share
share Price
price
$66
$73
$73
$22
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
BSE
BPM
(19)
PR
Berlin-Potsdam-Magdeburger
Eisenbahn
($4-$9)
(15)
HE
BME
+$2
+$1
+$1
AKE MHE SX MS PR
+$1 BSE
(2)
(6)
(8)
(16) (17) (19)
$7
(19)
Bergisch-Mrkische
Eisenbahn-Gesellscha
BD
+$1 KME
(5)
(12)
$1 ($1-$2)
(17)
MS PR
Berlin-Stettiner
($1-$3)
SX
+$1 BPM
(7)
(16)
$2
$55
$0$179
$0$239
$0$299
$0$359
$0$119
$0$179
$0$239
$0$299
$0$359
$55 $0$119
$60
$120$131 $180$197
$180$197 $240$263
$240$263 $300$329
$300$329 $360$395
$360$395
$60 $120$131
$132$145
$73
$132$145 $198$218
$198$218 $264$291
$264$291 $330$364
$330$364 $396$437
$396$437
$73
$81
$146$
$146$ $219$
$219$ $292$
$292$ $365$
$365$ $438$
$438$
$81
$60
$60
$31
$0$135
$0$169
$0$203
$0$67 $0$101
$0$101
$0$135
$0$169
$0$203
$31 $0$67
$34
$68$73 $102$110
$102$110 $136$147
$136$147 $170$184
$170$184 $204$221
$204$221
$34 $68$73
$74$81
$41
$74$81 $111$122
$111$122 $148$163
$148$163 $185$204
$185$204 $222$245
$222$245
$41
$45
$82$
$82$ $123$
$123$ $164$
$164$ $205$
$205$ $246$
$246$
$45
share price
Share
Price
$37
$0$119
$18
$0$39 $0$59
$0$59 $0$79
$0$79 $0$99
$0$99
$0$119
$18 $0$39
$20
$40$43 $60$65
$60$65 $80$87
$80$87 $100$109
$100$109 $120$131
$120$131
$20 $40$43
$44$47
$44$47 $66$71
$66$71 $88$95
$88$95 $110$119
$110$119 $132$143
$132$143
$48$
$48$ $72$
$72$ $96$
$96$ $120$
$120$ $144$
$144$
$24
$24
$26
$26
$22
$8
$8
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$11
$0$23 $0$35
$0$35 $0$47
$0$47 $0$59
$0$59 $0$71
$0$71
$11 $0$23
$12
$24$25 $36$38
$36$38 $48$51
$48$51 $60$64
$60$64 $72$77
$72$77
$12 $24$25
$26$27
$14
$26$27 $39$41
$39$41 $52$55
$52$55 $65$69
$65$69 $78$83
$78$83
$14
$28$
$15
$28$ $42$
$42$ $56$
$56$ $70$
$70$ $84$
$84$
$15
$20
$20
share Price
price
Share
$13
$34
$34
$2
max
Max
Payout
max payout
payout
Max
Payout
per
share
Per
per Share
share
Per
Share
$5
$5 $0$11
$0$11 $0$17
$0$17 $0$23
$0$23 $0$29
$0$29 $0$35
$0$35
$6
$6 $12$13
$12$13 $18$20
$18$20 $24$27
$24$27 $30$34
$30$34 $36$41
$36$41
$14$15
$14$15 $21$23
$21$23 $28$31
$28$31 $35$39
$35$39 $42$47
$42$47
$16$
$16$ $24$
$24$ $32$
$32$ $40$
$40$ $48$
$48$
$8
$8
$9
$9
Share Price
$7
$12
$12
$6
$6
$2
$10
$10
$26
$26
$8
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$81
$81
$81
$90
$90
$27
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
Private Companies
Starts the game with $4 in treasury.

Phase 5: Buys as many private companies as possible,
in ascending face value order.
Phase 6: Offers private companies for maximum price.
If more than one corporation wants to buy the same
private company, the corporation with the higher share
price has priority.
Phase 7: Closes private companies with negative income.
Phase 8: Earns $5 plus normal income from private
companies.
+$5
$0$218
$0$291
$0$364
$0$437
$66
$0$145
$0$218
$0$291
$0$364
$0$437
$66 $0$145
$73
$146$161 $219$242
$219$242 $292$323
$292$323 $365$404
$365$404 $438$485
$438$485
$73 $146$161
$162$179
$162$179 $243$269
$243$269 $324$359
$324$359 $405$449
$405$449 $486$539
$486$539
$180$
$180$ $270$
$270$ $360$
$360$ $450$
$450$ $540$
$540$
$90
$90
$100
$100
Foreign Investor
$0$131
$0$197
$0$263
$0$329
$0$395
$60
$0$197
$0$263
$0$329
$0$395
$60 $0$131
$132$145 $198$218 $264$291 $330$364 $396$437
$66
$66 $132$145 $198$218 $264$291 $330$364 $396$437
$146$161
$81
$146$161 $219$242
$219$242 $292$323
$292$323 $365$404
$365$404 $438$485
$438$485
$81
$162$
$90
$162$ $243$
$243$ $324$
$324$ $405$
$405$ $486$
$486$
$90
$24
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$73
$73
share price
Share
Price
$73
share price
Share
Price
$50
$50
$15
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$66
$66
share price
Share
Price
$45
$0$163
$0$204
$0$245
$37
$0$81 $0$122
$0$122
$0$163
$0$204
$0$245
$37 $0$81
$41
$82$89 $123$134
$123$134 $164$179
$164$179 $205$224
$205$224 $246$269
$246$269
$41 $82$89
$90$99
$50
$90$99 $135$149
$135$149 $180$199
$180$199 $225$249
$225$249 $270$299
$270$299
$50
$55
$100$
$100$ $150$
$150$ $200$
$200$ $250$
$250$ $300$
$300$
$55
$13
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$34
$0$147
$0$184
$0$221
$0$73 $0$110
$0$110
$0$147
$0$184
$0$221
$34 $0$73
$37
$74$81 $111$122
$111$122 $148$163
$148$163 $185$204
$185$204 $222$245
$222$245
$37 $74$81
$82$89
$45
$82$89 $123$134
$123$134 $164$179
$164$179 $205$224
$205$224 $246$269
$246$269
$45
$50
$90$
$90$ $135$
$135$ $180$
$180$ $225$
$225$ $270$
$270$
$50
$41
$41
$28
$28
$8
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$41
$45
$45
$26
$22
$0$119
$0$143
$22 $0$47
$0$47 $0$71
$0$71 $0$95
$0$95
$0$119
$0$143
$24
$24 $48$51
$48$51 $72$77
$72$77 $96$103
$96$103 $120$129
$120$129 $144$155
$144$155
$52$55
$52$55 $78$83
$78$83 $104$111
$104$111 $130$139
$130$139 $156$167
$156$167
$56$
$56$ $84$
$84$ $112$
$112$ $140$
$140$ $168$
$168$
$28
$28
$31
$31
$24
$24
$37
$37
Share
Price
share price
$20
$0$131
$20 $0$43
$0$43 $0$65
$0$65 $0$87
$0$87 $0$109
$0$109
$0$131
$22
$22 $44$47
$44$47 $66$71
$66$71 $88$95
$88$95 $110$119
$110$119 $132$143
$132$143
$48$51
$48$51 $72$77
$72$77 $96$103
$96$103 $120$129
$120$129 $144$155
$144$155
$52$
$52$ $78$
$78$ $104$
$104$ $130$
$130$ $156$
$156$
$26
$26
$28
$28
$24
share Price
price
Share
$16
$16
$5
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
share Price
price
Share
Share
share Price
price
$15
$22
$22
$4
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$13
$0$27 $0$41
$0$41 $0$55
$0$55 $0$69
$0$69 $0$83
$0$83
$13 $0$27
$14
$28$29 $42$44
$42$44 $56$59
$56$59 $70$74
$70$74 $84$89
$84$89
$14 $28$29
$30$31
$16
$30$31 $45$47
$45$47 $60$63
$60$63 $75$79
$75$79 $90$95
$90$95
$16
$32$
$18
$32$ $48$
$48$ $64$
$64$ $80$
$80$ $96$
$96$
$18
$14
$14
$3
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$7
$7 $0$15
$0$15 $0$23
$0$23 $0$31
$0$31 $0$39
$0$39 $0$47
$0$47
$8
$8 $16$17
$16$17 $24$26
$24$26 $32$35
$32$35 $40$44
$40$44 $48$53
$48$53
$18$19
$18$19 $27$29
$27$29 $36$39
$36$39 $45$49
$45$49 $54$59
$54$59
$20$
$20$ $30$
$30$ $40$
$40$ $50$
$50$ $60$
$60$
$10
$10
$11
$11
share price
Share
Price
$9
$12
$0$25 $0$38
$0$38 $0$51
$0$51 $0$64
$0$64 $0$77
$0$77
$12 $0$25
$13
$26$27 $39$41
$39$41 $52$55
$52$55 $65$69
$65$69 $78$83
$78$83
$13 $26$27
$28$29
$15
$28$29 $42$44
$42$44 $56$59
$56$59 $70$74
$70$74 $84$89
$84$89
$15
$30$
$16
$30$ $45$
$45$ $60$
$60$ $75$
$75$ $90$
$90$
$16
$15
$15
$8
$8
$14
Share
share Price
price
$9
$9
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$6
$6 $0$13
$0$13 $0$20
$0$20 $0$27
$0$27 $0$34
$0$34 $0$41
$0$41
$7
$7 $14$15
$14$15 $21$23
$21$23 $28$31
$28$31 $35$39
$35$39 $42$47
$42$47
$16$17
$16$17 $24$26
$24$26 $32$35
$32$35 $40$44
$40$44 $48$53
$48$53
$18$
$18$ $27$
$27$ $36$
$36$ $45$
$45$ $54$
$54$
$9
$9
$10
$10
share price
Share
Price
$8
$13
$13
$7
$7
The deck of companies
$2
max
Max
Payout
max payout
payout
Max
Payout
per
share
Per
per Share
share
Per
Share
$28
$0$123
$0$154
$0$185
$0$61 $0$92
$0$92
$0$123
$0$154
$0$185
$28 $0$61
$31
$62$67 $93$101
$93$101 $124$135
$124$135 $155$169
$155$169 $186$203
$186$203
$31 $62$67
$68$73
$37
$68$73 $102$110
$102$110 $136$147
$136$147 $170$184
$170$184 $204$221
$204$221
$37
$41
$74$
$74$ $111$
$111$ $148$
$148$ $185$
$185$ $222$
$222$
$41
$31
$31
Share Price
$6
$0
$0 $0$9
$0$9 $0$14
$0$14 $0$19
$0$19 $0$24
$0$24 $0$29
$0$29
$5
$5 $10$11
$10$11 $15$17
$15$17 $20$23
$20$23 $25$29
$25$29 $30$35
$30$35
$7
$12$13
$7
$12$13 $18$20
$18$20 $24$27
$24$27 $30$34
$30$34 $36$41
$36$41
$8
$14$
$8
$14$ $21$
$21$ $28$
$28$ $35$
$35$ $42$
$42$
$22
$22
$24
$24
$18
$18
$11
$11
$5
$5
The symbol cards and shares are set aside and not visible.
In practice, it is recommended to leave more space in the middle of the table.
(We just didn't want to show you lots of empty space in this figure.)
If
If this
this card
card is
is in
in use
use in
in phase
phase 10
10 or
or after
after aa share
share has
has been
been
bought
bought in
in phase
phase 3,
3, the
the game
game ends
ends immediately.
immediately. In
In phase
phase 9,
9,
assume
assume there
there is
is an
an infinite
infinite supply
supply of
of this
this card.
card. Each
Each
corporation
corporation reaching
reaching $100
$100 share
share price
price after
after the
the first
first
returns
returns its
its old
old share
share price
price card
card without
without taking
taking aa new
new one.
one.
Its
Its shares
shares have
have aa value
value of
of $100
$100 at
at the
the end
end of
of the
the game.
game.
$90
$90
$45
$0$149
$0$199
$0$249
$0$299
$0$99
$0$149
$0$199
$0$249
$0$299
$45 $0$99
$50
$100$109 $150$164
$150$164 $200$219
$200$219 $250$274
$250$274 $300$329
$300$329
$50 $100$109
$110$119
$60
$110$119 $165$179
$165$179 $220$239
$220$239 $275$299
$275$299 $330$359
$330$359
$60
$66
$120$
$120$ $180$
$180$ $240$
$240$ $300$
$300$ $360$
$360$
$66
$50
$50
$0$139
$0$167
$26
$0$55 $0$83
$0$83 $0$111
$0$111
$0$139
$0$167
$26 $0$55
$28
$56$61 $84$92
$84$92 $112$123
$112$123 $140$154
$140$154 $168$185
$168$185
$28 $56$61
$62$67
$34
$62$67 $93$101
$93$101 $124$135
$124$135 $155$169
$155$169 $186$203
$186$203
$34
$68$
$37
$68$ $102$
$102$ $136$
$136$ $170$
$170$ $204$
$204$
$37
$28
$28
$0
$0
$6
$6
$7
$7
$20
$20
$22
$22
$16
$16
$10
$10
$0
$0
n/a
Treasury
Treasury
max
Max
Payout
max payout
payout
Max
Payout
per
share
Per
per Share
share
Per
Share
Share Price
$0
Example setup for three players
The Foreign Investor
Chriss Playing Area
The offering of
companies
available for
auctions
Bobs
playing area
Share price
cards
(the row has
been split
into six)
The Bank
Alices
playing area
have placed your bid, the next player in player order

either raises the bid by at least $1 or leaves the auction. Then the next player does the same, and so on.
Remember that the player order is cyclic, so after the
last player in player order has raised the bid or left the
auction, the player at position 1 is up to either raise
the bid or leave the auction. This cycle continues until
all players but one have left the auction. The remaining player pays their bid to the bank and places the
company card in front of them. A players bid must
not exceed the money the player owns. Players that
have left the auction are skipped for the remainder of
that auction. They are not allowed to re-enter that
same auction.
Once the auction is over, a new company card is
drawn and placed face-up into the offering of companies. However, the newly drawn card is not available
for auctions during the same phase it is drawn. Turn
the company card vertically to mark it as unavailable.
In the first few turns of the game, it is very common
that at some point during this phase all the companies
in the offering are not available for auctions so that
players cannot start more auctions.
The player that takes the next action after the auc-
1.4.5
tion is the one next in player order after the player who
started the auction (not after the player who won the
auction).
If there are any companies left that are available for

auction, the foreign investor tries to buy them for face
value directly (no auction triggered), starting with the
company with the lowest face value and then continuing in ascending face value order. If he has enough
money for the company with the lowest face value, he
pays it to the bank and adds the company to his assets. (Place the company below the foreign investor
card. If he already owns companies, line them up in a
horizontal row.) Then repeat with the company with
the next lowest face value, and so on, until he no longer
has enough money.
Whenever the foreign investor buys a company,
draw a new one from the deck as if that company had
been purchased in an auction.
Usually, it takes a few turns before the foreign investor manages to buy a company. In practice, it is
very rare that he buys more than one company in one
turn.
After the foreign investor is done, turn all companies in the offering horizontally, so that they are available for auctions in phase 3 of the next turn.
Example of a complete auction: Alice, Bob, and

Chris play a three-player game. They have already
reached turn 2. (The auctions in turn 1 are less interesting, so this example is taken from turn 2. The rules
are exactly the same.) The current player order is Alice: 1, Bob: 2, Chris: 3. Alice has $20, Bob $12, Chris
$9. The offering contains the MHE, the WT, and the
MS. The WT has been drawn this turn, so it is oriented
vertically. Bob is up to pick an action. He wants to
start an auction. However, the WT is not available for
auctions, and the MS is too expensive (minimum bid
is $17 but Bob has only $12). The only company Bob
could pick is the MHE. He does so and decides to place
an initial bid of $9. $8 would have been a legal bid, too,
but Bob wanted to kick Chris out of the auction from
the start. Chris is next in player order but has only
$9 so he cannot raise the bid and automatically leaves
the auction. Next is Alice. She has enough money to
raise the bid. She decides to raise the bid to $11. Now
its back to Bob. He would still be able to raise the bid
to $12 but he thinks that $12 for the MHE is a bit too
much. Furthermore, if he leaves now, Alice has won
the auction and has to pay the $11 she has bid. After that, she wont have enough money to buy the MS,
which she would have gotten for face value otherwise
because no other player would have had enough money
to overbid her. So Bob leaves the auction, Alice pays
$11 and gets the MHE. A new company is drawn, the
BD, which is placed into the offering, but turned vertically. The auction is over now, and the next player to
take an action is Chris (because he is next in player order after Bob, who started the auction). Chris doesnt
have enough money to start an auction. So he has to
pass and turns his player order card vertically. In fact,
the only company available for auctions is the MS, and
none of the players have enough money left to bid for
it, so all players have to pass, and the phase ends.
1.4.4
Phase 5 foreign investor
1.4.6
Phase 6 corporations buy companies
As there are still no corporations in the game, nothing

happens in this phase.
1.4.7
Phase 7 close companies
In principle, you could close your freshly bought companies already, but it really wouldnt make any sense.
So ignore this phase for now.
1.4.8
Phase 8 collect income
The bank pays income to all players and to the foreign investor. Each player adds the income of all their
companies and collects the result from the bank. (The
income of each company is printed in the circle in the
upper right corner of the company card.)
The foreign investor does the same, but always
earns an additional +$5 bonus, regardless of owning
any companies (see the circle in the upper right corner
of the foreign investor card). Add the foreign investors
income to his treasury to the right of the foreign investor card.
Phase 4 determine new player

order
Redistribute player order cards according to remaining

cash on hand. The player with the most cash left gets
position 1, and so on. Break ties using the old player
order. (In practice, you should first check if there are
any ties, break them according to the current distribution of player order cards, and only then start to
redistribute the player order cards.)
1.4.9
Phase 9 pay dividends
Only corporations pay dividends. As you probably

have guessed by now, there are no corporations yet,
so nothing happens.
Example (continuing the example above): After the

end of phase 3, both Alice and Chris have $9 left. Bob
has $12 left. So Bob will be on position 1 in the new
player order. Alice and Chris tie for position 2. Since
Alice was before Chris in the old player order (1 vs.
3), she gets position 2, and Chris keeps position 3.
1.4.10
Phase 10 end of game check
Only once we approach the end of the game, something

will happen in this phase. Ignore it for now.
9
The second turn
in later turns, players will own differently colored

companies, too, which changes the range of eligible starting share prices for those companies.
(It is even possible, albeit highly unlikely, that
all eligible share price cards are in use by other
corporations. In that case, your company cannot
be converted. Sorry.)
Congratulations. You have finished your first turn.

