Gamehelpiberiangauge

Overview

Iberian Gauge is a cube-rails stock game for 3–5 players set on the Iberian Peninsula. You are an investor, not a railroad: you buy Shares in 5 Railroad companies with your personal money, and the Railroads — funded by their own Treasuries — build the track. Each Share you own lets you extend that Railroad by one hex during Build rounds. Dividends pay you per Share, and a Railroad that fails to reach a new city loses Share Value.

All 5 Railroads are always in play, regardless of player count. Ties are possible (shared victory).

At the start of the game, the 5 Railroads are placed in a random initiative order that never changes, each player receives ₱40, and a random player receives the Priority Deal token (the right to act first in Stock rounds).

Each Railroad has a fixed number of Shares — Red 6, Light Blue 5, Orange 5, Purple 4, Yellow 4 (24 total) — and a supply of 22 Locomotives (track markers) for the whole game.

Round Structure

The game lasts exactly 10 rounds in a fixed order:

Round	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Type	Stock	Build	Stock	Build	Build	Stock	Build	Build	Stock	Build

The game ends after round 10, followed by final scoring.

Stock Round

Starting with the Priority Deal holder and going clockwise, each player in turn either buys one Share or passes.

• Passing does not lock you out — if the round comes back to you, you may still buy.
• The round ends when all players have consecutively passed. The player who started the final all-pass streak takes (or keeps) the Priority Deal token and will open the next Stock round.
• You may buy at most one Share per Railroad per Stock round (buying from several different Railroads in the same round is fine).
• You cannot buy into a Railroad with no Share spaces left; if all 24 Shares are ever sold out, the round ends immediately.
• Shares can never be sold.

If you cannot afford anything on your turn, you are passed automatically (noted in the log). This counts as a real pass — it can make you the first passer who takes the Priority Deal token.

Starting a Railroad (buying its first Share)

Buying a Railroad's first Share floats it. You:

1. Choose its starting Share Value — anywhere from ₱12 to ₱36 — and pay that amount from your cash into the Railroad's Treasury.
2. Place its first Locomotive in a Major City that contains no other Railroad (if all 7 Major Cities are occupied, any Major City).

Its Dividend level starts at space 1 of the Dividends Track.

Buying into a started Railroad

Pay its current Share Value from your cash into its Treasury; you take its next Share space in order. (Share Value does not change from purchases — it only moves during Build rounds.)

Build Round

Railroads act in initiative order. Within each Railroad, its Shares act in the order they were bought. Railroads with no purchased Shares are skipped entirely — no build, no penalty, no dividends.

Each active Railroad's turn has four steps:

1. Track Building

Each Share, in purchase order, lets its owner optionally place one of the Railroad's Locomotives on the map — so if you own several Shares in a Railroad, you get several separate builds. Building is never mandatory.

A build is legal only if all of the following hold:

• The Railroad has a Locomotive left (22 for the whole game).
• The target hex has room: Easy/Difficult hexes hold one Locomotive total; Urban/Major City hexes hold one per Railroad (all 5 can coexist).
• The hex is adjacent to the Railroad's existing track, or reachable by leasing (below).
• The Treasury can pay the full cost (build cost plus any lease fees). Costs always come from the Railroad's Treasury, never from players.

Hex type	Build cost (to bank)	Lease cost (to owner)	Occupancy
Easy (light green)	₱4	₱2	1 Locomotive total
Difficult (dark green)	₱8	₱4	1 Locomotive total
Urban (blue, named)	₱4	cannot be leased	1 per Railroad
Major City (orange border, named)	₱4	cannot be leased	1 per Railroad

If your build must be skipped — the Railroad is out of Locomotives, can't afford anything, or has nowhere left to build — the game skips it automatically and says why in the log.

Leasing

To build a hex not adjacent to its own track, a Railroad may lease a path through other Railroads' track in Easy/Difficult hexes only — never through Urban or Major City hexes, even its own (a path may route around them). Every hex on the path must already contain another Railroad's Locomotive; you cannot lease empty terrain.

The path must be the shortest leasable route (fewest leased hexes); when several equally short paths exist, you choose which to use — this decides which Treasuries get paid and can change the total cost. Lease fees (₱2 per Easy hex, ₱4 per Difficult hex) are paid from the building Railroad's Treasury to each leased hex's owner; the destination hex's build cost is then paid to the bank as normal.

2. Immediate Bonuses

• Building into an Urban hex: Dividend level +1.
• Building into a Major City: Dividend level +2 and Share Value +1.
• Dividend thresholds: whenever the Dividend level crosses a share-icon threshold on the track, Share Value rises 1 more space per threshold crossed.
• 5-cities bonus: the moment a Railroad's network includes five Major Cities, a one-time Special Dividend is paid from the bank — each Shareholder receives the Railroad's listed amount per Share owned (Purple/Yellow ₱15, Light Blue/Orange ₱12, Red ₱10), and the Railroad's Treasury receives the same amount per unsold Share.

3. Share Value Penalty

If the Railroad did not add a new Urban or Major City hex to its network this turn, its Share Value drops one space per player-owned Share (unsold Shares don't count). This applies even when the Railroad couldn't build at all. Share Value never goes below ₱4 or above ₱80.

4. Dividends

The bank pays the Railroad's dividend at its current Dividend level:

• each player receives the dividend × their Shares in this Railroad, and
• the Railroad's Treasury receives the dividend × its unsold Shares.

Game End and Scoring

After round 10, each player scores:

Cash in hand + (current Share Value × each Share owned)

Railroad Treasuries are worth nothing. The player with the most money wins; ties are shared victories.

Reference Tables

Share Value Track

20 spaces in steps of 4: ₱4 to ₱80. Starting values when floating a Railroad: ₱12–₱36.

Dividends Track

19 spaces. Railroads are grouped by Share count:

Level	Purple / Yellow (4 shares)	Lt. Blue / Orange (5 shares)	Red (6 shares)
1	3	2	2
2	4	3	3
3	5	4	4
4	7	5	5
5	8	6	5
6	9	7	6
7	10	8	7
8	12	9	8
9	13	10	9
10	14	11	10
11	15	12	10
12	17	13	11
13	18	14	12
14	19	15	13
15	20	16	14
16	22	17	15
17	23	18	15
18	24	19	16
19	25	20	17

Share Value thresholds sit on the boundaries 3→4, 6→7, 9→10, 12→13, 14→15, 16→17, and 18→19 — moving up across one grants +1 Share Value. The Dividend level stops at 19; further increases are lost.