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 is shared by at least four players. 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 China Rails. If you would like to play one of the variants it is recommended that you bring your own copy and appear early to set it up and recruit players. Variants that do not get four willing participants will be shelved in favor of the default games of either Empire Builder [with or without Mexico] or Eurorails.

To encourage faster play, we will use a choose your best "three out of four" cards opening. The semi-finals will feature Empire Builder with 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 5-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 single Preliminary Heat win will NOT in itself guarantee advancement. We will be using the following tie breakers for advancement and seeding:

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 score
6. Player's second highest score
7. Player's third highest score
8. High dice roll

A set of seven hand painted, detailed pewter locomotive minis in colors appropriate for both Empire Builder and Rail Baron.