The second turn is going to become a bit more interesting. Some of the phases wont be ignored any longer,
and others get more complex.
1.5.1
We are nearly there, but at the moment, we still have

no corporations in the game. So once again, nothing
to see here.
1.5.2
4. Now take the first share from the stack of shares

(which is the golden presidents share) and place
it in front of you. Thats now your share, which
you got in exchange for the company you went
public with.
Now that players actually own private companies, they

can decide to go public with one or more of them,
i. e. convert them into corporations. Only companies
owned by players can be converted into corporations
(but not companies owned by the foreign investor or
by already existing corporations). In descending face
value order, the owners of the eligible companies decide
if they want to go public or not. If they go public, the
whole procedure is completed for that company before
the owner of the next company decides.
Example: Alice owns the MS (face value $17) and
the KME ($5). Bob owns the WT ($11) and the BPM
($7). Chris owns the BSE ($2). The first company that
may go public is the MS. Alice has to decide first, and
cannot revise her decision later during the same phase.
Once she has decided if the MS goes public (and if so,
has performed the required procedure), Bob decides for
the WT and then for the BPM. After that, Alice decides for the KME, and finally Chris decides for the
BSE.
The conversion procedure is the following:
5. As the share you have received has a higher share

price than the face value of the company you
went public with, you have to pay the difference from your private money into the treasury of
the corporation. Place the money to the right of
the share price card. (If you dont have enough
money to pay the difference, the whole procedure is void and has to be undone. If possible,
you can choose a lower share price so that you
have enough money to pay the difference between
share price and face value of your company. But
if not, you cannot convert your company. Sorry
once more.)
6. The whole point of going public is to get public investors. So next, you place the second share
from the stack into the bank. In return, the bank
pays the share price into the treasury of the corporation. (This step is mandatory. You cannot
opt to not give a share to the bank.)
$20
share price
Share
Price
$22
$24
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$7
$0$99
$0$119
$18
$0$39 $0$59
$0$59 $0$79
$0$79
$0$99
$0$119
$18 $0$39
$20
$40$43 $60$65
$60$65 $80$87
$80$87 $100$109
$100$109 $120$131
$120$131
$20 $40$43
$44$47
$24
$44$47 $66$71
$66$71 $88$95
$88$95 $110$119
$110$119 $132$143
$132$143
$24
$48$
$26
$48$ $72$
$72$ $96$
$96$ $120$
$120$ $144$
$144$
$26
$20
($10-$26)
($10-$26)
DSB
Danske
Danske Statsbaner
Statsbaner
+$2
+$2
2. Place the company that is being converted below

the symbol card.
3. From the share price cards that are currently not
in use, choose an eligible starting price for your
corporation. The eligible share price cards are
those that feature the color of the company being converted in their IPO box. Place the chosen
share price card left of the symbol card. (That
will leave an empty spot in the row of share price
cards. Leave it alone, dont move the other share
price cards to close the gap.) The share price
card determines the current value of each share
of the corporation. In turn 2, all privately owned
companies are red, so the allowed starting share
prices are $10, $11, $12, $13, and $14. However,
$17
($9-$21)
($9-$21)
Share
Share
All 1043Shares
Issued
th
rd
Issued
322 Shares
Shares Issued
Subsidiaries
Subsidiaries
MS
Groherzoglich
Groherzoglich MecklenMecklenburgische
burgische Friedrich-Franz-Eisenbahn
Friedrich-Franz-Eisenbahn
+$1
+$1
Treasury
Treasury
1. Pick one of the symbol cards that is currently not

in use. Together with the pile of shares on top,
place it a bit away from your personal assets (its
going to be a public company after all) but still
in your reach. (In the unlikely case that there is
no unused symbol card available, your company
cannot be converted. Sorry.)
Shareprice
price
Share
1.5
+$1
+$1
MS PR
+$2 OL
(14)
(19)
(14) (17)
(17)
(19)
AKE BPM MHE

+$1 BSE
(2)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(2)
(6)
(7)
(8)
BSR HH
+$4 DR
(48)
(29)
(40)
(48)
(29)
(40)
SX PR DSB PKP DR
+$2 OL
(14)
(20)
(23)
(29)
(14) (16)
(16) (19)
(19)
(20)
(23)
(29)
$7 ($4-$9)
($4-$9)
BPM
Eisenbahn
Eisenbahn
+$2
$2 ($1-$3)
($1-$3)
BSE
+$1
Berlin-Stettiner
Berlin-Stettiner
+$1
+$1
AKE MHE SX MS PR
+$1 BSE
(2)
(6)
(8)
(16)
(2)
(6)
(8)
(16) (17)
(17) (19)
(19)
SX
+$1 BPM
(7)
(16)
(7)
(16)
MS PR
(17)
(17)
(19)
(19)
Example: You go public with the MHE ($8 face value).

As the symbol for your new corporation, you choose
the Bear. As starting share price, you choose $11.
You have to pay $3 into the treasury of your newly
formed corporation. You receive the presidents share
of the Bear in return. The bank receives the second
Bear share and pays $11 into the treasury of the corporation. Arrange all involved components as shown
in the figure above. The Bear corporation consists of
the $11 share price card, the Bear symbol card with the
eight remaining shares in the central box, the company
card of the MHE, and $14 cash in its treasury.
10
1.5.3

trading
1. Choose one of your shares to sell and place it

into the bank. (Only choose the golden presidents share if it is the last share you own of that
corporation.)
This phase works the same as in turn 1, but now we

will add share trading to the mix. There are two more
possible actions to chose from: buy one share and sell
one share.
Only shares owned by the bank can be bought.
(The pile of shares on top of the symbol cards cannot be touched in this phase.) If you choose the buy
one share action, perform the following steps:
2. Return the share price card of the corresponding

corporation to its place in the row of share price
cards and replace it by the next lower available
share price card. (Usually, that is the card with
the share price marked in the upper left corner
of the old share price card. However, as before,
you will skip missing share price cards.)
1. Take the desired share from the bank and place

it in front of you.
3. Now the bank pays you the new share price.

There is one important restriction in selling shares:
After you have sold the share, there must be at least
one other share of the same corporation owned by a
player (which might be yourself). In other words, the
bank can never own all issued shares of a corporation.
In turn 2, things are quite simple in this regard.
Each corporation has only two shares issued, so if one
is owned by the bank (which is the case just after going
public), the other cannot be sold. Only after a player
has bought a share from the bank, selling the other
share of the same corporation becomes possible.
Similar to the situation when buying a share, the
displayed share price is not the price you get paid. Like
buying, selling a share modifies the system, so you get
less money for a share than its last known value.
Another similarity is that a change of presidency
might occur after the transaction: If you are the current president, and you have sold a share, you have to
check if now another player (not the bank) owns more
shares of that corporation than you. That player exchanges one of their shares of that corporation with the
golden presidents share (which might still be owned by
you, or it is owned by the bank if you have just sold
it as your last share of that corporation). In the case
where more than one player is tied for the most shares,
the player that is following you closer in player order
becomes the president.
Example: The player order is Chris: 1, Alice: 2,
Bob: 3. The Eagle corporation has currently three
shares issued. (That cannot be the case in turn 2, only
in later turns, youll see.) Alice is the president and
owns the golden presidents share. Chris and Bob own
each one of the other two shares. Its Alices turn to
take one action. She decides to sell one Eagle share,
following the procedure above. After that, both, Chris
and Bob own more shares each than Alice. As they
are tied, the player order decides who becomes the new
president. Alice is followed by Bob, and Bob is followed by Chris (remember, the player order is cyclic,
the last player is followed by the first). So Bob is following Alice closer than Chris and becomes the new
president. He takes the presidents share from the bank
and places his own share into the bank in exchange.
Now Bob owns the presidents share, and Chris and
2. Return the share price card of the corresponding

corporation to its place in the row of share price
cards and replace it by the next higher available
share price card. (Usually, that is the card with
the share price marked in the upper right corner of the old share price card. However, if that
share price card is in use, you will skip it. It is
even possible that many share price cards in a
row are used and the share price of the share you
are currently buying jumps up a lot.)
3. Now pay the new share price to the bank. (If you
dont have enough money to do so, the whole action is void. Undo everything, and try something
else.)
Now re-read the last item in that list and think
about the consequences. Like in real share trading,
the displayed share price of a corporation is not the
price you have to pay if you want to buy one of the
shares. It is more like the last known share price.
By buying a share, you are already modifying the system, and you have to pay more than that last known
share price.
After you have bought a share of a corporation you
are not the president of, check if you now own more
shares of that corporation than the current president.
If that is the case, you have managed something like a
hostile takeover. You are now the president of that corporation. Exchange the golden presidents share with
any one of your shares of the same corporation. (Shares
are basically all the same. The numbering only matters as long as they are still on the stack on top of the
symbol card. The golden presidents share, however, is
used as a marker for the current president. In all other
regards, its a perfectly normal share.)
By the way, in turn 2, a hostile takeover as described above is technically impossible (because every
existing corporation has only two shares issued, so you
cannot own more than the current president). Its still
good to know about it for later.
If you choose the sell one share action, perform the
following steps:
11
the bank own one share each. Alice no longer owns an

Eagle share.
1.5.4
you use poker chips, youll find it hard to recognize chips that have been turned vertically.
Instead, place the chips used in a transaction on
top of the stack of unissued shares.)

order
At any time, each corporation must own at

least one subsidiary company. You can never
completely empty a corporation. This one
company might very well be a company turned
vertically, i. e. a corporation that owns only
one subsidiary company in the beginning of the
phase could first buy another company (which is
thereby turned vertically) and then sell the company it originally owned. There is no hierarchy
of subsidiary companies within a corporations.
The company a corporation owned when it was
formed has no special status within the corporation.
This phase works exactly the same as in turn 1.
1.5.5
1.5.6
In this phase, corporations may buy companies. Only

corporations may buy, but they may buy from anybody: players, the foreign investor, and even other
corporations (but not from the offering of companies
available for auctions those are indeed only available
for auctions in phase 3, and only players acquire them
during auctions). In phase 6, players and the foreign
investor only sell companies, never buy.
This is the first time where presidency of a corporation becomes relevant. The president of a corporation
decides on behalf of the corporation. It might easily
happen that both sides of a deal are actually controlled
by the same player. If you (as a player) own a company
and you are at the same time the president of a corporation, there is nothing wrong if you (as a player) agree
with yourself (as the president of the corporation) that
the corporation will buy your company for a price you
agree on with yourself.
In every single transaction, exactly one company
is bought. Buyer and seller have to agree on a price
within the price span printed on the company card.
(This price span is inclusive, e. g. the allowed prices
for the KME ($5 face value) are $3, $4, $5, $6, and
$7.) The buying corporation must be able to pay the
price from its treasury. (You cannot pay with other
corporations. Its always one company for an allowed
amount of cash.)
Any number of transactions might happen during
the phase, in any desired order, even concurrently.
Think of a marketplace. Buyers and sellers find each
other at will, by announcing their offers to whomever
they want, negotiating in all directions. And once a
buyer and a seller agree on a deal, they make it happen.
The phase goes on until no transactions are happening
any longer. There are some restrictions, though:
A special case is the foreign investor, as nobody

controls him and his decisions. The foreign investor
will happily sell any company he owns, but only for
the maximum allowed price. The money he receives if
he sells a company goes into his treasury and is available to be used in phase 5 of later turns. There might
still be an ambiguous situation if more than one corporation want to buy the same company from the foreign
investor. In that case, the corporation with the higher
share price card has priority. In practice, whenever a
corporation wants to buy a company from the foreign
investor, it has to announce its intention. At that time,
pause the game for a short while and ask each corporation with a higher share price if they want to intervene
and buy that company immediately themself. If more
than one corporation wants to intervene, again the one
with higher share price has priority. If no corporation
intervenes, the announcing corporation must buy the
company (i. e. no fake announcements allowed).
1.5.7
As in turn 1, it rarely makes sense to close companies

so early in the game. Keep ignoring this phase.
1.5.8
For players and the foreign investor, this phase works

exactly the same as in turn 1. The new thing is that
corporations, too, collect income.
Their base income is calculated in the same way as
for players and the foreign investor: Just add up all
the income of the individual subsidiary companies of
a corporation. However, corporations (and only corporations!) have the ability to generate bonus income
from synergies:
A pair of companies that are subsidiaries of the
same corporation and have each others abbreviation
printed in one of their synergy boxes, generates the
bonus income printed in the upper left corner of the
synergy box. All pairs you can find within a corporation generate bonus income, but each pair generates
Every $ and every company may only be part of

one single transaction in the whole phase. The
money that has been paid is turned vertically,
as well as the company that has been handed
over, to mark those components as in flight.
They cannot be part of another transaction in
the same phase. Once the phase is over, you can
turn them all horizontally again. They have arrived by then and can be used normally. (If
12
1.5.9
the bonus only once. Use synergy markers to track the

bonuses. For each pair, place a corresponding synergy
marker on the company card of the company with the
higher face value. Place it on top of the abbreviation of
the other company. (There is a bold red or yellow line
in each synergy box. You will see that the markers are
only placed in front of that line, never behind. Never
place markers behind the line (on the abbreviations
of companies with higher face value) to avoid doublecounting of bonuses.) To easily find all existing pairs,
sort the companies in descending face value order from
left to right. Then start with the left-most company
and check all the companies listed in its synergy boxes
until you hit the bold line. No need to check behind
the line. Then repeat the procedure with the second
left-most company etc. You only ever have to look to
the right. The companies left of the one you are checking have already been checked. So you have to look at
fewer and fewer companies. The right-most company
will never receive a synergy token.
Starting with the corporation with the highest share

price card, and then continuing in descending share
price order, each corporation pays a dividend (which
is chosen by the president and can be as low as $0) and
then adjusts its share price.
For each corporation, the president performs the
following steps:
1. The top card of the stack of shares on your symbol card (or the symbol card itself if all stacks
have been issued) tells you how many shares you
have issued. You will have to pay dividends to
each of those shares. So keep the number in
mind.
2. On your share price card, you see the maximum
possible dividend per share. Obviously, the corporations treasury must have enough money to
pay the dividends. If you have three shares issued and $8 in the treasury, the maximum dividend per share is $2, even if the share price card
allows more. The minimum dividend is $0 (you
can call that not paying a dividend, it doesnt
make a difference). Pick a dividend in this range,
and pay it from the corporations treasury to
the owner of each share (which might be yourself
(this time as a player, not a president), another
player, or the bank).
The bank pays the total income of a corporation

(base income plus synergy bonuses) into its treasury.
For large corporations, it makes sense to track the income on a sheet of paper so that you dont have to
calculate the total income again each turn.
$24
max
payout
Max
Payout
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per
Share
per
share
Per share
Share
$7
$0$99
$0$119
$18
$0$39 $0$59
$0$59 $0$79
$0$79
$0$99
$0$119
$18 $0$39
$20
$40$43 $60$65
$60$65 $80$87
$80$87 $100$109
$100$109 $120$131
$120$131
$20 $40$43
$44$47
$44$47 $66$71
$66$71 $88$95
$88$95 $110$119
$110$119 $132$143
$132$143
$48$
$48$ $72$
$72$ $96$
$96$ $120$
$120$ $144$
$144$
($10-$26)
($10-$26)
DSB
Danske
Danske Statsbaner
Statsbaner
+$2
+$2
$17
($9-$21)
($9-$21)
Share
Share
All 1043Shares
Issued
th
rd
Issued
322 Shares
Shares Issued
$24
$24
$26
$26
$20
Subsidiaries
Subsidiaries
MS
Groherzoglich
Groherzoglich MecklenMecklenburgische
burgische Friedrich-Franz-Eisenbahn
Friedrich-Franz-Eisenbahn
+$1
+$1
Treasury
Treasury
$22
Shareprice
price
Share
share price
Share
Price
$20
+$1
+$1
MS PR
+$2 OL
(14)
(19)
(14) (17)
(17)
(19)
AKE BPM MHE

+$1 BSE
(2)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(2)
(6)
(7)
(8)
BSR HH
+$4 DR
(48)
(29)
(40)
(48)
(29)
(40)
SX PR DSB PKP DR
+$2 OL
(14)
(20)
(23)
(29)
(14) (16)
(16) (19)
(19)
(20)
(23)
(29)
$7 ($4-$9)
($4-$9)
BPM
Eisenbahn
Eisenbahn
+$2
$2 ($1-$3)
($1-$3)
BSE
3. Now calculate the book value of the corporation:

Add the face values of all companies owned by
the corporation and the remaining cash in treasury.
+$1
Berlin-Stettiner
Berlin-Stettiner
+$1
+$1
AKE MHE SX MS PR
+$1 BSE
(2)
(6)
(8)
(16)
(2)
(6)
(8)
(16) (17)
(17) (19)
(19)
SX
+$1 BPM
(7)
(16)
(7)
(16)
MS PR
(17)
(17)
(19)
(19)
4. Take your share price card and look at the table

in the bottom half. Find the column that corresponds to the number of issued shares. (If you
cannot find that column, flip the card. The column you are looking for will be on the back.) In
that column, find the row that shows the $ range
that includes the book value you have calculated
above. At the left end of that row, you will find
your new share price and a little arrow. Return
your old share price card to its spot in the row of
share price cards and take your new share price
card from the row. If your new share price card is
currently in use by another corporation, find the
next available share price card in the direction of
the little arrow.
Example: The corporation in the figure above consists

of the DSB ($20 face value), the MS ($17), the BPM
($7), and the BSE ($2). Its base income is $6 + $3 +
$2 + $1 = $12. The DSB pairs with the MS, yielding
+$2. The MS pairs with both, the BPM and the BSE,
for +$1 each. Finally, the BPM pairs with the BSE for
+$1. The synergies add up to +$5 (note the synergy
markers), so the total income is $12 + $5 = $17.
You can see here how the synergies model a network: Both the BPM and the BSE historically started
in Berlin. The MS is the state railroad of Mecklenburg,
a German state north of and not far from Berlin. So it
connects to the two Berliner railroad companies. The
DSB, in turn, is the state railroad of Denmark, which
is north of Germany, and relatively close to Mecklenburg. So MS and DSB can connect their networks for
mutual benefit. The Bear corporation has developed
into an international northern European railroad trust.
5. Turn your new share price card vertically (to

mark that you have gone through this whole procedure).
13
share price
Share
Price
$20
$22
$18 $0$39
$0$59
$0$79
$0$99
2. Return the corporations share price card to its

place in the row of share price cards and replace
it with the next lower available share price card.
(Usually, that is the card with the share price
marked in the upper left corner of the old share
price card. However, as before, you will skip
missing share price cards.)
$24
max
Max payout
Payout
per
Per share
Share
$7
$0$119
$20 $40$43 $60$65 $80$87 $100$109 $120$131

$24
$44$47 $66$71 $88$95 $110$119 $132$143
$26
$48$ $72$ $96$ $120$
3. Now the bank pays the new share price into the
corporations treasury.
$144$
Later in the game, it is possible that the share price

card the corporation has to take is the $0 one. In
that case, the corporation is declared bankrupt and removed from the game. Follow the instructions on the
$0 share price card. Note that shares are recycled,
i. e. they may later be used to form new corporations.
However, the recycled shares have nothing to do with
the old bankrupt corporation. The bankrupt corporation is gone for good.
Example: Imagine the same corporation as in the previous example (section 1.5.8). It has three shares issued, a current share price of $22, and after paying
dividends, it has $16 left in treasury. Its book value
is therefore $20 (for the DSB) + $17 (for the MS) +
$7 (for the BPM) + $2 (for the BSE) + $16 (cash) =
$62. Cross-reference as shown in the figure above. The
new share price is $20. If the $20 share price card is
not available, the next lower available share price card
must be taken. (If the corporation had $4 more cash,
its book value would be $66, just enough to go up to
$24. In that case, if the $24 share price card were not
available, it would go up even more, to the next higher
available share price.)
1.5.10
1.6.2
In general, this phase works the same as in turn 2.

