Lunar Rails works if you are a moon freak and a railroad geek. Unfortunately, I plead guilty to at least a railroad geek.

Lunar Rails does not disappoint you from the standpoint of graphics for the far and near sides of the moon. I particularly liked the craters and the extra cost to cross.

If you like Empire Rails and all the accompanying rail games, you will find the rules easy to digest. Naturally, the names were not easy to digest, and one of my gaming colleagues suggested remembering the far side of the Moon with Russians and physicists. That worked for most of the locations. With four of us playing we were constantly asking each other where Lowell, Wells, Clavius, and Copernicus were. The Peary/Scott feature works well where a railroad built into this southern location can be transferred from the near side to the far side and back again. One has to remember the only place to find the Water is the Scott city. The Peary/Scott feature speeds up some of the deliveries unless one carries a '10' train with two loads for most of the game.

Now, let's talk about some of the drawbacks after the four of us played for three hours:

1. The player who had the most money acquired only $50 million; one needs $250 million for victory conditions.

2. Most of us still had only a '10' train with two loads or maybe three loads in one case.

3. One player had acquired at least five cities; one needs seven of the eight major cities to win.

All these drawbacks suggest the game has a 'slow' feature. Therefore, our group suggested we double each load delivered for the money. That would allow us to acquire the $250 million much sooner in spite of slow trains and difficult terrain.

Would I play the game again? Absolutely. I enjoyed finding all those strange sounding names, and the deliveries would make more sense after two or three more plays with 'speeded up' rules. The rules are well organized, and Mayfair has learned a great deal about presenting the information in a coherent manner. Still, our group wondered why the cities and the loads were printed back to back instead of four different sheets for multiple players. I liked the setup of loads on the back of each Von Braun '10' train.

My mistake occurred when trying to build to Daedalus from Scott on the Moon's far side and almost running out of money. Therefore, strategy always plays an important part in railroad games, especially Lunar Rails. One cannot build too fast; the terrain is so expensive with obvious Highland mountains and Highland Alpine everywhere.