Stephen Paget
United Kingdom
London
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Why did they print different track combinations on each side of the tiles ?
Played once and we spent a third of the playing time trying to find out if the piece of track we needed was available. Or is it on the reverse of a tile, and has that tile been used or not. Ruined the game for us. Rediculous production choice, but cheaper I'm sure. Any way around this???
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Jordan Alexander
United Kingdom
Accrington
Lancashire
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since 9 times out of 10 you want either a stright track, or a slight curve track (which are actually the same piece) I sort my tiles into two containers, 1 box hold all of the straight/slight curve track peices (again, this is only one tile design), and the other box holds all of the non standard track tiles.
My group have never brought up any problems finding track with this setup, so it may help you.
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Klaus Brune
United States
Torrance
California
HEY! That TICKLES!
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The good news is that there is SOME method to the madness, and once you recognize the pattern and become a little bit familiar with it, you will be able to tell what type of track to expect on the reverse side of the tile you're looking at.
See my comments under...
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Christopher M.
United States
Jackson
Mississippi
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First and foremost, I completely agree with you. Double sided tiles don't make for the greatest play. The best advice I can offer (short of obtaining a copy of Age of Steam) is to print off a tile manifest and make organized stacks. There is an order to the madness (most of the time), but it will always be a pain.
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Stephen Paget
United Kingdom
London
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I did my best to organise the tiles, and we needed a non standard straight or curve rather more than 1 in 10. Can you please explain to me the 'method' in the madness?
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Klaus Brune
United States
Torrance
California
HEY! That TICKLES!
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stephenpaget wrote: I did my best to organise the tiles, and we needed a non standard straight or curve rather more than 1 in 10. Can you please explain to me the 'method' in the madness?
It's a somewhat lengthy explanation, so a link is easier than just cutting-and-pasting here. See my comments under the image...
http://boardgamegeek.com/image/971601
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Wolfgang Zelller
Germany
Schramberg
Baden-Württemberg
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While I don't think that it really "ruins" the game, that is exactly the reason why I built this:
The big tray in the back contains all straights and single curves. All other tiles are sorted in the two smaller trays. With both sides transparent, it is easy to find the tile you are looking for.
Also helpful are the player reference sheets showing all tiles with their front and back, so if you have to search, you know what is on the other side.
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Klaus Brune
United States
Torrance
California
HEY! That TICKLES!
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wolfzell wrote: While I don't think that it really "ruins" the game, that is exactly the reason why I built this: The big tray in the back contains all straights and single curves. All other tiles are sorted in the two smaller trays. With both sides transparent, it is easy to find the tile you are looking for. Also helpful are the player reference sheets showing all tiles with their front and back, so if you have to search, you know what is on the other side.
Those do look nicer than my Dixie Cup solution 
I'm not that great at working with Plexiglas though 
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Pasta Batman
United States
Tustin
California
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j0rdan wrote: since 9 times out of 10 you want either a stright track, or a slight curve track (which are actually the same piece) I sort my tiles into two containers, 1 box hold all of the straight/slight curve track peices (again, this is only one tile design), and the other box holds all of the non standard track tiles.
I made a really wide and shallow tray out of foamboard for the unusual tiles (fits easily in the Steam's big box), so that you can see just about all the tiles at once. That, combined with a printout of this, makes things pretty efficient. I put the simple tiles in a little bowl.
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Stephen Paget
United Kingdom
London
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wolfzell wrote: While I don't think that it really "ruins" the game, that is exactly the reason why I built this: The big tray in the back contains all straights and single curves. All other tiles are sorted in the two smaller trays. With both sides transparent, it is easy to find the tile you are looking for. Also helpful are the player reference sheets showing all tiles with their front and back, so if you have to search, you know what is on the other side.
They look great. We used the reference sheets, but it was still a pain trying to find a particular layout which is on the reverse of another. Leading to 'I need this which is on the reverse of that. Has that been used? Lets all look at all the played tiles and the remaining tiles and see if we can spot it.' Awfull.
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Klaus Brune
United States
Torrance
California
HEY! That TICKLES!
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stephenpaget wrote: wolfzell wrote: While I don't think that it really "ruins" the game, that is exactly the reason why I built this: The big tray in the back contains all straights and single curves. All other tiles are sorted in the two smaller trays. With both sides transparent, it is easy to find the tile you are looking for. Also helpful are the player reference sheets showing all tiles with their front and back, so if you have to search, you know what is on the other side. They look great. We used the reference sheets, but it was still a pain trying to find a particular layout which is on the reverse of another. Leading to 'I need this which is on the reverse of that. Has that been used? Lets all look at all the played tiles and the remaining tiles and see if we can spot it.' Awfull.
Once you know the pattern, it's really not that hard. I can look at the above photo and tell you what's on the other side of each tile without having to look at a reference sheet. For example, left tile in the front row, reverse side is a town tile which also has four exits in an "X" shape. In the second row, first tile on the left has a blank back, next one over has a town with two exit tracks on adjacent hex sides, and so on.
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Wolfgang Zelller
Germany
Schramberg
Baden-Württemberg
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Gruumsh wrote: Those do look nicer than my Dixie Cup solution
Thanks.