However, with the more valuable companies that have
entered the game by now, you will sooner or later go
public with a company whose face value matches or
even exceeds the share price. In case the share price
matches the face value, you simply dont have to pay
anything into the corporations treasury. The share
you get has precisely the value of the company you
have given up, so you are all set. But what if the share
price is lower than the face value of the company going
public? Very simple: Take more shares than one. Start
with the presidents share, and then continue to take
shares until the total value of taken shares matches
or exceeds the face value of the company. Dont take
more shares than you need to accomplish that. After
that, pay the difference between total share value and
face value of the company into the treasury of the corporation as usual. In this case, the number of shares
to put into the bank is increased, too. Put as many
shares into the bank as you have taken for yourself.
Of course, the bank pays correspondingly more money
into the corporations treasury. You always end up
with half of the issued shares in your possession and
the the other half in the bank.
Example 1: You go public with the BD (face value
$12). You choose a share price of $12. You receive
one share (the presidents share) and pay nothing. The
bank gets another share and pays $12 into the treasury
of the new corporation. The corporation ends up with
two shares issued and $12 in its treasury.
Example 2: You go public with the BD (face value
$12). You choose a share price of $11. You take
the presidents share, but its value is not sufficient to
match the face value of the BD. So you take another
share. Now you have two shares with a total value of
$22. You pay $10 from your cash into the treasury of
We are still not close enough to the end of the game

to make anything happen in this phase. Keep ignoring
it.
1.6
The remaining turns
From the third turn on, all the features of the game
are in full swing.
1.6.1
Finally, corporations have the opportunity to issue new

shares. After going public, this is the only phase where
the stack of shares on the symbol card is touched and
more shares enter the market.
Again in decreasing share price order (starting with
the corporation with the highest share price card), the
president of each corporation decides if the corporation
issues one share or no share. (A corporation cannot issue more than one share in this phase.) In any case,
the share price card is turned horizontally to mark that
the corporation already had the opportunity to issue a
share.
Issuing a share works very similarly to selling a
share. Perform the following steps for the corporation
that issues a share:
1. Place the top-most share from the pile of unissued shares on the corporations symbol card into
the bank. (If there are no shares left, i. e. all 10
shares have already been issued, you cannot issue
more shares. Sorry.)
14
1.6.6
the new corporation. The bank gets two shares, too,

and pays $22 into the treasury. The corporation ends
up with four shares issued and $32 in its treasury.
Example 3: You go public with the LE (face value
$90). You choose a share price of $45 (a share price
that is only allowed for blue and purple companies, but
fortunately the LE is a purple company). You take two
shares. Their value matches the face value of the LE,
so you dont have to pay anything. The bank gets two
shares, too, and pays $90. The corporation ends up
with four shares issued and $90 in its treasury.
Example 4: You go public with the LE (face value
$90). You choose a share price of $28 (the lowest possible share price for purple companies). You take four
shares with a total value of $112. (Three shares have a
total value of $84, which would not have been enough to
match or exceed the face value of the LE.) You pay $22
from your cash into the treasury of the new corporation
($90 + $22 = $112). The bank gets four shares, too,
and pays $112 into the treasury. The corporation ends
up with eight shares issued and $134 in its treasury.
1.6.3
1.6.7

trading
After selling a share, the new share price might

be $0. In that case, the same procedure is triggered as described in section 1.6.1.
1.6.8
The income calculation works the same as before, but

at some point in the game, you will have to deduct a
cost of ownership. Refer to the back of the top-most
card of the deck of (not yet drawn) companies. Starting with the green cards, it will show a central rectangle
with a cost of ownership. Each company matching any
of the colors in the rectangle suffers the cost of ownership printed on the card, i. e. its income is reduced,
possibly becoming negative. Each player and each corporation first add up the income of all their companies,
and only then they receive or pay the total income (if
it is positive or negative, respectively). A player will
always be able to pay their negative income (because
they were required to close companies to make sure of
that, see section 1.6.7). However, a corporation might
not be able to pay its negative income. In that case,
treat it the same as if it has just reached share price
$0 (see section 1.6.1).
Once all company cards have been drawn from the
deck, the game end card is visible. With regard to
cost of ownership, it is treated the same as the central rectangle on the company cards. (In the training
game, you will only see the red rectangle on the back
of the green company cards. The green companies are
directly followed by the game end card. However, in
the short and full game you will play later, you will
see blue company cards with a red-and-orange rectan-
After buying a share, the new share price might

be $100. In that case, the game ends after the
buy action has been completed (i. e. you still
have to pay the $100 for the share you have just
bought, but after that, the game is over). Read
on in section 1.8 to learn how to determine the
winner.
Eventually, the deck of companies will run out.
The last card in the deck is the game end card. It
is never drawn and just stays where it is. If you
cannot draw a company after an auction, just
skip that step. The offering will contain one less
company whenever that happens.
Eventually, there will be no companies left in the
offering. From that point on, the action start an
auction cannot be chosen any longer.

order
This phase works exactly the same as in previous turns.
1.6.5
As you will see in the next section, later in the game, a

cost of ownership will apply to certain companies. You
might find yourself (or your corporation) in a situation
where you want to get rid of one or more companies.
In this phase, you can remove any number of your privately owned companies from the game. Essentially,
you can do the same for the companies owned by corporations you control. However, a corporation has to
retain at least one subsidiary company at any time.
If your total income from your privately owned
companies in the following phase 8 (see section 1.6.8)
will be negative and you dont have enough money to
pay for it, you must close enough companies in this
phase to be able to pay for your losses (or get rid of
the losses altogether). In other words: As a player,
you cannot drive yourself into bankruptcy.
As in phase 6, the players act in no particular order. They simply close companies as they see fit, and
once nobody wishes to close a company any longer, the
phase ends.
The foreign investor automatically closes any companies with a negative income (to be vetted separately
for each company).
Nothing really changes here compared to previous

turns. However, we have to deal with a few special
cases:
1.6.4
This phase works exactly the same as in previous turns.

15
gle on their back, and purple company cards with a

red/orange/yellow rectangle on their back.)
the corporation has to pay from its treasury. If there

is not enough left, it goes bankrupt. (But of course, it
could have closed all but one company in phase 7. Not
good for the book value, but perhaps a healthy consolidation. If it had closed all companies except the DSB,
its losses would have been only $2 ($6 base income minus $8 cost of ownership).
On the yellow and green company cards, youll find

some synergies with blue companies. Blue companies
are not part of the training game, so ignore them for
now.
1.6.9
Example: Look at the same corporation as used in the
example in section 1.5.8. We calculated an income of
$17. That was without cost of ownership yet. If the
top face-down card of the deck is a green one (see figure
above), each red company has a cost of ownership of $1.
Our corporation would earn $1 less per red company it
owns. So it would earn $2 less, its income would be
$15.
Once more, nothing really changes here compared to

previous turns, but eventually, you might run into one
of the following special cases:
After adjusting the share price, the new share
price might be $0. In that case, the same procedure is triggered as described in section 1.6.1.
(Note that paying dividends happens first. Its
perfectly legal to pay a dividend only to drop to
$0 and go bankrupt right after that.)
training game
After adjusting the share price, the new share

price might be $100. In that case, the game
does not end immediately. The phase continues,
and only in phase 10, the game will be declared
over. Should it happen that other corporations
reach $100, too, those companies dont take a
new share price card. They only return their old
one. The shares of a corporation without a share
price card have a share price of $100.
If there are no unowned private

companies le at the end of
a turn, ip this card.
Once all companies have been drawn, the front-side of

the game ending card is visible (see figure above). From
now on, each orange and each red company has a cost
of ownership of $3. Our corporation would earn 3*$3
= $9 less than the unmodified income. Its total income
would be meager $8 now.
1.6.10
Eventually, something will happen in this phase.

First you have to check if the $100 share price card
is held by a company. If so, the game ends immediately. Read on in the next section to learn how to
determine the winner.
If the $100 share price card is not in use, check if
there are still companies available for auctions in the
offering. If not, flip the game end card (which will increase the cost of ownership). Once you reach phase 10
again, the game ends. (In other words: If at the start
of phase 10, the game end card is already flipped, the
game ends in the same way as if the $100 share price
card is in use.) The next section tells you how to determine the winner.
While the game end card is flipped (i. e. during
the last turn of the game), the game might still end in
phase 3 as described in section 1.6.3.
training game
e end of the next turn is
the end of the game.
In the last turn of the game (see section 1.6.10 below),

the game end card will be flipped, and the cost of ownership will not only be much higher, but even affect
yellow companies. (Luckily, it will only last one turn.)
Our now pretty much obsolete corporation (if it still
existed) would earn $8 less for each company it owns
(green companies would not be affected, but our corporation doesnt own any). $17 unmodified income minus
$32 cost of ownership yields a hefty loss of $15, which
1.7
How the game ends
As described above, there are three ways the game may

end:
16
If a corporation takes the $100 share price card

during a buy one share action in phase 3, the
game ends immediately after that action is completed.
by the foreign investor never ever receive synergy

bonuses. When counting synergies, count every
pair only once. If A synergizes with B, then B
will always synergize with A, too. You still get
the bonus only once.
If the $100 share price card is in use during phase

10, the game ends.
Pass and leaving an auction both happen during

phase 3, but are entirely different things. Pass
is an action you may take when its your turn
to perform one action. If you do that, you basically do nothing. If all players pass consecutively,
phase 3 is over. But if any of the others take a
non-pass action, you will have another turn, and
when its your turn again, you may (and must)
choose a new action (which might be pass again,
but any other legal action is eligible, too). In
other words: Passing doesnt prevent you from
taking another action later. In contrast, if you
leave an auction, you have left the auction for
good. You may not bid in the same auction ever
again. Strictly speaking, leaving an auction is
not an action at all. It happens as a sub-step during an auction, which is triggered by any players
start an auction action.
If phase 10 starts with the game end card already

flipped, the game ends.
1.8
Who has won?
For the final ranking of players, add the value of everything each player owns:
Their cash.
The face value of each private company they own.
The current share price of each share they own.
For the final player ranking, it is irrelevant how
much cash and which companies the corporations own.
If there is a tie, break it by player order (lower
number in player order wins over higher number).
1.9
The short game and the full

game
After an auction, keep in mind that the last

player that has performed an action is the player
that has started the auction (not the player that
has won the auction). So the next player performing an action will be the one next in player
order to the player that has started the auction.
Once you have played the training game once or twice,

you are ready for the real game types. No rules are
changed, you just use a different game end card (each
of the three game end cards is marked with the game
type it is used in note that in the short and full game,
even green companies will suffer the cost of ownership
in the later parts of the game), and you add one or two
additional tiers of companies.
The short game adds the blue companies (airports,
container ports, and an airline). As usual, select one
more company than players, randomly and secretly,
and add them to the deck, between the green companies and the game end card (which is now the game
end card marked short game).
The full game adds not only the blue companies,
but also the purple companies (spacefaring companies
we got all the way from the 19th century to the future). They go into the deck between the blue companies and the game end card (which is now the game
end card marked full game).
1.10
Never transfer any assets (money, shares, companies) in a way not explicitly allowed by the rules.
You cant sponsor your corporations, you cant
steal from the treasury of your corporations,
you cant give money or companies to other players, not even as a gift, etc. Keep all assets next to
their respective owner (players, corporations, foreign investor, bank) and clearly separated from
others.
It is very tempting to think of the share price
cards you see on the table as the price you have
to pay to buy a share (or the price the bank will
pay you if you sell a share). However, you have
to pay the next higher available share price (and
you will be paid the next lower available share
price). You can see the next regular share prices
in the corners of the share price cards, but remember that cards that are already in use are
skipped, so the relevant price may be even higher
(or lower, in case you sell).
Easily missed or misunderstood rules
The following list of things beginners often get wrong

might prove helpful in your first couple of games. It
is in approximate order of frequency, most common
issues first.
Newly drawn companies are not available for auction in the same turn. They have to wait until
next turn. (Even the foreign investor cannot buy
them in phase 5 of the same turn.)
Synergies are only possible within a corporation. Companies owned directly by a player or
17
Never ever use any $ or any company twice in

phase 6. Dont forget to turn vertically the companies and the money used. Execute each transaction separately. Things like The Bear buys
MHE for $8 from the Eagle, and at the same time
the Eagle buys the BPM from the Bear for $8,
too, so we just swap companies and no money
just dont work. First transfer one of the companies (lets say the MHE) and pay the money
(and turn both vertically), then do the same with
the other company (the BPM), pay the money
(which must not be the money turned vertically),
and turn them both vertically.
may sell shares of a corporation that has just

been founded. You may even buy shares you
have sold before in the same phase. (Oh yes!
But keep in mind the next item below. In other
words: If you keep selling and buying the same
share, you will lose money each time.)
Every individual sell and buy action will modify the share price, and you will get/pay the new
share price (see also the non-18xx-specific notes
above).
At the end of phase 3 (the share round), fully
sold shares will not change their share price.
There is no notion of a share being explicitly a
10 % share or a 20 % share. Keep in mind
that shares not yet issued basically dont exist. (After going public, the only way un-issued
shares enter the game is by issuing shares in
phase 1.) If a company has two shares issued,
each is implicitly a 50 % share. If it has three
shares issued, each is 33 %, and so on. Also note
that the presidents share is a single share, not a
double share.
The cost of ownership is defined solely by the

back of the top-most card in the deck of unrevealed company cards (or, if the deck has run
out, by the game end card left behind). Once a
company card has been drawn, it will never be
flipped back again and its back is irrelevant for
the rest of the game.
While you cant sell the last player-owned share
of a corporation, it is perfectly legal to sell the
presidents share if there is at least one other
player owning a share of that corporation. (That
player will become president after your sell action and will swap their own share with the presidents share in the bank.)
1.11
There is no emergency money raising. If your

corporation has a negative net income and cannot pay for it, it goes bankrupt.
You set a dividend per share and then pay it
from treasury. The dividend you pay has no direct link to the income of your corporation in the
same turn. Even if your corporation has a negative income, it may still pay dividends (if there
is enough money left in the treasury). Furthermore, the share price adjustment is not directly
coupled to the dividends you pay (despite this
happening in the same phase 9). It is indirectly
coupled (via the book value), but the effects are
the opposite of what you would expect: In general, paying a dividend makes it more likely your
share price will drop, while not paying a dividend (strictly speaking: paying a dividend of
$0) makes it more likely your share price will increase.
Special notes for 18xx players
If you are an 18xx player, many concepts in Rolling

Stock will be familiar to you. However, there are a
number of significant differences, and you will have to
un-learn certain things. The following list will help
you to avoid the most common traps for 18xx players.
(Non-18xx players can safely skip this section.)
Players always start with $30, no matter what
the number of players is. (Basically, instead of
decreasing the money of each player, the game
size is increased to accommodate more players.)
Pay special attention to phases 6 and 7, which
are performed in any order. Dont wait until
its your turn. Just act.
In a certain way, the companies in Rolling Stock

are a bit of both, privates and trains in 18xx.
However, there is no upper limit of the number of subsidiary companies in a corporation (no
train limit), and companies are never scrapped
by force. (The latter is, however, not entirely
alien to the 18xx world. 1873 Harzbahn uses a
very similar cost-of-ownership system.)
In phase 3 (you might want to call it share

round), you indeed have exactly and only one
action whenever it is your turn. Either buy or
sell or start an auction or pass. And if you sell,
its only ever one share per action.
Otherwise, share trading has almost no restrictions compared to 18xx. There is no certificate
limit. There is no limit of shares in the pool (except that at least one share of a corporation must
be player-owned). There is no limit of shares an
individual player way hold (may be 100 %). You
Phase 4 (new player order) works exactly like in

