If you have eyed the 18xx train games and quietly backed away from the three-hour runtimes and the wall of spreadsheets, here is a friendlier way in. North American Railways is getting a compact new edition from Korean publisher Playte, which showed it off at Game Market Spring 2026 and now has it up for pre-order.
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Start organising for freeThe game reworks a 2016 design by Peer Sylvester, the German designer behind well-liked titles like the sharp area-control game The King Is Dead and the solo-friendly survival game The Lost Expedition. His idea here is a neat one. Keep the beating heart of the 18xx genre, its cut-throat share market, and strip out the fiddly tile-laying map that turns those games into a full-day commitment.
For three to five players, everyone buys and sells shares in five rail companies, with one important catch: only the bottom share in each stack is available to bid on, so timing is everything. Anyone holding shares can spend a company's money to grow its network by adding cities, and a director can swoop in to match a rival's offer and take the shares for themselves, handing the original bidder half the payment. The result is a tight knot of stock-market bluff and brinkmanship that fits in a box you could slip into a jacket pocket.
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Set up your group for freeShrinking respected designs into pocket editions is becoming Playte's calling card, and North American Railways looks a natural fit. UK fans have often had to import Sylvester's economic games, so a fresh, more widely stocked run is welcome, and it is already turning up at British shops like Meeple's Corner.
It plays in a fraction of the time of a full 18xx epic, which makes it a real option for a weeknight rather than a cleared Saturday. If money-and-shares games are your group's thing, this is a low-commitment gateway worth a look.
Sources: W. Eric Martin | Board Game Bliss | Meeple's Corner