Quote: I'm not that great at working with Plexiglas though
Me neither, but with a drill press, a table saw, a little creativity, a sharp knife and a lot of patience and sweat you can get a long way (two prototypes were trashed before I finally got it right...)
I thought about having the parts made by a laser cutting service. They would surely look better and I also would have engraved the rail pattern of each tile onto the plexiglas to ease sorting them back, but the cost didn't add up for a single run. Maybe I will still do the engraving by hand with the dremel.
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It's far better than having twice as many tiles cluttering everything. Really dude, it's not worth creating a thread to complain about it.
Straights are behind Soft Curves. Everything else is together by number of exists.
Left 3 spoke town/Right Three Spoke Town
Y Spoke Town/Y Crossing
X Spoke Town/X Crossing
And so on.
But really, I bet that you would have taken less time to take the tiles and separate them in a couple of bags than it took you to complain in this forum.
You are never going to run out of tiles btw.
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Dick Ruck
United Kingdom
Brighton
East Sussex
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wolfzell wrote: Maybe I will still do the engraving by hand with the dremel.
No, don't chance slipping and spoiling them... These are perfect.
Edit: added wolfzell's name
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Bill Bennett
United States
Newton
Iowa
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As many have said, you can start by sorting and storing the tiles into some easy to remember organized fashion. Personally, I use three little plastic trays, one for all the straight/gentle curve pieces, one for all other tiles with 1, 2 or 3 exits, and one for all tiles with 4 exits. Then I give each player a reference sheet that has a tile manifest on the back.
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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General_Norris wrote: It's far better than having twice as many tiles cluttering everything. Really dude, it's not worth creating a thread to complain about it.
Straights are behind Soft Curves. Everything else is together by number of exists.
Left 3 spoke town/Right Three Spoke Town
Y Spoke Town/Y Crossing
X Spoke Town/X Crossing
And so on.
But really, I bet that you would have taken less time to take the tiles and separate them in a couple of bags than it took you to complain in this forum.
You are never going to run out of tiles btw.
Yeah, it was a great system!
Until Steam: Map Expansion #1, where they printed a set of tiles that don't follow the rules! Grrr ... now that was just plain stupid!
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snoozefest wrote: Yeah, it was a great system! Until Steam: Map Expansion #1, where they printed a set of tiles that don't follow the rules! Grrr ... now that was just plain stupid!
Why, what happened?
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Richard Young
Canada
Victoria
BC
Old Ways Are Best!
Check Six!
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The OP has never played Railroad Tycoon? Or any other game that uses backprinted counters/tiles? It is a production choice that helps keep the games affordable and workable with respect to storage etc. It is a compromise it is true but a reasonable one. Of the track-laying rail games using tiles, Age of Steam has a simpler mix and uses smaller scale maps and so can get by with fewer single-sided tiles. They are what they are...
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Tater Salad
United States
Indiana
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I use a Plano Model 3601 Container for everything but the straight/gentle curve pieces. The slots are just the right size for the tiles and the container is shallow so it is easy to dig them out. Each distinct tile type has its own slot, but I organized via the methods described above into large "areas" as well - All the "4-exit" tile pieces are on the far left, all the "3-exit" tile sections in the middle, etc. I added some colored construction paper to the bottom of the box to make the "areas" more distinct (e.g. all the "4-exit" tiles have a red slip of paper underneath them). So if you are looking for a tile with 4 exits, look in the red section and you can clearly see that there are 6 distinct tiles with 4 exits so you can flip those 6 over and see if what you want is there.
Plus, there is room at the front of the box to put the 3 money types.
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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General_Norris wrote: snoozefest wrote: Yeah, it was a great system! Until Steam: Map Expansion #1, where they printed a set of tiles that don't follow the rules! Grrr ... now that was just plain stupid! Why, what happened?
The tile backs do not necessarily match the front!
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Jack Neal
United States
Madison
Ohio
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snoozefest wrote: General_Norris wrote: snoozefest wrote: Yeah, it was a great system! Until Steam: Map Expansion #1, where they printed a set of tiles that don't follow the rules! Grrr ... now that was just plain stupid! Why, what happened? The tile backs do not necessarily match the front!
Super.
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snoozefest wrote: General_Norris wrote: snoozefest wrote: Yeah, it was a great system! Until Steam: Map Expansion #1, where they printed a set of tiles that don't follow the rules! Grrr ... now that was just plain stupid! Why, what happened? The tile backs do not necessarily match the front!
Yeah, that was annoying as hell when trying to add the expansion tiles to my already sorted plano... which one of the existing sections should it go in?
Eventually just gave up and sorted instead by the number of track exits (roughly). But expansion tiles definitely mess with great organisation setups like those pictured above.
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Randall Bart
United States
Granada Hills
California
Red October
Earth is one of my favorite planets
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General_Norris wrote: You are never going to run out of tiles btw.
Unless you have four or more players
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Barticus88 wrote: General_Norris wrote: You are never going to run out of tiles btw. Unless you have four or more players
A total of 104 tiles can be built with four players, while both three and five players will use, at most, 100. This is assuming Engineer is taken every turn, which won't happen. Player count doesn't matter when it comes to tiles used.
The only tiles that you might run out are complex crossings and none of the released maps are specially heavy on complex crossings, specially not the ones included with the base game.
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