1844: Switzerland. If you know that game, nothing new here. Otherwise: Its basically a refined
priority deal.
The bank has unlimited money.
18
Chapter 2
A word about playing time

Rolling Stock is essentially a short game. If you
have already tried the so-called short game (or even
the full game), you might laugh at me now. Your
game probably took the better part of your day.
So why do I believe Rolling Stock is essentially a
short game?
First, the number of turns is relatively low if you
play with experienced players. (Its an interesting aspect of the game that less efficient strategies increase
the total number of turns in the game, to be discussed
below.) A full game at the usual pace will rarely take
more than 15 turns. If enough players opt for an overdrive strategy, you might be done in 12 turns.
Second, not so much is happening in a single turn.
Lets analyze a bit: Phases 4, 5, 8, and 10 are completely deterministic. You just execute them. The
more experienced you are, the faster you will be done.
Phase 8 (collecting income) involves the somewhat
complicated step of calculating everybodys income. If
you have the discipline to track the income of your corporation on a sheet of paper, and if you do the math
in advance before phase 8 even starts, you should still
be very fast. And of course, it is all in parallel. With
beginners, you probably want to double-check their income calculations, but once all players are experienced
enough, you should be able to trust each other, and everybody just grabs the appropriate amounts of money
from the bank. All these four phases (4, 5, 8, and 10)
should be matter of seconds.
The other phases require some decisions by players. The decisions in phase 7 (closing companies) are
sometimes not easy, but things only change fundamentally whenever the cost of ownership has changed. So
phase 7 is probably difficult in only a couple of turns
of a whole game. And again all players act in parallel. In most cases, your decision of closing a company
does not depend on other players decisions. Phases 1
and 2 dont have this advantage. They are strictly sequential, either in share price order (phase 1) or in face
value order (phase 2). However, the decisions in these
phases are usually relatively quick and easy. In phase 1
(issue shares), its strictly binary for each corporation:
Issue a share or not? You have to ask each corporation

each time, but with reasonably disciplined players, it
should be a very fast sweep through all the corporations. Phase 2 (going public) has an additional degree
of freedom: the starting share price. On the other
hand, only privately owned companies can go public,
and in many turns, there are not a whole lot of them.
Some players have the tendency to start lengthy negotiations in phase 2 to find out if they should go public
with their company or if it is better to keep it private
to sell it in phase 6 later in the same turn. While I
do not intend to discourage negotiations in this phase,
you should keep the time spent limited. See section
3.1 for an in-depth discussion of this issue.
Altogether, it is relatively easy and requires only
a minimal amount of discipline to run through all the
phases discussed so far quite quickly, taking only one or
two minutes of the total time used for the whole turn.
That leaves us with phases 3, 6, and 9. I sometimes
call these three phases the soul of the game. Not only
do they take longest to execute, but also the most crucial decisions tend to happen here. Lets look at them
in more detail.
Phase 9 is executed sequentially in share price order
like phase 1. However, the decision of how much of a
dividend to pay is often way more subtle and difficult,
not only from a strategic point of view, but also the
technical part of share price adjustment: Sometimes
the range of allowed dividends includes all the possible
new share prices, i. e. a $0 dividend would result in
a double jump up (last line of the share price card)
while the maximum possible dividend would lead to
a double drop (first line). Not only is the decision
loaded, it also takes a while to do all the math to determine the dividend bands with their share price
consequences. Again, tracking the book value (at least
the less volatile non-cash part of it) on a sheet of paper and disciplined thinking ahead helps a lot. (Your
decision might depend heavily on those of other corporations with a higher share price, but while thinking
ahead, you can come up with a plan A and a plan B,
and even a plan C if necessary. . . ) The good news: The
19
more experienced players become, and the more consequently they follow particular strategic patterns, the
more often they will lean towards extreme choices,
i. e. either no dividend at all or maximum possible
dividend. At that point, you dont have to calculate
any longer the exact amount of dividends you may pay
while still increasing your share price.
In phase 6 (corporations buy companies) players
act in parallel again. That is very important as a lot
of transactions might happen (and have to be negotiated before). If you have trouble keeping this phase
short enough, you might want to use a sand timer and
limit the duration of the whole phase to two minutes
or even less. Once the time is up, transactions may
not be performed any longer. Another possibility is a
soft constraint: Let phase 6 run at will, but once
you reach the point of fruitless lengthy negotiations,
any player has the right to start a one-minute or 30second sand-timer with the same effects as above.
Phase 3 has a sequential nature, but since everybody only performs exactly one action when its their
turn, the downtime tends to be very short. Thinking
ahead and acting fast is the key, as usual. Sometimes
you might be required to pass because there is no other
action legally possible. Sometimes you will obviously
pass because any action legally possible would make
no sense. However, these circumstances might not be
so obvious to everybody else. Just say pass quickly
whenever you are up to perform an action, and dont
take for granted that the others will guess your intentions. In many turns, phase 3 will actually be very
short and almost trivial. Other turns may see epic
takeover battles and cunning (but lengthy) maneuvering. Thats part of the fun and is time well spent.
Overall, it doesnt appear too difficult to run
through a whole turn in less than 10 minutes. The
aforementioned fast-paced full game of 12 turns would
be done in 2 hours. But dont feel ashamed now, thinking about your 6+ hour full game last weekend. In
practice, it is very tough to get down to 10 minutes
per turn (on average). Furthermore, the time needed
per turn increases a bit with more players (as players
cannot always act in parallel). You should aim for at
most 12 minutes per turn in a three-player game, 15

minutes per turn in a four-player game, and 18 minutes
per turn in a five player game (on average, there will
always be longer and shorter turns). Another thing
is that inexperienced players will take more turns to
finish the game. The less efficient you play, the less
money you make, and the less money is available to
buy new private companies. So companies are auctioned off more slowly, and it takes more turns to go
through the whole deck. You will usually see a tendency to shorter games (in terms of number of turns
needed) when players become more experienced. However, there are situations where it is actually part of a
viable strategy to slow down the game. Structurally,
the game rewards the players ahead in the tech race.
So usually, everybody tries to run fast, outrun the others, but by doing so, they are speeding up the game as
a whole, making it even more important to run even
faster. But there are particular meta-stable situations where suddenly, enough players consciously slow
down the game to have a significant effect on the total
turn count.
The table below lists the typical number of turns
and the typical playing time for the different variants,
provided you do not exceed the time per turn above.
game type
training
short
full
turns
811
1014
1217
3p
1h45m
2h30m
3h00m
4p
2h15m
3h00m
3h45m
5p
2h45m
3h30m
4h15m
To summarize the key points for reasonably short

games:
Think ahead!
Track income and book value of corporations
with pen and paper.
Parallelize wherever possible.
Avoid excessively long negotiations (and read
section 3.1 to decide which kind of deals and negotiations you want at all).
20
Chapter 3
Variants
The following introduces several possible variants,
in addition to the three game types (training, short,
full) already featured in the standard rules.
3.1
In general, you should make sure that negotiations

dont stall the game for too long, see chapter 2. If you
cant avoid spending an uncomfortable amount of time
with negotiations and/or if you want to limit negotiations for other reasons, try one of the following more
formalized variants:
Deals and negotiation
The rules are (intentionally) silent about deals and negotiations. Rules about deals and negotiations are a
bit like rules about showing up on time to start the
game or switching off your mobile phone while playing.
Things are different for games with secret information,
i. e. where some players have information others dont.
In that case, you need rules about legal ways to share
(or not to share) this information. But Rolling Stock
has no secret information. Of course, the order and
composition of the deck has a random component, but
no player knows more than any other.
So by default, players can just say whatever they
want. Nothing is forbidden, but nothing is enforced
either. Feel free to forge deals and alliances, but remember that the rules wont help you to enforce those
deals. (I believe it is basically impossible to write consistent rules that would make freeform deals binding.
Deals are too often worded ambiguously, or they cant
be fulfilled without breaking the rules, or a player has
agreed to multiple deals that are mutually exclusive.)
There is little danger that Rolling Stock would degenerate into a Diplomacy-style backstabbing game, simply
because long-term deals are rare and the short-term
deals neither require nor foster a long-term partnership
(if at all, those will implicitly emerge from overarching strategic goals, e.g.
a single player is running away
with the game so that the other players cooperate with
each other more intensely to catch up perhaps they
will even manage to implement an embargo against the
leading player). In JC Lawrences words: Both sellers
and buyers (in phase 6) are naturally promiscuous.
Groups might have their own etiquette about deals
and negotiations. Feel free to implement whatever you
feel is right. However, Id strongly discourage from secret negotiations. They would be a huge time drain,
and I believe they are neither in the spirit of the game
nor will players feel a great need for them.
Strictly limit the time for the any order phases

(e. g. two minutes for phase 6 and one minute for
phase 7, feel free to use any value you see fit). In
all sequential phases, players have to decide
quickly and must not negotiate with other players when its their turn to do something. At any
other time, they may negotiate freely.
Strictly limit negotiations to phase 6. (The more
experienced players become, the more they will
feel the need to plan in advance. The decision
to issue a share in phase 1 or to form a corporation in phase 2 depends on future deals in phase
6. Players might be tempted to meticulously arrange all those deals for phase 6 as soon as in
phase 1 or 2, which might stall the game quite
seriously.)
The most radical solution is a strict no deals,
no negotiations policy. In phase 6, offers and
counter-offers can still be made, but without additional table-talk. The following will still be
OK: Do you want to buy the MAD for $50?
Ill give you $45. Lets say $47.
Deal. Not OK would be any additional arguments along the lines: I cant give you more
than $45 because I still need these $12 left to
buy the PR from Chriss Horse corp. Furthermore, the $45 are good enough for you because
that will allow you to pay dividends and still rise
in share price. This radical variant is most suitable for blitz games. You might manage a full
game in only two hours. But keep in mind that
Rolling Stock is a very interactive game, and
negotiations and deals are supposed to be part
of the fun.
21
3.3
There is one specific type of situation where a certain type of players might create a sense of backstabbing.
Example: Alice is the president of the Android
corporation, which owns the WT and the OL. Bob is
the president of the Bear corporation, which owns
the MS and the BY. Alice and Bob agree that they
should swap the OL and the BY to get better synergies. Since a direct swap is not possible, what formally
has to happen is two transactions: (1) The Bear
buys the OL from the Android. (2) The Android
buys the BY from the Bear. Alice and Bob agree
to do both transactions for the minimum possible price
of $7 (because both corporations are short of cash at
the moment). The order of the transactions doesnt
really matter, but you have to start somewhere. So Alices Android hands over the OL to Bobs Bear,
and the Bear transfers $7 to the Android. Alice
wants to go on and to execute the second transaction,
but in that moment, all of a sudden, Bob has second
thoughts and refuses. Alice feels backstabbed. Bobs
behavior is completely legal, though. The rules dont
enforce any connection between transactions.
If this kind of situation appears to be a problem
in your games, you might want to introduce a variant
rule that allows complex transactions where a number of individual transactions can be executed in one
step (so that the kind of second thoughts Bob had
in the example are rendered impossible). But make
sure that the complex transaction would still be legal if executed in a series of individual transactions. It
is still impossible to swap companies if the corporations dont have enough money to pay for their newly
acquired companies, or if both corporations only own
one company.
3.2
Pre-selected companies
With a bit of bad luck, the deck in a three-player game

might contain a subset of companies with very few
synergies. While thats an interesting challenge on its
own, some players might not like it very much. Other
players might dislike the random company selection in
general. Both problems can be solved by pre-selecting
all or a part of the companies. All players should do
that together and agree on the set of companies in
play. Once the selection is done, perform the rest of
the deck-building steps as usual (i. e. the companies
are still face down and in random order).
A very simple tweak to guarantee a certain amount
of synergy is to always have the most expensive company (i. e. the one with the most synergies) of each
color in the deck. When creating the deck, first add
the most expensive company of each color, then add
more companies of the same color randomly until you
reach the usual number. Shuffle in the usual way. Of
all the variants in this chapter, this is in fact my personal favorite, and I recommend it whole-heartedly for
three-player games. If you got fed up with games where
the synergy monsters DR(29) or PR(19) were missing, try it.
If you wish to pre-select all companies, here are two
very synergy rich scenarios for three players as suggestions:
Ports of the North: BSE(2) AKE(6) BPM(7)
MHE(8) OL(14) SX(16) MS(17) PR(19)
DSB(20) NS(21) B(22) DR(29) SJ(30) BR(33)
BSR(40) E(43) HA(47) HH(48) HR(49)
LHR(54) OPC(70) RCC(71) RU(85) AL(86)
Secret private money
Southern aeronauts:
BME(1) KME(5)
BPM(7) MHE(8) WT(11) BD(12) BY(13)
HE(15) SNCF(24) KK(25) SBB(26) DR(29)
BR(33) RENFE(32) FS(37) E(43) MAD(45)
CDG(56) FRA(58) FR(60) MM(75) VP(80)
LE(90) TSI(100)
In the rules, all assets are open for inspection. Some

players, however, prefer to play with secret private
money. (The treasury of corporations has to be open
because the book value has to be calculated in phase 9.)
Feel free to do so as a variant, but keep in mind that the
private money is perfectly trackable. If you allow players to take notes on paper (which is strongly encouraged to speed up the game, see chapter 2), then tracking the private money of each player becomes merely a
matter of diligence, and most players will probably argue you should simply play with open money to spare
everybody the tedious tracking work. If you disallow
notes (or only allow specific kind of notes), tracking
private money becomes a brain exercise, which only
some players consider fun. Others simply wont bother
and leave it to their intuition, which will make auctions
less predictable (How much money will he have? How
much do I have to bid to kick him out of the auction?).
Again, some players will consider that fun, others not.
Its your call.
3.4
Open companies
Some players dislike the unpredictability of the deck.

To solve that, you can play with an open deck. Build
the deck as usual, but then declare it open for inspection. To facilitate inspection, you can turn all company cards face-up. In that case, you should use one
each of the unused green, blue, and purple company
cards to mark the current cost of ownership. (Once
the top-most card of the deck is green, place the unused green company card face-down next to the deck.
Correspondingly, do the same once the top-most card
is blue or purple.)
22
3.5
Pre-selected open companies
Example: Alices right hand player ends up first

in the final ranking with a huge margin, and her left
hand player ends up on a close last place. Bobs simulated players end up on rank 2 and 3, very close to Alices left hand player. Bob wins the game because his
lower ranked player is better than Alices lower ranked
player.
Rolling Stock is full of win-win deals. Forging
those deal between opponents isnt really interesting
any longer in a two-player game, because there is no
third (or forth or fifth) party any longer relative to
which the two dealing players would win. While deals
between opposing players are in theory still possible
in the two-player variant, they would only happen if
the two players had a different understanding of the
benefits of the deal and were both thinking they were
winning more than the other. Deals between allied
simulated players are obviously highly encouraged, and
the two-player variant is very suited as an exercise for
cooperative strategies. You even have to make sure
that both simulated players benefit in a similar way
because you can only win if you balance the result of
your two simulated players. Thats very similar to a
real four-player game. (Of course, you can switch
camps at any time in a real four-player game and
forge deals promiscuously with changing partners,
while the two camps are fixed in the two-player variant.)
Obviously, you can combine the pre-selected companies

variant with the open companies variant. You could
even agree on a particular order of the pre-selected
companies (e. g. in ascending face value order). In that
way, you can eliminate all elements of chance from the
game (except the initial random player order).
3.6
Share redemption
In this variant, corporations have a third option in

phase 1. Instead of issuing a share or doing nothing,
they can redeem one of their own shares from the bank.
It basically works as if a player buys a share, only the
buying entity is a corporation and the share ends up
on the pile of unissued shares. Obviously, there must
be at least one share of the redeeming corporation in
the bank, and the redeeming corporation must have
enough cash in treasury to pay for it. To avoid oneshare corporations, a corporation must have at least
three shares issued before redeeming a share.
There is one technicality, though: If a corporation
has e. g. four shares issued, and it redeems a share,
then the share ending up on top of the pile of unissued shares should be the one reading 4th share 3
shares issued. (In other words: Shares returning to
the pile of unissued shares should preserve the order of
the pile.) If that share is not in the bank but owned
by a player, exchange that share with any share of the
same corporation currently owned by the bank. Then
redeem that share from the bank as usual.
This variant appears to increase the number of
choices and therefore to make the game strategically
richer. Be aware, however, that it might interfere
with the subtle game balance in surprising ways. It
might very well make certain strategies too easy so that
the game degenerates strategically instead of becoming
richer. I recommend this variant if you feel that corporations are not powerful enough. Should you reach
the point where you think that corporations are too
powerful with this variant, simply drop it again.
3.7
3.8
Epic six-player variant
If you are desperate to play with six players, and you

have a lot of time, you may try the following epic sixplayer variant:
During setup, use the foreign investor card as a
proxy for the missing player order card number
6.
Later in the game (when the foreign investor card
is needed as such), use a card from a different
game as a proxy for the number 6 player order card. Or simply dont give the last player
in player order a player order card at all.
Two-player variant
Each player receives only $25 start money.
To play with two players, set up the game as if you were

playing with four players. Then, each player takes the
position of two players in the four-player game simultaneously. Player A starts with his simulated right
hand player in player order position 1. Player B starts
with his simulated left hand player in position 2 and
his simulated right hand player in position 3. Finally, player A starts with his simulated left hand
player in position 4.
Play the game normally, as if it were a four-player
game. To win, your lower ranked simulated player
must be better than the lower ranked simulated player
of your opponent.
Use all company cards of each color that is in

use for the chosen game type (i. e. all 45 company cards if you play a full game).
Otherwise, play the game following the usual
rules. Note that the number of companies drawn
from the deck is six.
Because of the smaller amount of money each
player receives in the beginning, the game will have
a slower start. The huge synergy potential will compensate for that later (if the players manage to realize
that potential).
23
The number of active corporations will likely be

