The Empire Builder Series tournament offers play of all of Mayfair's Crayon Rails games. Empire Builder and Eurorails will be offered in each of the three preliminary heats. Additionally players may choose to play variants if their choice has a four player interest. Variants include original Empire Builder [without Mexico], North American Rails [with Mexico], British Rails, India Rails, Australian Rails, Nippon Rails, Lunar Rails, Russian Rails, Iron Dragon and the newly released China Rails. If you would like to play one of the variants it is recommended that you bring your own copy.

To encourage faster play, a choose your best "three out of four" cards opening will be used, open contracts after "dumping" will not be used. The semi-finals will feature Empire Builder including Canada and Mexico and the 5-player Final will be the original Empire Builder board without Mexico.

If there are more than 20 individual Heat winners we will advance 25 players to five player semi-finals from which the five winners will advance to the Final. If there are between 17 and 20 individual Heat winners we will advance 20 players to 4-player semi-finals from which the five winners will advance. If there are fewer than 17 individual Heat winners we will advance 16 players to 4-player semi-finals from which the four winners will advance to the Final.

REMEMBER: If we have more than 25 individual Heat winners a Preliminary Heat win will NOT in itself guarantee advancement. We will be using the Heats Most Wins Tie Breakers for advancent as follows:

1. Most Wins (e.g., total in all heats entered);
2. Win in first Heat entered;
3. Win in second Heat entered;
4. Win in third Heat entered;
5. Player's highest winning score
6. Average finish in all heats entered (e.g., a 2nd and two 3rds = 2.67 and beats two 2nds and two 4ths = 3); and
7. High dice roll.