App Review: Wabash Cannonball rolls in with a near-perfect score

Simple graphics, deep gameplay. That's what the 2007 board game Wabash Cannonball promised and delivered. The Winsome train game, with a small print run of around 300 copies (we think), quickly sold out. The game was then licensed to Queen Games and re-released as Chicago Express. This version sold well enough that an expansion pack was released. Now, the game comes to the iOS market as an app called Wabash Cannonball [US$4.99]. It's got everything (almost) that the earlier, nearly identical games have, but it's all packed into a tiny screen – maybe a little too packed – along with a few digital friends to play against. Very different from your normal iPhone time-waster app, Wabash is a gamer's game, and it deserves attention. The name might refer to a fictional train, but there's a lot of real gameplay here. Read on for the full ride and to see if you'd like to hop aboard the Wabash Cannonball.

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The Game

Wabash Cannonball looks like a train game, but it's really a stock market game with a train component. This is because, unlike, say, Ticket to Ride, the routes you send your train companies on aren't nearly as important as the stocks you buy in those companies. Of course, you can't ignore laying down tracks or deciding where they should (or shouldn't) go, and the game is a balancing act between expanding and enhancing trains and making sure to buy the right stocks at the same time.

The full rules are available here (and in the app, of course), but the gist of the game is that there are four train companies (sometimes five) racing from the East Coast to Chicago. Any player can buy into any company and, once they've done so, can affect how that train expands and get paid during the game's dividend phases based on how well the company is doing. On your turn, you can either auction off a share in a company, lay track in a company you own, or improve a hex that contains track from a company you own. Since there are a limited number of each of these actions that can be taken in each round, you might not get to do your preferred action, but a good player will always have a back-up move. The goal of the game is to be the one with the most money at the end.

Everything in Wabash is open information, so you can (and pretty much have to) make your bids for stocks based on what other people have at the time. Oh, and based on how much money you want to add to the company's treasury and how much you think the stock will pay out during the next dividend phase, and so on. It can be kind of brain burning.

The App

The Wabash Cannonball app's graphics hearken back to the original board game, eschewing the colorful delight that Queen Games put into Chicago Express (compare these pics of the old and new boards). The game is getting good reviews on the App Store (4.5 stars, as of this writing), and deservedly so. With the clear graphics and amazing gameplay, there's a lot to like here. If you're familiar with either of the board games, it won't take long to figure out how to play the app. For newbies, there is a detailed tutorial included that guides you through the rules. One go-through and you should be set, since the rules are not that difficult.

There are a few tiny differences between the app and the tabletop versions. One is that the board games can handle between two and six players, while the app only goes up to five. Certainly not a deal breaker, but there it is. Also, the railroad companies in the game are given color names, not the names from the board games, which might make it difficult for colorblind players.

The game works great with two or more people passing the iPhone around, but what will be really wonderful is when Wabash is updated to an iPad app. Hopefully, this will allow us to see the entire map, stock values, and treasuries (etc.) at one glance. This game is information dense and, while you can drill down to see all this information in the iPhone app, gameplay will be so much better if it's all available on one screen. Apparently, the developer is considering an iPad update, but whether this means a separate (no!) or universal (yes!) app is not clear. Here's hoping the app delivers everything it could (a good discussion about this issue is available here).

Another update that the game needs is better built-in opponents. I realize that it's difficult to program an AI for a game like this, and I'm not the first to say that the AI is pretty weak, but it is. I've only played the board games twice (once each on both the Wabash and Chicago boards) over the last few years, and I beat the AI opponents on my first try by around $45. The second time around, I tied for first at $99, and the third time I won by $30 again. This doesn't bode well for future challenges. As far as I can tell, there are no AI difficulty level settings. This is a must-implement item for a future update (whether I'd rather have better AI or a full iPad version first is a tough call). From what I can see, the biggest problem with the AI is that it has a hard time bidding correctly. Granted, this is a tough decision for humans to make, too, but the AI players often let me win the bid for a much cheaper price than it's worth, even when they have money in the bank to buy them. Once I dominate two or three railroads, it's an easy win. Also, is it unfair to look forward to the Narrow Gauge and Erie Railroad expansions as well?

Sometimes, it seems that the app doesn't show you the auctions taking place if you don't have enough money to participate. What's really happening is that the AI players are taking a "null" action. A little notification (that old hands can turn off) would be a nice touch. Also, the app doesn't save player names between games, which gets kind of annoying. I recognize that this app is a labor of love, and I'm totally happy to have a copy that fits in my pocket, but that doesn't stop me from wanting it to be a bit better, because it could be so totally amazing. As it is, it's easy to recommend people pay $5 for it if they like the game, but with these improvements, I'd probably go out and stand on street corners shouting the game's wonders. So, give it a shot. If you like the app, you can buy the tabletop game (well, the Chicago Express version) from Queen Games. Check out a video of the game below.