higher, so the share price row will be more crowded.
Also, you might easily run into the situation where a
player wants to form a corporation but none is available (which is otherwise pretty rare, even in a fiveplayer game).
In general, Id recommend to play two three-player

games in parallel if you have six players and two game
sets available. But now and then, it might be fun to
play the six-player variant, even if it takes significantly
longer.
24
Chapter 4
Strategy
4.1.2
Compared to most other economic simulation

games, the rules of Rolling Stock are ridiculously simple. Strategically, however, the game is extremely challenging and quite opaque, up to a point of utter frustration for beginners. This chapter gives you some
strategic guidance, starting from the very basics all the
way up to pretty advanced analyses. Hopefully, it will
help you overcome the initial frustration, or prevent it
altogether.
4.1
So how much can you earn with companies alone? The

following naively assumes that you always get to buy
companies for face value. Especially in the early game,
that will rarely happen. Later in the game, you might
still see vicious auction battles, but its actually quite
common to buy companies for face value because the
situation where only one player has enough money to
bid happens frequently or is easy to arrange.
The yield of the cheapest two red companies is a
bit pathologic: 100 % per turn for the BME(1) and
50 % for the BSE(2). Sounds great, but you will rarely
get them for face value, see above. The more normal companies in the red tier are those earning $2
per turn. Their yield starts at 40 % for the KME(5)
and then drops to 25 % for the MHE(8). Within a tier,
the base income is usually the same, so the more expensive companies have a lower yield. (In return, they
offer better synergies, but we will come to that later.)
In the orange tier, the yield starts at 27 % for the
WT and goes down to 16 % for the PR. So where is the
glory of technical progress? Those ancient red companies have a much better yield than the new orange
ones. . . There are actually many reasons why the orange companies are usually much more popular than
the red ones. The most obvious is that they suffer cost
of ownership later, and if they do, its lower (in relative
terms). They rot more slowly. Well come to that in
a bit.
The yellow tier starts with the DSB(20) with a 30 %
yield and ends with the DR with 21 %. And of course,
yellow companies rot even later than orange ones. Getting the more modern companies finally seems to be a
clear win.
The green tier starts with the SJ(30), with a whopping 40 % yield, and ends with the E, with meager
23 % (but still better than the most expensive yellow).
Note that the four low-cost greens have a higher base
income than the three high-cost, but their synergies are
abysmal (in other words, they are perfect as companies
owned by a player). The rotting of the green companies is so slow that they will only make loss in the last
Basics
Lets start with a few basics to answer the questions

you will probably run into first.
4.1.1
About growth rates and yields
Life-cycle of a company
A company is born in the offering, by drawing it

from the deck (in phase 3 or during game setup). At
the end of the following phase 5 (or even immediately
if it is drawn during setup), it becomes available for
auctions. Eventually, in a later turn, it is sold to a
player in an auction (during phase 3), or the foreign
investor buys it directly (during phase 5). A company
could very well stay in the posession of a player or the
foreign investor for the rest of its life (which may last
until the game ends or may end early by closing the
company in phase 7). If it ever changes hands again,
it will happen in phase 6, and its next owner will be a
corporation. From then on, it might be sold to other
corporations, but it will always be owned by a corporation for the rest of its life.
As a player, you want to use this flow of companies
to maximize your profit. Well talk about the intricacies of share trading and managing corporations later.
Lets focus on the man in the middle role of players first. Its obvious after reading the rules, and it
sounds almost trivial, but the ability of players (and
the foreign investor) to buy companies in auctions is
the crucial magic power corporations are missing. All
companies flow through the hands of players (or sometimes the foreign investor), and controlling this flow
(what, when, and how fast) is the key to the game.
25
turn of the game. They will most probably survive

until the end, which is of crucial importance, as you
will see further below. Even now, you can probably
understand why you always see this greedy sparkling
in the eyes of experienced players once the first green
company is drawn.
But it gets even better. Blue companies never pay
cost of ownership. They start with a 33 % yield for the
MAD(45), going down to 25 % for the FR(60). In contrast to the green companies with high base incomes,
they all have great synergies. (Note that the amount of
a single synergy bonus doubles with every tier, except
green also stays at +$4.)
Purple companies never pay the cost of ownership
either. Their yield starts at 36 % for the OPC(70) and
drops to 25 % for the TSI. Overall, their yield is a bit
better than blue, but their synergies are much better.
Lets finally talk about the rotting in a bit more
detail. The blue and purple companies never rot, so
you can just keep them in your private possession until
the end of the game, and they will reliably pay their
income. Furthermore, as their face value counts for
your final score, the money you paid for them is not
even lost. With green, things get a bit more complicated. In the short game, green companies have a cost
of ownership of $15 but only in the last turn. So if you
keep lets say the BSR(40) until the end of the game,
it will reliably pay you $10 per turn except in the last
turn where you can either close it, or you pay $5 net.
As the BSR will count with its face value of $40 for
your final score, its better to pay the $5 because its
still a net win of $35 for your final score. In the full
game, the front side of the game end card inflicts cost
of ownership for green. That will apply for a couple
of turns before the last turn. Its only $10, so you will
simply earn nothing for a while, and in the last turn,
you have to pay $6. Still a net win for your score, so
you see how green companies will usually survive until
the end of the game. They dont earn you anything in
the last few turns of the full game, and in the last turn
of both the short and the full game, they will even cost
you a bit, but you dont have to write them off, which
means a lot. Yellow, orange, and red companies will
not see the end of the game if they remain in your private property (perhaps with the exception of yellow in
the short game, where its still marginally more beneficial for your final score to keep them alive). So not
only will they eventually cease to earn anything, you
even have to write them off at some point, and all the
invested money is lost.
Its very tough to predict the exact number of turns
after which an increase in the cost of ownership will
happen. (Here you see a reason why it is so important to control the speed of the flow of companies
described in the previous section.) For the red companies, we can at least try a simple analysis. The red
companies will start to pay $1 cost of ownership once
the top-most company card in the deck is green. That

will make the BME(1) and BSE(2) earn nothing, and it
will halve the income of the four other red companies.
(Once the top-most company is blue, they will all have
a net negative income.) The number of companies to
be drawn before that happens is 12 in a three-player
game (3 red, 3 orange, 3 yellow). Because the number
of orange companies grows a bit more than usual with
more players (6 for four players, 8 for five players), the
number of pre-green companies in a four-player game
is 16, and in a five-player game 20. In each turn, the
maximum number of companies being drawn is equal
to the number of players. In addition, a number of
companies equal to the number of players is drawn in
the game setup. Putting all the numbers together, you
can see that the earliest possible turn where a cost of
ownership is charged is turn 3. In the worst case, the
BME and the BSE, if bought in the first turn, will pay
their base income twice. The other reds will pay their
full income twice and then pay a reduced income of
$1 for a number of turns that is difficult to predict.
Things are even worse if you buy a red company in
the second turn. The good news: If in at least one of
the three turns, the number of drawn companies is less
than the maximum, everything is postponed by one
turn. Thats actually quite likely, especially if at least
one player is intentionally slowing down the game. Less
likely, but still possible, is yet another turn of delay.
In any case, you can see now how the glorious yields of
the red companies have turned into a struggle against
time to get at least some return of investment, and
how in turn 2, when there are red and orange companies in the offering, buying an orange is so much more
attractive than buying that stinking last red.
The succession of companies sets the stage for the
so-called tech race. It should be quite obvious by now
how highly attractive it is to be ahead in this tech race
by owning the more profitable and more slowly rotting
companies. While that constantly drives the game forward, there are situations when individual players want
to slow down the game, and of course, thats when it
gets really interesting.
Lets keep things simple for now and discuss the
easy solution for the rotting problem: Sell your soonto-rot companies to a corporation, ideally for maximum price. Unfortunately, that raises another problem: How to find a corporation that is willing to agree
to such a deal? The easy solution for that: You are
the president of that corporation. Be aware that in
terms of immediate growth, selling even at maximum
price is actually not that attractive. In particular the
early companies will rarely give you more premium
than what they would have earned anyway. (Example: You own the WT(11). If you sell it for maximum
price, you get $14. If you dont sell it, you will earn
$3. $3 earned plus $11 face value of the WT is $14
total value, too.) But dont forget: Companies rot,
26
money doesnt. After you have sold the company, you

have cold hard cash on hand, which you can use to
buy a shiny new company in the next auction, jumping ahead in the tech race. Or you can use it for other
nice things. See section 4.1.3 for more details.
be even more if the target share price card is missing

and the share price overshoots. 52 % is enormous,
much more than you can ever reach with companies
alone. However, its the best case, and its very tough
and rare. Furthermore, only the dividend is gained in
cash. The share price doesnt translate into cash directly. Even if you can sell a share (only possible if it
is not the last in players hands), you will get less cash
from it than the current share price. And dont forget
about the worst case: Shares might not pay a dividend
at all, and their price might drop like a stone.
How on earth can a corporation ever approach that
best case described above? There are two possibilities:
The honest one, and the collusive one. In the honest
case, the corporation builds up an efficient network of
synergies. Synergies are the magic power of corporations. With an exceptionally good synergy network,
corporations might be able to support growth rates
of more than 50 %. The collusive approach is easier:
Once more, a corporation has to selflessly sacrifice itself, in this case for the corporation aiming for those
huge growth rates. Corporation A feeds its companies
to corporation B for the minimum price, while A buys
Bs companies for the maximum price at the same time.
Repeat as required. Both approaches are discussed in
more detail in section 4.2.
Whats emerging here is a strategic pattern called

the money pump: In turn 1, you buy a company.
You go public with that company in turn 2 phase 2
(lets call it T2.2 to keep it short). In T2.3, you buy
another company, which you sell to your new corporation in T2.6. In T3.1, your corporation issues a share
to raise more money. If nothing has gone wrong, you
should have enough money to buy a new company in
T3.3, which you can then sell again to your corporation in T3.6, hopefully for maximum price again (if it
has enough money at this point). Rinse and repeat.
The money pump is indeed the first efficient strategy
most players discover. Of course, life (or a game) cant
be that easy. The money pump will stall at some
point. Either the corporation no longer has enough
money to pay a decent price for your latest company,
or even with the maximum price, your private cash is
not enough to buy a new company. Additionally, there
are other players who might interfere by bidding more
on the only affordable companies available or even by
taking over your corporation. (Remember, you are
issuing shares every turn, but you only own the one
presidents share. Your shares will probably become
cheaper and cheaper, but your control gets more and
more diluted.) Good players set up the money pump
in a way that it will continue to work for quite a while.
The better players have a viable exit plan when the
pump stalls. The best players will implement strategies that are even better than the money pump in the
first place. More about that in section 4.2.
4.1.3
The importance of being liquid
By now you should have realized, cold hard cash is a

good thing, mostly for two reasons: Cash doesnt rot,
and cash gives you full flexibility.
The first reason sounds like owning cash will guarantee you a carefree life. However, thats a premature
conclusion. While keeping the cash on hand is certainly
better than wasting it for an ill-fated investment, keep
in mind that Rolling Stock is pretty much an exponential growth game. To win, you have to invest your
money somewhere. To state the obvious: No investment is better than a bad investment but is worse than
a good investment.
The second reason is so important because the moment you have a pile of cash in phase 3, you are in
control. You can participate in auctions to purchase
new companies (possibly even interfering with plans of
others to purchase specific companies), thereby speeding up the game. But you also have the option to slow
down and invest in shares. Usually, there are plenty of
shares available in the bank, not all of them will be a
good investment, but at least there will be some choice.
Even hostile takeovers of corporations are possible. If
timed properly, it will not only screw up the plans of
another player, but it might even give you a strong
advantage. Takeovers are very expensive, though.
Speaking of timing: The player order is often of
crucial importance. If phase 3 starts, you are first in
player order and you already have enough cash on hand
to buy a company, but your opponents dont, then you
can buy a company without them interfering in the
We havent talked a lot about shares so far. As

part of the money pump, you only needed that one
golden presidents share to control the corporation as
your sacrificial lamb. The strategic power of controlling corporations, ideally with very little bound capital, is significant. But shares might make you money,
too. Lets consider the best case, ignoring the effects of
share trading and issuing shares for now. In that best
case, the corporation pays the maximum possible dividend, and it manages to double jump at the same
time. Thats very hard to accomplish because paying
a lot of dividends usually results in a decrease in share
price (you basically pay out your book value to your
investors so it cant be used to back up your share price
anymore). But we wanted to assume the best case, so
here we are: A single jump from one share price card to
the next is on average a 10 % share price increase. The
second jump is +10 % again. If you know how to calculate percentages, you will agree that together, thats
an increase of 21 % (and not only 20 %). The maximum dividend is on average 31 % of the original share
price. So we are at 52 % maximum yield, which might
27
auction, even if they could raise cash by selling shares.

Only once its their turn can they sell a share, but by
then, its too late.
Having learned about the benefits of liquidity, lets
briefly discuss what lastingly destroys liquidity. Every investment has the risk of binding your cash for a
long time. There are two different things to consider:
Companies you cant sell, and shares you cant sell.
Shares are in a certain way easier because you can
sell them to the bank unless its the last share of that
corporation in players hands. Unfortunately, the latter is a very common situation. So if you own that one
last share (which implicitly is always the presidents
share), and its a good corporation or at least one that
plays a role in your cunning plans, fine. But if its a
dying corporation not helpful to you at all, you have
sunk your cash into a black hole.
To sell a company, you need a corporation to act
as buyer. If you control one that has the money, fine.
But if not, you need to convince another player that
one of the corporations they control desperately needs
your company. Owning a good company you cant sell
(a green one with $12 base income, or better a blue
or purple one) is not the worst thing that can happen,
but a rotting company is another black hole. However,
what you usually do if you cant get rid of an otherwise useless company: You go public with it, so you
convert the problem of a company you cant sell into
the problem of a presidents share you cant sell. There
are two possible advantages: First, if you end up with
more than one share after going public, you can sell
all but one to create at least some liquidity (see next
section). Second, a corporation, even a crappy one,
usually gives you some leverage you might use to your
advantage (see section 4.2.1 for details).
The most common dead-lock beginners end up in
is to own two presidents shares of dying corporations
and not much else. Controlling multiple corporations
is potentially very powerful (see section 4.2.1), but unleashing this power requires a lot of experience and
skill. So beginners might be lured into running two
corporations but then screw up and drive them both
into the ground, basically kicking themselves out of the
game.
Take-home message: Think twice before you bind
your cash. Going public for no good reason, investing
in a share that becomes unsellable later, or paying too
much for a soon-to-rot company are the most common
ways to sink your cash into black holes. Sometimes,
it is indeed best to sit on your cash, even if it earns
nothing.
4.1.4
pocket and how many shares will be issued. The table

below lists all possible starting share prices if you go
public with MAD ($45 face value).
share price
$22
$24
$26
$28
$31
$34
$37
$41
$45
shares issued
6
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
2
money paid
$21
$3
$7
$11
$17
$23
$29
$37
$0
treasury
$87
$51
$59
$67
$79
$91
$103
$119
$45
Lets first look at the money you pay from your

own pocket. Obviously, you want to minimize that.
However, the more money you pay from your pocket,
the more money will be in the initial treasury of the
new corporations. The formula for initial cash in treasury is quite easy: Its the face value of the company
going public plus twice the money you paid from your
pocket. In other words: If you really need a lot of
initial cash, it might be worth paying private money
to get it. If the corporation doesnt need that money
soon, its very bad. (But keep in mind that whatever
you do, you will never lose personal book value immediately. Going public will not change your personal
book value by design. The shares you get will always
have exactly the value of the private company and the
cash you have thrown in.)
As you can see, with the right combinations of numbers, it is possible to have a very high starting share
price and still pay very little or no private money. A
high share price has the huge advantage that you can
raise a lot of money later by issuing shares. Furthermore, with a higher starting share price, you will issue fewer shares initially, so you can issue more shares
later. (Remember, there are only ten shares that can
be issued in total.) Thus, not only will later share issues raise more money, but you can also do it more
often. Only one share can be issued per turn, so the
amount of money you can raise by issuing a single share
will be crucial for the growth rate of your corporation.
On the other hand, issuing shares is optional, so you
have the flexibility to not issue a share if you dont need
more money, thereby not diluting your own shares. In
contrast, with a low share price, you often dont have a
choice. You have to make use of every opportunity to
issue a share if you are in desperate need of every little money you can get. But because of your low share
price, you have already issued more shares initially, so
you might hit the limit of ten issued shares quite soon.
So what is a low share price and/or many initially
issued shares good for, then? Its more subtle, but
there are actually a number of merits:
Starting share price: high or low?
When going public (phase 2), you usually have a number of starting share prices to choose from. But which
is the best? The problem has actually more than the
one dimension besides share price. The other axes
are how much money you have to pay from your own
If a corporation goes south, you find yourself

28
caught with that last share that cant be sold.

