Steam

To set up the game, randomly determine player order and place one piece from each player on the turn order track. Each player also places one disk on the '1' space of the locomotive track and the '0' spaces of the income and victory point tracks. Players in second place and beyond receive increasing amounts of starting money. Cubes are placed on each city on the board, with the number of cubes determined by the city's starting value and the color indicating the city type for delivery. Additional cubes are placed on the goods supply spaces along the left of the board, which can come into play later in the game.

The main objective of Steam: Rails to Riches is to connect cities and towns with your track to deliver goods. The more cities and towns a cube passes through on its way to its destination, the more points it is worth. Players aim to earn the most victory points by the end of the game through strategic track building, efficient goods delivery, and managing their income.

A turn consists of several phases. First, players take action tiles, which provide various game advantages and determine the turn order for the next round. Next, players build tracks in player order, with the option to build up to three track tiles (or four if they took the Engineer tile). Track must start at a city or connect to existing owned track. Players mark their tracks with tokens to show ownership. After building, players deliver goods twice per turn, moving cubes from their starting city to a matching-colored destination city, passing through towns and cities up to their locomotive level. Finally, players either earn income or pay expenses based on their position on the income track, and the turn order is reordered based on the action tiles taken.

During the game, points can be taken as either income or victory points. If taken as income, a player's income marker moves up on the income track, affecting their earnings or expenses at the end of each round. If taken as victory points, the player's victory point token moves up. At the end of the game, players receive one victory point for each completed link of track they own between cities and towns. They also get one victory point for every two positive steps on the income track, but lose two victory points for every negative step on the income track.

The game ends after a predetermined number of rounds, which is based on the number of players. Once the final round is completed, players calculate their final scores by combining their victory points from delivered goods, completed track links, and their final income track position. The player with the highest total victory points wins the game.