A friend suggested playing Wabash Cannonball, but when digging through my Winsome crate, I found Chicago & NorthWestern. This John Bohrer design from 2016 was released by Rio Grande in 2023, so it’s more widely available.

It’s a funny game. This is a cube rails game where railroad companies spread out west from Chicago. Everybody gets to buy one share at the beginning of the game, then it’s the usual build track or offer stock for auction stuff from Winsome games. However! There are some really curious twists in this game.

First of all, there aren’t many dividends. Each player can trigger dividends once per game. Each company can pay a special dividend once per game, after they reach their target city (this is usually trivial). While the dividends are rare, they can be lucrative: last night my best dividend was $180.

The companies can also “go west”. When the track reaches the western edge of the board, the company can then leave the game. After that, it doesn’t build or sell shares, but it pays a bigger dividend. The game usually ends after four companies go west, but can also end when all companies have paid their special dividends or all shares are sold. These seem unlikely.

We played two games back-to-back, as the games only took 35-40 minutes each. This is an intriguing game of juggling your priorities and controlling your money. You often want to do at least three things on your turn. Build track, try to get more shares, run a special… Also how much you want to build before cashing out the special dividend, and what if a minority shareholder sends the company to west before you get the special dividend?

In the second game, the end game was delicious. The third player was out of the race no matter what. I had bigger dividends (180–150 or so), but only my opponent had a dividend card left, and of course they’re not paying out dividends. Only cash in hand matters in the end, and I had one dollar more. My opponent put a share in the auction and bid $25. I expected the company would pay a special dividend for $27 before going west and ending the game, maybe more, so I bid more and got the company. We built it up, I got $33 in dividends, and before the game was over my opponent was also forced to auction a worthless share and pay $5 for it, so I won by $14.

I used to play this once per year from 2016–2019 but haven’t played since. Now I think the game will get back to rotation, as it is a delightful. From my BGG notes, I see I’ve once won the game before any dividends were paid. That’s curious. We need to play more. I remember thinking about drawing a new board for my Winsome copy, like I did for South African Railroads. That might be a fun project at some point.