In that case, the less money bound in that last
share, the better. Sometimes you might even
plan the demise of your corporation from the beginning. A low share price might be just perfect
for your evil plans.
dividends is attractive if you dont need the cash

in the corporation for anything else.)
A constant sub-theme in Rolling Stock is bin
packing. Many things you can buy (companies,
shares) are ridiculously expensive compared to
the money you have available. If you buy one expensive thing, you might still have quite a lot of
money left, but not enough to buy another thing.
If you buy one cheaper thing, you might have just
enough to buy another not so expensive thing.
In that case, the investment in two things of
mediocre quality might be more profitable than
buying only one high-quality thing and letting
quite a lot of cash sit idle. In that way, lower
share prices alleviate bin packing problems. A
lower priced share might suddenly appear very
attractive if it is the only possible place to invest
your remaining money. (Sometimes, however,
you want to prevent other players from buying
shares of your corporation, in which case the low
share price is more of a disadvantage.)
You have learned earlier how important liquidity

is. Going public with many shares issued gives
you the opportunity to sell a number of the newly
gained shares in the following phase 3. Lets compare the first and the last row in the table on the
previous page. If you go public at a $45 share
price, you dont have to pay anything, but you
receive exactly one share which cant be sold (unless somebody else buys the other share, which
is initially owned by the bank). If you go public
at $22, you gain three shares. In the subsequent
phase 3, you can sell one for $20 and then another one for $18, returning $38 to you. In terms
of liquidity, you have paid $21 to start the corporation, then youve got $38 back, so youve effectively gained $17 cash on hand, and your corporation has more cash in its treasury, too ($87
instead of $45). On the other hand, you only
own a sixth of the corporation now, not half of
it, and a hostile takeover is easily possible.
There is a completely separate aspect to take into

account when choosing the share price: In most cases,
you want to have some distance between your share
price and those of other corporations. If you find yourself in a densely populated area of the share price row,
you will suddenly realize the other reason why the
game is called Rolling Stock . . .
With more shares on the market, there is a

greater potential for share price manipulation
(which might be good or bad). As an example, lets look at the first row of the table above
again. Lets assume you have the MAD, the
whopping amount of $99 cash, and you control
the Bear corporation with a lot of companies.
(Its a pretty good situation to be in and pretty
unlikely to accomplish. Its just an example.)
After converting the MAD into the Orion corporation at $22 share price, you have $78 cash
left and you own three Orion shares. Three
more Orion shares are in the bank. In the
subsequent phase 3, you buy them all, one after
another, for $24, $26, and $28. (There they go,
your remaining $78 cash.) In phase 6 of the same
turn, the Orion buys a lot of companies from
the Bear for minimum price. Lets assume, for
the sake of it, the Orion buys enough to back
its hugely inflated share price, and even manages
to rise from $28 to $34 in phase 9. Now lets
check what happened: The MAD has $45 face
value, and you had $99 in cash, in total $144
(plus the presidents share of the Bear). Now
you have six Orion shares worth $34 each (and
still the Bear presidents share, but it has probably dropped a lot in value). Six times $34, thats
$204, not too bad for a one turn yield. And that
doesnt even include any dividends the Orion
might have paid. (You own all shares, so paying
4.1.5
Pay dividends: Really?
The favorite task of beginners is apparently to carefully calculate the optimal dividend to pay in phase
8. They invest a lot of time and effort and in most
cases they screw themselves up.
Experienced players tend to the extremes when it
comes to dividends. In most cases, they simply pay
nothing. The second most popular option is to pay
as much as possible. Only rarely do they bother to
calculate something in between. If that happens, its
probably not to engineer the share price carefully, but
more to optimize the personal cash for the next turn.
If you are only missing a $ or two to buy a particular company or share, it might be worth it to pay just
enough dividends to cover that shortfall.
To debunk some common misconceptions: First of
all, if you dont plan to sell shares, or if you only
own the presidents share anyway, the share price is
almost irrelevant for you personally (unless we are getting close to the end of the game when the value of
your shares matters for your final score). Sometimes
you might actually be interested in a low share price
to buy a share for cheap in the next turn. Paying just
enough to still raise the share price sounds like a foolproof way to increase your wealth, but in most cases,
it is harmful in the long run. The main reason you are
interested in a high share price is to be able to raise
29
more money by issuing a share. But if you are in need

of more cash in the corporations treasury, why should
you pay any dividend at all? For the fastest growth of
your corporation, you dont want to pay dividends at
all, and you want to issue as many shares as possible.
Issuing shares is basically taking out a loan where the
interest has been replaced by dividends. Especially in
a very diluted corporation (one that has issued many
shares and where you own only very few of them), paying dividends feels very much like paying interest on all
those outstanding loans. You dont want to do that if
you can avoid it. In return, that means paying dividends might actually be really attractive if you own
most of the shares of a corporation.
Rule of thumb: Only pay dividends if you know
why. Paying a significant amount of dividends and
then issuing a share in the following round is usually a sign that something is wrong or you have just
switched strategies (which should be something you do
consciously and not accidentally).
However, see section 4.2.2 for a legitimate strategy
where you issue shares and pay dividends at the same
time. (In fairness, its a strategy to limit the damage after a disaster so arguably, something has gone
wrong indeed.)
4.1.6
the tech racers an unexpected opportunity to speed

up the game again. In a situation where the foreign
investor has just enough money to buy the cheapest
company, it might more effectively slow down the game
if a player buys that company than if he leaves it up
to the foreign investor.
4.1.7
I have screwed up. How to catch

up now?
As every game with exponential growth, Rolling Stock

features the effect that the rich get richer. Each of
these games needs a compensation or limitation mechanism to avoid a small wealth difference early in the
game trivially growing over the course of the game,
thereby deciding the game too early (provided the leading player doesnt make any grave mistakes). Adjusting the strength of those compensation and limitation
mechanisms is difficult. If they are too strong, players
will feel punished for playing well. (And of course, the
ideal strength of compensation is strongly influenced
by personal taste.)
I can safely claim that Rolling Stock is in no danger to compensate too strongly. Its rather unforgiving,
but not necessarily more unforgiving than the average
18xx game. Thats certainly not in line with modern
Euro-style games, which usually offer a pleasant entry
path for the beginner. But at least, Rolling Stock has
the training game, so you can learn from your mistakes
and improve your strategy without sitting through four
or more hours of a full game you cant win any longer.
Having said that, there are in fact compensation
mechanisms. First, wealth (at least in the first half
of the game) is not a fixed asset, but it rots. Second, its an interactive game there are gang up on
the leader effects, not as strong and obvious as in a
wargame, but still quite significant.
The good news is that there is always only one winner but at least two other players that dont win. If the
player that is about to run away with the game is drawing his enormous growth from an aging mega-corp, all
the other players can work together on speeding up
the game to destroy that mega-corp. If it is the other
way round and the advantageous position of the leading player is based on a few modern companies, the
other players might decide to slow down the game to
draw more revenue from their numerous old companies.
Even in the bleak situation where the leading player is
ahead in everything, the tech race, personal wealth,
and growth rate, there is some hope if the other players cooperate strongly, build shared corporations with
high synergies, and boycott any trade with the leading
player.
A different situation is if there are two or more players competing closely for the leading position while one
player has fallen behind a lot. For example, Alice and
Bob are both in good shape and neck and neck, while
Chriss situation is almost hopeless. Rolling Stock is
How to tame (or arouse) the

foreign investor.
The foreign investor is basically there to ensure a minimum speed of the game. He also cleans up companies from the offering that nobody wants any longer.
In a typical game with reasonably experienced players,
the foreign investor will take quite a while to get hold of
a company. Usually, he stays a tad behind for a long
time, just a few $ short to buy anything. The more
players slow down the game (intentionally or not), the
earlier the foreign investor will strike.
Once he has at least one company, it can be bought
by corporations at maximum price. Quite often, that
doesnt appear overly attractive for the corporation, so
the foreign investor might just sit on his company until it rots. However, you should consider the secondary
effects of buying a company from the foreign investor:
It funnels quite a lot of money into his pockets. This
money will help him to buy another company soon
(which can then be bought again, gaining him even
more money). In that way, you can spin up another
money pump, one that doesnt benefit a player, but
the foreign investor. Why would you do that? Simple: To speed up the game. It might very well happen
that one of your corporations is buying crappy companies from the foreign investor for the sole purpose of
speeding up the game.
That puts other players efforts to slow down the
game into a new perspective: If they simply refuse to
buy companies, they will pretty soon allow the foreign
investor to buy a company, which in turn might give
30
full of possible win-win deals. The problem is how to

distribute the collective gain. In a situation like this,
Alice and Bob have little incentive to deal with each
other. They want to deal with Chris, who is currently
not threatening their position. Chris has a strong position in the negotiations and will probably be able to
get most of the collective gain on his side of the deal because every little that either Alice or Bob gets will help
them against the other. Alice and Bob cant refuse so
many deals with Chris, even if their own gain is small,
because they would otherwise gain nothing while Chris
can still deal with their competitor.
There are, however, points of no return. If you
manage to bind all your cash in a few unsellable shares
of dying corporations (see section 4.1.3), you may as
well go home. Dont let it get that far.
4.1.8
current share price are missing at the time you adjust

the share price. Sometimes all your efforts will have
the somewhat frustrating result that it doesnt actually matter what you do, the net gain might be more
or less the same. There are certain situations where
things are crystal clear, though. A common one is
that in phase 3 of the last turn, the share price of a
particular corporation was inflated a lot (by buying the
shares of that corporation remember that in the last
turn, there are no companies available for auction any
longer, so players will invest more money in shares).
That corporation will almost certainly double-drop in
phase 9, so there is no benefit in keeping companies
only for their book value. It can close all companies
that are not profitable any longer, so it will earn more,
and then it can pay out as much as possible without
any remorse.
The last turn.
4.2
Rolling Stock is designed to be interesting to the very

last moment of the game.
You cant be sure how many turns there will be in
total, and in particular, the game could be ended by
reaching the $100 share price, in which case, the final
last turn cost of ownership on the back of the game
end card might never kick in, which makes a huge difference for the fate of many companies. If the game
hasnt developed in an extremely unusual way, a $100
share price end will not happen much earlier than the
regular game end (via flipping the game end card)
would have happened anyway, usually only one or two
turns earlier (if it happens at all). Often you can be
quite sure that a $100 share price end will not happen. Share prices can only go up so fast, and if no
corporation is anywhere close to the $100 share price
in the late game, you can be positive that the regular game end with the increased cost of ownership in
the last turn will happen. On the other side, if a $100
share price end is within the realm of possibility, you
can usually not be sure that it will actually happen.
Even if a corporation is close enough, the player who
has the power to drive up a share price to $100 might
not be interested in an early game end. In general, its
pretty hard to get up to $100 at all, and something
might go wrong in the last moment. Things get really
interesting in that case.
A $100 share price end will catch you in the middle
of business-as-usual, while the last turn of a game with
a regular end will have a very special twist because of
the increased cost of ownership. Essentially, there will
be quite a lot of companies that will have a negative
revenue, and you have to decide if their contribution
to the book value will be more valuable than the additional income you (privately or your corporations) will
gain by closing them. At that point, you have to do
the math to see what combination of paying dividends
and adjusting share prices will gain you the most for
your final score. Often, thats a very subtle interplay
of numbers, especially if share price cards next to your
Strategic roles and patterns
This sections describes a number of more advanced

strategic patterns and strategic roles players can
adopt. In practice, patterns are rarely applied in their
pure form, and players might need to switch from one
role to another to adapt to new conditions. In particular, never forget that Rolling Stock is an interactive
game. Whenever a player is highly successful in implementing a particular scheme, the other players should
destructively interfere.
4.2.1
Its a share game: privatize

profits, socialize losses.
If you look at a game where every player is busy with

the basic money pump as described above, you might
ask yourself why Rolling Stock is called a share trading game. You only see corporations issuing shares,
which pile up in the bank, and every player only owns
a single share, the presidents share of the corporation
they founded themself. Once you get a bit deeper into
the game, you will see that there are reasons to get involved in share trading at some point during the game.
Fundamentally there are two different reasons to own
shares: to make money and to exercise control.
With the money pump pattern, you are basically
abusing your corporation pretty badly. But guess
what? Its actually possible to build corporations that
make money, even lots of it. Further below, well look
at a few examples. For now, lets accept that there is
such thing as a profitable corporation. If you are the
president of such a corporation, you have several incentives to own more than only the presidents share.
First, its profitable. Second, you want to stay in control of that corporation. Third, once you own a significant number of shares, paying dividends finally becomes an attractive option to generate cash on hand.
Fourth, if you have the best running corporation, you
are probably interested in slowing down the game, so
you better invest your money in shares instead of using
31
it to speed up the tech race.
low percentage, and the other with a very high percentage. The extreme case is 10 % vs. 100 %, and its
actually quite realistic to get close to that. Once you
are there, you can apply all the old tricks you know
from 18xx. Your low percentage corporation will feed
your high percentage corporation. The bad and rotting
companies will end up in the former, and the good and
new ones and the better part of the cash in the latter.
It gets more interesting if you are not the president

of that nice corporation. If you have enough money
for a hostile takeover, you might want to go for it.
But what if you only have enough money to buy a single share? As a short term investment, shares rarely
make sense. By buying it, you are already driving
up the share price, which makes it more difficult to
naturally rise more in phase 9. As an example, lets
assume the Horse corp has a share price of $22. It
will probably have enough book value for the double
jump to $26. So you think it might be a good investment. You buy a Horse share, driving the share price
up to $24, which means you have to pay $24 for that
share. In phase 9, the Horse only manages to go up to
$26. With the now higher share price, the double jump
doesnt work any longer (which would now lead to $28).
In phase 1 of the next turn, the president of the Horse
decides to issue a share. Bang, the share price goes
down to $24. Later, in phase 3, you decide to sell your
Horse share. The share price drops to $22, which is the
amount of money you get. The Horse is actually doing
quite well. It could raise its share price, it made a reasonable amount of money by issuing a share, its shares
are kind of undervalued (after issuing a share and your
sale). Quite attractive to buy, Id say. But still you
have made a $2 loss with your short term investment.
As a rule of thumb, short term investments are only
good if you can be reasonably sure that a significant
dividend will be paid without totally ruining the share
price. Unfortunately, a president might not feel like
paying dividends if he would pay a lot into the pockets of his opponents. A well-run company where the
president is already heavily invested in (ideally 50 %
or even more) is a pretty good co-investment, short or
long term, as long as your own share count is much
lower than that of the president. Lets say the president has three shares and you have one. If you are
an 18xx player, youll recognize the common pattern
here. There are other more or less remote similarities
to 18xx: If you buy a share of a corporation controlled
by another player, you are taking the chance that this
share will at some time be the last one a player owns.
While there is no additional liability for the president
in Rolling Stock, having bound your money in an unsellable and possibly dying share is pretty bad, as we
have seen before. In Rolling Stock, players can only
sell one share per action, so the quick 18xx-style dump
doesnt work. But if you own one share and the president owns one share, you might become the president
sooner than you wish. In situations like this, the player
order for the next turn is of crucial importance. (Once
more, nothing new for 18xx veterans.)
4.2.2
Corporations doomed
bleed them dry.
to
die:
It will happen even to the most experienced players,

sometimes even on purpose: A corporation has reached
the point of no return and is doomed to die. In that
case, you want to pick the bones as efficiently as possible. The best way is usually to have another corporation handy and transfer everything thats still worth
something from the dying corporation into the other
one. Here you can see how it can make sense to keep a
crappy old company around. If your dying corporation
has only one company left, it couldnt sell it even if it
is a moderately decent one. If you have kept back an
even crappier company, it can sell the moderately decent one to the other corporation (where it may enjoy
an unexpected revival thanks to synergies) and only
retain the really crappy one.
However, at some time, the dying corporation is
completely empty; it has barely any money left and
only owns one very old company with no (or even negative) income. What to do then? Now you can switch
into a less efficient bone-picking mode: Pay dividends.
Its so inefficient because a dying corporation is usually very diluted already, so most of the dividend has
to be paid to the bank. An example: The Star corp
owns the WT(11) and $10 (from selling its last relevant
asset, the DSB(20), for minimum price to the Horse,
an allied corporation). It has a share price of $10
and currently 5 shares issued. The cost of ownership is
currently $3 for orange companies, so it doesnt earn
anything any longer. Swapping back and forth another
company between the Horse and the Star isnt worth
the little money that is left in the Star. The president of the Star decides to issue another share. The
share price drops to $9, the treasury increases by $9 to
$19, and now there are 6 shares issued. Then the Star
pays the maximum possible dividend: $3 per share, so
$3 to the president and $15 to the bank. Remaining
treasury: $1. The share price drops to $7 (the book
value of the Star is only $12 at that point). Next turn,
another share is issued. The share price drops to $6,
the treasury goes up to $7, and now there are 7 shares
issued. The star pays $1 dividends per share, giving
$1 to the president and the remaining $6 to the bank.
Then the share price drops to $0 and the Star is history. Effectively, the president had a $10 unsellable
share, which has now disappeared, but in the process,
he got $4 dividends, so he basically recovered 40 % of
Now lets talk about exercising control. Again,

youll see similarities to other share trading games, in
particular 18xx. A prime example of the power of control is if you control two corporations, one with a very
32
the value bound in an unsellable dying share. Better

than nothing, Id say.
4.2.3
An undying corporation:
scavenger.
have spotted the successful scavenger scheme. In that

case, you even have to defend your presidency and
get even steeper share price increases in return.
Despite all the synergies, you cant really expect
to keep the red companies until the end of the game.
Even the orange ones might need to be closed at some
time. If that happens, the scavenger might very well
die after all. (Start to sell shares in time in that case.
Selling them all in one turn will cost you a lot. Better
get rid of them gradually.) There are ways to keep the
scavenger alive, though:
the
After talking about so much corporation misery, finally

a success story shall be told. And its even an unlikely
one, about companies already declared dead that experience an Indian summer.
The basic idea here is that a corporation is created
that serves as a scavenger: It buys all the companies
nobody else wants any longer for minimum price and
creates a synergy network so efficient that it can compensate the cost of ownership. The scavenger doesnt
really need to earn a lot. Because it buys its companies for minimum price, it will gain a lot of book value,
which drives up the share price, which in turn makes it
easy to raise money by issuing shares. (Remember, as
long as you dont plan to pay dividends, issuing shares
pretty much equals free money.)
The scavenger works best if there are many synergies in the deck. You almost certainly want to have
the synergy monsters PR(19) and in particular the
DR(29). In a five-player game, all orange and red companies are in the deck, and the chance for getting the
DR are pretty high (75 %). Thats the ideal setup for a
scavenger. As a model calculation, lets consider a corporation that owns all red companies, all orange companies, and the yellow DR(29). The sum of face values
of the companies is $174. Without cost of ownership, it
earns $40 base income and $63 synergy bonus, adding
up to impressing $103 income per turn, a yield of 59 %
relative to the sum of face values. Obviously, the scavenger will only reach this size when cost of ownership
already applies. With $1 cost for the red, the total
income will still be $97. With $3 for the red and the
orange, we are down to $61. With $6 for red, orange,
and yellow, we are down to $13. Quite a downfall, but
take into account that at that time, every single red
and orange company would lose enormous amounts of
money individually. In most cases, owners would simply close them, but the scavenger will do them a favor
and will buy all those companies for minimum price.
The scavenger will build up gradually. Ideally, you can
convince the other players to sell you their companies
for minimum price a bit before they would actually
close them. It will still be a win for them. While the
scavenger will buy most of its companies at minimum
price (the red in a first wave and later the orange, perhaps even yellow very late in the game), you have to
arrange to get a few key companies (most likely the
PR and the DR) earlier. A typical start of a scavenger
is if you privately own the PR and go public with it.
To profit from the scavenger (whose gains will
mostly be expressed in share price appreciation), you
need to own as many shares of it as possible. Other
players will probably join the cause anyway once they
Try to scavenge all the way up to yellow. However, other corporations have a good chance to
keep yellow companies running profitably for
quite a while, so collecting the yellow companies
is not that easy.
Try to end the game early with a share price of
$100 so that the highest cost of ownership will
not kick in. (Unfortunately, you cant rely on
others to do you the favor. And a pure scavenger
will have a hard time reaching the $100, but you
might be able to mix in some more modern companies, see next item.)
With a sufficiently inflated share price the scavenger will raise so much money by issuing shares
that it can at some time switch from scavenger
mode into tech-leader mode. Read on in section
4.2.5 for that kind of corporation.
4.2.4
The money pump vs. the private corporation: self-sustaining

strategies of different kinds.
We have already discussed the money pump at some

length. Lets discuss a bit in which ways the money
pump will stall eventually. The exact mode of failure
depends on details of the setup (which companies you
buy for which price, which start share price you chose)
and on how many other players are running money
pumps (or other strategies that speed up the game
similarly or even more). The more companies that are
bought per turn, the faster higher priced companies
will show up in the offering, and the sooner there wont
be enough money to buy the next company. In other
words: If you are the only one speeding up the game,
your life is easier.
The cash might get tight in two places: Your sacrificial corporation might not have enough money to
buy your private company for maximum price. Or
even if you get the maximum price out of the corporation, your personal cash might not be enough to buy
a new private company. The first problem is more
likely to occur and luckily also easier to solve. It will
occur later if the companies you feed to your corporation have some good synergies so that the corporation generates more income. (So you care a bit about
33
the wellbeing of your corporation after all.) You can

also increase the cash of your corporation by selling
the companies again. Its quite possible that another
player is running a different strategy and controls a
corporation that might be very interested in buying
companies from other corporations for bargain prices.
If you still run into the situation of not having enough
cash in your corporation, you could simply wait for
one turn. The next turn will allow you to issue yet
another share for more cash in the corporation, and in
the meantime, the private company you are keeping is
at least paying some money into your private pocket.
Not the worst thing that can happen. If your sacrificial
corporation is already quite diluted, you might want to
consider an exit strategy: Use your private company
to go public. You will own 50 % of that corporation,
but you will only own very little of your sacrificial corporation. Now your new corporation can buy all the
companies that have been accumulated in your sacrificial corporation for minimum price. A nice kickstart
into your new life as president of a (for a change) successful corporation.
that you own 100 % of the corporation. The next priority is to buy another company. You might not have
enough cash to do so, but you can pay dividends like
crazy. The share price of your corporation is not relevant for quite a while (because you will avoid issuing
shares and diluting your own shares). You need to tailor the dividends such that you will be able to buy the
next company as soon as possible and at the same time
have enough cash in the corporation to buy the company from yourself for a minimal price. As with the
money pump, you rinse and repeat as often and fast
as possible. You need really good synergies to make it
work. And since you are not leveraging share issues as
a source of money, this strategy a lot slower than the
money pump. Against a gang of opponents that are all
pressing for the tech race, the private corporation will
melt away faster than ice cream in the sun. However,
if the game goes slowly, for whatever reason, you might
fare well with this strategy.
So why do I consider the private corporation a mirror image of the money pump? You are basically doing
the same thing. As often as possible, you buy a private
company to sell it in the same turn to the one corporation you control. However, the money pump strategy
is focused on the wellbeing of your private purse, while
the private corporation strategy is focused on the wellbeing of your corporation. That little detail works like
inverting the sign on all the numbers:
If you could sell your last private company, but end

up with not enough money to buy a new one, you are
forced to try something else. A short term investment
in shares rarely works, so you cant expect to quickly
earn enough money to restart your money pump. Now
its time to look at the shape of your sacrificial corporation. Perhaps it has accumulated a decent portfolio
of companies. So you might actually invest in your
own corporation for a change. It might also be a good
time for some long term investment in other shares,
or probably more effective for a hostile takeover.
If another player has run a money pump too, but did
better than you and was able to buy a new company
this turn, they will now have no money left and you
will probably be able to take over their sacrificial company. It will definitely destroy the money pump of
your opponent, but it still might not be a net win for
you. A hostile takeover is usually very interesting, and
its long-term harm and benefit are difficult to predict.
The money pump player (MPP) owns only one

share, which is constantly diluted. The private
corporation player (PCP) owns (ideally) 100 %
of the shares.
The MPP issues a share every turn. The PCP
(ideally) never issues a share.
The MPP sells private companies at maximum
price, the PCP at minimum price.
The MPP never pays dividends. The PCP pays
as much dividends as possible (only retaining
enough money in the corporation to buy the next
private company at minimum price).
There is a rarely used strategic pattern that is in

some way the exact mirror image of the money pump:
The private corporation. The basic idea is to utilize
the synergies of companies in a pseudo-private corporation, i. e. one where you own most if not even all
of the shares. Owning all (or most) of the shares has
two advantages: Paying dividends doesnt feel like paying interest any longer, you get all (or most) of it into
your own pocket. And you can sell your private companies to your corporation for minimum price without
hurting yourself. It stays yours anyway. Starting a
private corporation is quite similar to starting a money
pump. You buy two companies. Then you go public
with the one and sell the other to the newly formed
corporation. The first thing you do with this money,
however, is to buy the other share(s) from the bank so
The MPP wants to speed up the game, ideally

damaging the other players more than themself.
The PCP wants to slow the game down.
4.2.5
The trader and the builder:

natural partners.
The money pump and the private corporation are more

or less self-sustaining strategies. In fact, you are mostly
interested in the other players not to interfere with
your scheme. The two strategic roles introduced in
this section are cooperative. They are more efficient
but require active cooperation with each other.
The general idea here is specialization. We basically split the machinery already known from the
34
money pump and the private corporation into two

parts. The trader is the part that buys companies
in auctions and then sells them to corporations, while
the builder is the part that runs the corporation that
buys the companies.
In the case of the trader, the benefits of specialization are easy to understand. If you set up a money
pump, you have to throw in one of your companies to
form your sacrificial corporation, and after that, you
have to maintain control of it. That binds a significant
amount of your wealth. If you specialize as a trader,
you can use all of your cash to buy companies, and
ideally you will sell all your companies in phase 6 so
that you start the next turn again with your whole
wealth in form of unbound cash. Essentially, you have
almost doubled the amount of money per upstroke of
the pump.
As a builder, the benefits of specialization are a
bit more subtle. As you are not required any longer to
buy companies yourself (in the pure case, you will only
buy one company in the whole game, the one you use
to found your mega-corp), you can use your money for
other things:
When discussing the scavenger, we have seen how

powerful synergies can be. The builder is more interested in the shiny new companies, and synergies are
even more powerful there (plus, they dont suffer from
the cost of ownership). You can easily reach yields of
more than 40 %; good builders will even reach more
than 50 %. A mid-game example would be the FS(37),
SBB(26), KK(25), and the SNCF(24) with a combined
face value of $112 and a total income of $48 (43 %).
This corporation will still rot at some time (but take
into account that a good builder will manage to end
the game early with $100 share price, thereby avoiding the increased cost of ownership in the last turn).
A simple late-game non-rotting combination would be
VP(80), MM(75), and LHR(54), combined face value
$209, total income $97 (46 %).
A possible problem between trader and builder is to
find the fair price for a company. For a brand new
company, paying face value will be too low, perhaps
with the exception of some very special cases, while
the maximum price will usually (but not always) be
too high. Trader and builder have to meet somewhere
in between.
Lets summarize both roles, in their purest form
(which you might deviate from more or less, as required
by the given situation):
The trader. . .
Start your corporation with a higher share price

and a larger contribution of your own cash. That
gives it more initial money and allows it to raise
more money by later share issues. Both are crucial for the builder strategy because you plan to
buy many companies.
. . . buys companies that are attractive to other

players corporations, using as much as possible
of his cash.
Buy more shares of your own corporation. That

has a dual benefit: First, it defends against a
hostile takeover. And second, your corporation
is supposed to grow a lot so its shares are usually
a very good investment, which also doesnt speed
up the game. (Despite feeding the traders, the
builder is still interested in not speeding up the
game too much.)
. . . sells companies for as much as possible to

other players corporations (but cant expect to
always get the maximum price).
. . . will never start a corporation.
. . . avoids to bind cash in shares. (Investment in
shares might be a carefully considered plan B,
in case of bin-packing problems or if no suitable
company to buy or corporation to sell it to is
available. The trader already knows to a certain
extent which corporations will become good ones
(namely those he intends to offer good deals), so
he can do a kind of insider trading.)
As mentioned in section 3.1, sellers and buyers of

companies are naturally promiscuous, so there is no
real need for long term bonding between a particular
trader and builder. You can find your trade partners
anew each turn, quite possibly even players that have
not really adopted a trader or builder role but just
happen to have a company available or the need for
one. Still, each role works better if somebody else is
playing the other role. A builder needs to leverage synergies a lot, so the builder role becomes more attractive with fewer competing builders and more players
in total (as more players mean more companies). Im
pretty sure that a three-player game can only accommodate at most one builder, while a five-player game
might just be able to accommodate two. The limit for
traders is less strict. Its also very easy to change from
a trader role into a different one. Traders are very flexible because they dont bind their cash in presidents
shares.
The builder. . .
. . . buys only one company (preferably one with
many synergies and a relatively high face value).
. . . goes public with that company, maximizing
share price and initial treasury. (He will happily
pay private cash to accomplish that.)
. . . will issue shares if the raised money can be
used to buy more good companies.
. . . aims to own as much of his corporation as
possible. (Which will usually be less than 50 %.
35
The builder does not run a private corporation

as described before. He will often issue shares,
thereby diluting his own shares.)
price. Your sacrificial corporation will issue a share

every turn and will never pay dividends. Your private
corporation will never issue shares and pay as much
dividends as possible while keeping enough money to
buy the next batch of companies from the sacrificial
corporation for minimum price.
With that many moving parts in your money machine, many things can go wrong. On the other hand,
there is a certain amount of flexibility. The sacrificial
corporation could also buy companies from other players or the foreign investor if they are a good fit for the
private corporation. In that case, you dont need to
buy as many companies privately any longer, so you
can use your cash to increase your percentage of the
private corporation or to defend your presidency of the
sacrificial corporation.
. . . tends not to pay dividends until late in the

game. (If there is really nothing suitable to buy
and the percentage owned by the builder is reasonably high, dividends might be paid earlier.)
. . . buys as many companies as possible from
other players and the foreign investor, as long
as the price is reasonable and there are plenty of
synergies.
4.2.6
Master-slave: the holy grail
The master-slave pattern is very difficult to implement, probably only feasible later during the game,
and only when you find yourself in control of two corporations anyway.
In a master-slave setup, you try to combine the
advantages of the money pump and the private corporation. You need two corporations, a sacrificial one
and a private one. Ideally, the sacrificial corporation
has a high share price and you own as little as possible
of it. In contrast, you maximize your percentage of
the private corporation, ideally up to 100 % (which explains why we call it a private corporation but even
if you wont be able to get up to 100 % ownership in
most cases, well continue to call it a private corporation in this section). An initially low share price makes
it easier to maximize your percentage.
Then you basically connect a money pump and a
private corporation in series. You buy private companies and sell it to your sacrificial corporation for
maximum price, as in the money pump. Your private
corporation buys the companies your sacrificial corporation has acquired last turn, but now for minimum
4.3
Your turn. . .
You know the basics now. You have learned the most
important strategic patterns (which will almost never
show up in their pure form, but interchanging and intermixed). Finally its your turn. Play the game. Try
out different strategies. Refine them. The patterns
provide you with a vocabulary, helping you analyze and
understand your own strategies and those of others.
You can say things like Ill run my money pump for
one more turn. or Since you appear to be a builder,
I could be your trader and offer you my nice MS company. What will emerge in a good game of Rolling
Stock, however, is far more complex than anything described in this chapter. While it is a good things to
have some rules of thumb and a general strategic intuition in place, be prepared to act against them if
required by sufficiently special circumstances. Rolling
Stock is subtle and brutal at the same time, which I
hope you will enjoy.
36
Chapter 5
Designers notes
market means everything and reality not so much. I
had been working as a freelancing IT consultant from
2000 to 2005, and in my prototype I could use actual
companies I worked for, many of them bankrupt by
now. I could call the game 1998, so it had at least a
1 and a 8 in it. After a few months of leisurely
thinking while waiting for the bus and such, I had the
outline of a game that would have the following features:
I cant deny it: Im a big fan of the 18xx series of

games. But the stock market in 18xx games never felt
real to me. I accepted it as a game mechanism (in
fact, a very effective game mechanism) but I couldnt
really consider it a realistic simulation of actual stock
trading. I felt most bewildered when a crappy corporation paid its last pennies to the share holders and
the share price went up, while a super-solid corporation that withheld to buy another mega-profitable
train went down despite the glorious future it was facing. Then everybody bought those exceptionally undervalued shares, but the share price would only go up
(by one meager step) at the end of the share round. . .
Hence, the urge to fix the stock market was there
for as long as I have known 18xx (i. e. since the early
90s).
In 2006, I put together some concrete ideas for a
new stock market to replace the regular stock market
in one of the more straightforward 18xx variants, lets
say 1830. Pretty soon, it became obvious that my own
stock market would be so different that Id better develop a completely new game for it. I considered various themes, from industrial manufacturing to space
flight, but in the end, I realized that I wanted to keep
things very pure. The game should be almost exclusively about stock trading. The theme, if any, should
be quite thin, and the rules damn simple. That was
not entirely unheard of. In my 18xx group, we had already experimented with some kind of 1841 without a
map. 1841 has a lovely map, with changing national
borders, alpine tunnels, and mountain passes, but the
most interesting things happen off-map: Stock trading,
forming new corporations, building complex structures
of corporations that own other corporations, and more.
So in some way it was tempting to abstract the map
away and have (nearly) as much fun. We never really
got to working it out and making a real game of it,
but not much later, Andreas Trieb had a prototype on
the table for an 18xx variant about airlines that didnt
need a map, either.
But back to 2006: The burst of the dotcom bubble
was still echoing in my ears, and in some way, I thought
it might be a good theme for a game where the stock
Players were venture capitalists that discovered hopeful new-economy startups and either
led them to a hugely hyped IPO or sold them for
loads of money to existing corporations. (Funny
enough: Rolling Stock has a completely different
theme but this part of the story is still shining
through.)
The startups worked as some kind of combination
of private companies and trains in conventional
18xx games. (Nothing changed about that.)
The startups came in a deck with rainbow
colored tiers, simulating the progress of technology, and suffered a cost of ownership at
some time. (I had worked out this idea down
to the level of detail where the cost of ownership appears on the back of the cards so
that it would automatically display the current cost. The fundamental idea of inflicting
cost of ownership instead of just removing the
old trains/companies/whatever was not mine,
though. It was Klaus Kiermeiers, as seen in
the 1873 prototype that I was helping develop
at that time.)
The startups had funny titles and satirical effects, some of them only applicable if part of
a corporation, like the Underground Hackers
doubling their performance if you have the Master Coffee Brewers in the same corporation, or
the Investors News Portal that would boost
your share price by spreading rumors. (That
would have turned the game into one of those
37
where a lot of rules are actually on the cards and

you have to find good combos of cards to get
things rolling. The synergies in the final game
are a distant echo of this idea.)
level of detail, but obviously not anywhere close to a

real game.
Then came 2010, the year brought us Railroad
Barons, an 18xx card game by Helmut Ohley. An 18xx
card game? Wait a minute. . . However, if you compare
Railroad Barons and Rolling Stock, you will immediately realize how very very different those two games
are. But funny enough, they share one detail: trains
are now companies. It gave me the creeps. I realized, if I only waited long enough, every single one of
my ideas would be found independently by somebody
else. If I then published my game, everybody would
laugh at me about my copycat approach to game design. Nobody would believe me that I had all those
ideas back in 2006.
So I finally pulled my ideas together and created
a proper prototype to play with myself. Before doing
so, I had to work out the theme properly. I realized
that a somewhat realistic stock trading simulation and
the dotcom boom theme dont play well together. As
bizarre as it might sound, in a game, nobody would behave as insanely as so many did in reality. My theme
was gone, but the rock-solid and elegant stock trading
simulation was still there. I needed a new theme. The
requirement was pretty minimal, the theme should be
thin, after all, not distracting from the stock market.
I only needed an incentive to form corporations, some
kind of synergy between subsidiary companies. After
all the detours, I finally came back to railroads and to
network building. As far away from classical 18xx as I
had gone at that time, I could still use the companies
we all know and love from those games. Lets start
small and early, say the Vorpreuen from 1835, and
then go through the ages and end in space with 2038.
In a flash of inspiration, I put together the first draft of
the synergy network literally over night, and it worked,
at least kind of. I was set to create the first real
prototype, which I did. And then I played against
myself, countless times, smoothing the roughest edges.
The first test game with real players happened on January 21st 2011. Lets say, it could have been worse.
The greatest disappointment was that despite the simple rules and gameplay, the game took actually a lot
of time. Otherwise, things worked out mostly as expected. Obviously, many parameters needed tuning,
but the general direction felt right. I was traveling
quite a bit during the next months, so I had the opportunity to test the game with a whole lot of very
different people in Germany, Ireland, and the USA. In
mid-2011, it was done. Nothing has really changed
since then. I only had to write down proper rules
and present it all in a form that would allow interested
players to build their own copies.
Among the many things that changed during
playtesting with real players, Id like to mention a
few in a bit more detail:
The game was planned as a true card game. Even

the share prices were marked by cards. And the
money was to be cards, too. (I had some ideas
of secret simultaneous bidding, so all the money
cards have the same back, and there are $0
cards in the mix for fake bids. In Rolling Stock,
the auctions turned out to be more straightforward than anticipated. There wasnt any real
need for a complex bidding mechanism anymore.)
Selling and buying shares had an immediate effect on the share price. After adding the idea
that the new price was the relevant one, most of
the restrictions on share trading in conventional
18xx could be lifted.
At some time, reality had to strike, and the
share price would be adjusted based on the book
value and possibly some other effects.
Dividends were set freely (within limits) by the
president and paid per issued share. There was
no direct connection between dividends and the
current revenue or the share price.
Hostile takeovers were a real threat. (In conventional 18xx, the president will try hard and is
usually successful in keeping 50+ % of any company that is at least remotely useful or valuable. I wanted players to more often experience situations where a hostile takeover would
be possible, at least in theory, so it would be
a constant threat. In Rolling Stock, that has
been accomplished by making it very attractive
to issue shares while keeping only the presidents
share to control the growing monster. However,
in the early prototype stage, I was still determined to have a 50 % bank pool limit, and hostile
takeovers should be made possible by some way
of buying unissued shares directly.)
The game had small integer numbers and bin
packing would be one of the problems to solve.
(That was even more extreme in the early days.
Starting money was even as low as $7.)
As you can see, quite a lot of the basic ideas were
there back in 2006. But at that time, I had no clue
if they worked at all. And even if they worked in
principle, they would need significant fine-tuning and
testing. I was very aware that I was far away from
a complete game. I never found the time to create a
physically existing prototype to play with. For years,
I was playing the game merely in my head, to some
With the playing time being much longer than

38
expected, the need for shorter game variants was

evident. The short game and the training game
were born. While the game was designed with all
six tiers of companies in mind, the short game
works surprisingly well. Sure, the full game is
more fun and more epic, but if you really need to
shorten the game by about an hour, the short
game is a reasonable trade-off. The training
game, in contrast, is significantly less interesting. However, if you are learning the game, you
wont even be able to appreciate the aspects of
the game that are missing in the training game.
Its more likely you will screw up your position
quite early in the game, and then you really dont
want to sit through four hours or more in a fruitless struggle to catch up. Even if all players are
beginners and nobody happens to run away with
the game, a full game with inexperienced players
will take a very long time, simply because beginners will inevitably play less efficiently than experts, and it will therefore take many more turns
to get to the end of the deck. The training game
is really the best choice for your first game (and
probably even for your second).
was very afraid of spoiler strategies, i. e. easy

to implement dominant strategies that would kill
strategic choices and solve the game. Hence,
the original prototype was way more restrictive
than the final game. The starting share price
was more or less fixed. In auctions, you couldnt
choose the company to offer; you had to pick
the top-most one. (All the other companies were
only in the market forecast similar to the
newly-drawn companies in the final game.) During playtesting, those restrictions could be lifted
gradually, always making sure that they would
increase the strategic choices instead of degenerating them by creating spoiler strategies.
In the end, the only thing missing was a name.
Amusingly, there wasnt even a working title in the
beginning. (1998 had to be dropped together with
the dotcom theme.) When playtesting in public games
meetings, the prototype with its many colorful cards
attracted quite a bit of attention from other attendees.
The most frequently asked question was, obviously:
What game is that? The requirement to give some
kind of answer led to the ad-hoc title 18card. For various reasons, it wasnt suitable as the final name of the
game. Ultimately, I liked Rolling Stock best because
of its two layers of meaning. With most of the companies being railroads, the first layer is pretty obvious.
You will recognize the second layer once you have seen
a number of corporations with directly adjacent share
prices each issuing a share, one after another, resulting
in a nice rolling movement of the stock prices. (It
even behaves like in real life: Rolling down-hill is much
easier than rolling up-hill. . . )
Speaking about the slow progress in a game with

beginners: That was actually the original incentive to introduce the foreign investor. He basically enforces a minimum game speed. But he
was also a lucky strike for the game. As you
can see in section 4.1.6, he opens up quite a few
strategic possibilities.
Once the game had proven to be relatively stable, I could introduce more degrees of freedom. I
39
Chapter 6
Overview of companies
To keep things short, only the abbreviated form of the company name is used here, followed by the face value, the
allowed price span for selling the company, the base income, and the synergies. Each synergistic company is listed with
its abbreviation followed by its face value in parentheses.
As an homage to the 18xx series of railroad games, games from that series that feature one or more of the companies
represented in Rolling Stock are mentioned here.
6.1
Red companies
The red companies are early Prussian railroad companies from the first half of the 19th century. The same six companies
are represented as Vorpreuen in Michael Meier-Bachls 1835 (with slightly different names, though). Some of the
companies can also be found in other games: The MHE in Klaus Kiermeiers 1873 Harzbahn, the BPM and the BSE in
David Hechts 18EU, the BME and KME in Wolfram Janichs 18Rhl Rhineland, and the AKE in Wolfram Janichs
1842: Schleswig Holstein.
All synergies are +$1.
BME
BSE
KME
AKE
BPM
MHE
6.2
$1
$2
$5
$6
$7
$8
($1$2)
($1$3)
($3$7)
($3$8)
($4$9)
($4$10)
+$1
+$1
+$2
+$2
+$2
+$2
KME(5)
BPM(7)
BME(1) MHE(8)
BPM(7) MHE(8)
BSE(2) AKE(6) MHE(8)
KME(5) AKE(6) BPM(7)
BD(12) HE(15) PR(19)

SX(16) MS(17) PR(19)
OL(14) HE(15) PR(19)
OL(14) MS(17) PR(19)
SX(16) MS(17) PR(19)
OL(14) SX(16) MS(17) PR(19)
Orange companies
The orange companies are the railroads of the various German states in the middle of the 19th century. Again, you
will find the same companies (with slightly different names) in Michael Meier-Bachls 1835. In addition, David Hechts
18EU features the BY and the PR, and Wolfram Jahnichs 18SX the SX. In Rolling Stock, these companies start as
private companies, in the 18xx games, they are corporations. Thus, the games somewhat misrepresent history, as all
these companies were state-owned.
Synergies with red companies are +$1, all other synergies are +$2.
WT
BD
BY
OL
HE
SX
MS
PR
6.3
$11
$12
$13
$14
$15
$16
$17
$19
($6$14)
($6$15)
($7$16)
($7$18)
($8$19)
($8$20)
($9$21)
($10$24)
+$3
+$3
+$3
+$3
+$3
+$3
+$3
+$3
BME(1)
KME(5) AKE(6) MHE(8)
BME(1) KME(5)
BSE(2) BPM(7) MHE(8)
BSE(2) AKE(6) BPM(7) MHE(8)
BME(1) BSE(2) KME(5) AKE(6)
BPM(7) MHE(8)
BD(12) BY(13)
WT(11) HE(15)
WT(11) HE(15) SX(16)
MS(17) PR(19)
BD(12) BY(13) PR(19)
BY(13) MS(17) PR(19)
OL(14) SX(16) PR(19)
OL(14) HE(15) SX(16) MS(17)
SBB(26) DR(29)
SNCF(24) SBB(26) DR(29)
KK(25) DR(29)
DSB(20) NS(21) DR(29)
DR(29)
PKP(23) KK(25) DR(29)
DSB(20) PKP(23) DR(29)
DSB(20) NS(21) B(22)
PKP(23) DR(29)
Yellow companies
The yellow tier of companies covers the late 19th and early 20th century. The DR is the state railroad of the now unified
German Empire, while all the other yellow companies represent the railroad companies of the countries neighboring
Germany. Again, these companies were mostly state-owned. Representing them as tradeable companies is once more
bending history a bit. You can find many of these companies in David Hechts games: The SNCF, B, DR, NS, and
KK in 18EU, the SNCF and B also in 1826, and the DSB in 18Scan. Leonhard Orglers 1837 features the KK, as does
40
Leonhard Orglers and Helmut Ohleys 1824. The SBB is the largest company in Peter Minders and Helmut Ohleys
1844: Switzerland.
Synergies with orange companies are +$2, all other synergies are +$4.
DSB
NS
B
PKP
SNCF
KK
SBB
DR
$20
$21
$22
$23
$24
$25
$26
$29
6.4
($10$26)
($11$27)
($11$28)
($12$29)
($12$30)
($13$32)
($13$33)
($15$36)
+$6
+$6
+$6
+$6
+$6
+$6
+$6
+$6
OL(14) MS(17) PR(19)

OL(14) PR(19)
PR(19)
SX(16) MS(17) PR(19)
BD(12)
BY(13) SX(16)
WT(11) BD(12)
WT(11) BD(12) BY(13)
OL(14) HE(15) SX(16)
MS(17) PR(19)
DR(29)
B(22) DR(29)
NS(21) SNCF(24) DR(29)
KK(25) DR(29)
B(22) SBB(26) DR(29)
PKP(23) SBB(26) DR(29)
SNCF(24) KK(25) DR(29)
DSB(20) NS(21) B(22)
PKP(23) SNCF(24)
KK(25) SBB(26)
BSR(40)
E(43)
E(43)
SZD(31)
BSR(40)
RENFE(32) FS(37) E(43)
FS(37)
FS(37)
BSR(40)
HH(48)
HA(47) HR(49)
HA(47) HR(49)
HH(48) FRA(58)
HA(47) CDG(56)
FRA(58)
CDG(56) FRA(58)
HH(48) HR(49)
FRA(58)
Green companies
Historically, we are now moving deep into the 20th century. Geographically, we are expanding towards the periphery
of Europe. Two companies are not strictly railroad companies: The E (representing the tunnel between Britain and
France) and the BSR (a hypothetical company running the ferries, bridges and tunnels in the Baltic Sea). David Hechts
games feature two of the green companies: The FS in 18EU and the SJ in 18Scan.
All synergies are +$4.
SJ
SZD
RENFE
BR
FS
BSR
E
6.5
$30
$31
$32
$33
$37
$40
$43
($15$42)
($16$43)
($16$45)
($17$46)
($19$51)
($20$54)
($22$58)
+$12
+$12
+$12
+$12
+$10
+$10
+$10
BSR(40)
PKP(23)
SNCF(24)
SNCF(24) KK(25) SBB(26)
DSB(20) PKP(23) DR(29)
NS(21) B(22) SNCF(24)
E(43)
MAD(45)
LHR(54)
SJ(30)
BR(33)
HH(48)
HA(47) HR(49) LHR(54) CDG(56)
Blue companies
The blue tier of companies contains no railroad companies at all, but the modern seaborne and airborne competitors. HA,
HH, and HR are the three largest container ports in Europe. MAD, LHR, CDG, and FRA are the four largest European
airports. Passengers and cargo have to reach the ports and airports, so those companies are not only competitors of the
railroad companies but also offer some opportunities to synergize. An airline company has been included, too, which
synergizes with all airports. It is difficult to determine the most important airline in Europe, as that depends heavily on
the chosen metric. In the end, Ryanair (FR) was picked as a proverbial low-fare airline in tough competition with the
railroad, although it ironically only serves the smallest of the four airports represented in the game (MAD).
Synergies with green and yellow are +$4, synergies with blue and purple are +$8.
MAD
HA
HH
HR
LHR
CDG
FRA
FR
6.6
$45
$47
$48
$49
$54
$56
$58
$60
($23$67)
($24$69)
($24$70)
($25$71)
($27$77)
($28$79)
($29$82)
($30$84)
+$15
+$15
+$15
+$15
+$15
+$15
+$15
+$15
NS(21) B(22) SNCF(24)

DSB(20) PKP(23) DR(29)
NS(21) B(22) DR(29)
SNCF(24) SBB(26)
PKP(23) KK(25) SBB(26) DR(29)
RENFE(32)
E(43)
BSR(40)
E(43)
BR(33) E(43)
E(43)
FR(60)
FR(60)
FR(60)
FR(60)
MAD(45) LHR(54)
CDG(56) FRA(58)
VP(80) LE(90)
RU(85) AL(86)
RU(85) AL(86)
RU(85) AL(86)
MM(75) VP(80) LE(90)
VP(80) LE(90)
MM(75) LE(90)
Purple companies
The ultimate tier of companies takes us into space. You might recognize the companies as the corporations in Tom
Lehmanns 2038. Imagine the airports now running passenger flights to the colonies on Moon, Mars, and Venus. Heavier
cargo to and from the asteroid belt and the outer planets goes via space elevators somewhere at the equator, which are
linked to Europe by container ships.
Synergies with blue are +$8, synergies with purple are +$16.
OPC
RCC
MM
VP
RU
AL
LE
TSI
$70
$71
$75
$80
$85
$86
$90
$100
($35$107)
($36$108)
($38$112)
($40$118)
($43$123)
($43$124)
($45$129)
($50$140)
+$25
+$25
+$25
+$25
+$25
+$25
+$25
+$25
LHR(54) FRA(58)
MAD(45) LHR(54) CDG(56)
HA(47) HH(48) HR(49)
HA(47) HH(48) HR(49)
MAD(45) LHR(54) CDG(56) FRA(58)
41
RU(85) AL(86) TSI(100)

RU(85) AL(86) TSI(100)
LE(90) TSI(100)
LE(90) TSI(100)
OPC(70) RCC(71) TSI(100)
OPC(70) RCC(71) TSI(100)
MM(75) VP(80) TSI(100)
OPC(70) RCC(71) MM(75) VP(80) RU(85) AL(86) LE(90)
Chapter 7
Credits
7.1
Playtesters
licensed under the Creative Commons

Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence
http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en.
Obviously a
good fit for any purple company.
I would like to thank the countless playtesters, especially those that were courageous enough to play more
than one game, listed here in alphabetical order:
Aliza Panitz, Daniel Barnes, Eckhart Kinast, Greg
Stark, Guido Trotter, Jan Rous, JC Lawrence, Jean
Joswig, Jens Dr
ogem
uller, Klaus Kiermeier, Manfred
M
oller, Michal Dziewo
nski, Scott Strobele, Thomas
Bornheim.
Special thanks to Greg Stark for proofreading the
rules and to Scott Petersen, Eric Brosius, and Derek
H. for proofreading the Players Guide.
I am grateful to Tom Lehmann for granting permission to use the fictional corporation names from
his game 2038.
7.2
Yellow the Eagle Coat of arms of the state of

Brandenburg, Germany. Good fit (regionally and
coat-of-arms wise) for PR or DR.
Grey the Horse Coat of arms of the state of
Lower Saxony, Germany. Another general symbol for transportation and mobility. Regional fit
for the OL and DR.
Green the Star Coat of arms of the municipality of Tamins, Switzerland. Obvious regional fit
is the SBB.
Corporation symbols
Chartreuse the Android Logo of the Android

operating system reproduced from work created and shared by Google and used according
to terms described in the Creative Commons 3.0
Attribution License. Works well for all modern
companies as a symbol of the tech race.
Most of the symbols are coat of arms of cities or states

from the same areas as some of the companies represented in the game. You might want to pick the symbol
of a corporation in agreement with its theme (which
is purely cosmetic, of course technically, symbols are
only needed to keep the corporations and their shares
apart).
Blue the Ship Coat of arms of the town of

Wehlen, Germany. Obviously a nice fit for the
ports (HA, HH, HR) and the BSR. Wehlen is,
however, not a port city at all. Its an inland
city in Saxony. So SX (and DR anyway) is a
good regional fit.
Red the Bear Coat of arms of the city and state

of Berlin, Germany. Fits well the Berliner companies BSE and BPM, obviously, but also a good
regional fit for the PR or the DR.
Black the Wheel Coat of arms of the city of
Erfurt, Germany. The wheel is a symbol of transportation and will suit any of the companies. A
moderately good regional fit for the MHE, HE,
SX, DR.
Brown the Jupiter Another space symbol,

good for anything purple. Found on Wikimedia
Commons, public domain.
Magenta the Saturn And yet another space
symbol. Published by Everaldo Coelho under
LGPL,
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html.
Purple the Orion Published by

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Rursus
42

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Contents

1 Learning the game

2 A word about playing time

Learning the game

Rolling Stock is a card game for three to five players.

Once you have played one or more training games,

The game contains two booklets: One is titled Players

The 45 company cards are the core of the game. They

Player order cards

There are five player order cards. They are used to

If there are no unowned private

$24 ($12-$30) SNCF

Socit nationale des chemins

cost of ownership $15

The colorful cards that have a cost of ownership on

Game end cards

All 10 Shares Issued

Finally there is the foreign investor. The card contains

$44$47 $66$71 $88$95 $110$119 $132$143

$20 $140$153 $160$175 $180$197 $200$219

$48$ $72$ $96$ $120$

Setting up the training game

Your first game will be a so-called training game. Its

Share price cards

Starts the game with $4 in treasury.

There are 10 symbol cards. Each features the symbol

Foreign investor card

There are 32 white share price cards. These cards are

1. Each player should have a turn summary handy

tral area is the bank. Initially, it contains all the

3. Give each player $30 from the bank.

12. Repeat for the orange companies, but draw six

5. Set the ten symbol cards aside, separately. On

6. In another area of the table, lay out the 32 share

The first turn

Each turn runs through ten phases (although in some

Phase 1 issue new shares

9. In the following steps, youll build the company

Phase 2 form corporations

10. Shuffle the green companies. Without looking

Phase 3 auctions and share

In current player order, starting with position 1, each

$135$149 $180$199 $225$249 $270$299

In turn 1, the only actions available are pass and

Starts the game with $4 in treasury.

The deck of companies

Example setup for three players

The Foreign Investor

Chriss Playing Area

have placed your bid, the next player in player order

If there are any companies left that are available for

Example of a complete auction: Alice, Bob, and

Phase 5 foreign investor

Phase 6 corporations buy companies

As there are still no corporations in the game, nothing

Phase 7 close companies

Phase 8 collect income

Phase 4 determine new player

Redistribute player order cards according to remaining

Phase 9 pay dividends

Only corporations pay dividends. As you probably

Example (continuing the example above): After the

Phase 10 end of game check

Only once we approach the end of the game, something