Review: Carnegie

Introduction & Overview

Andrew Carnegie (Scotland in 1835) and his parents emigrated to the United States in 1848. Although he started his career as a telegrapher, his role as one of the main players in the rise of the United States steel industry made him one of the richest men in the world and an icon of the American Dream. He was also a benefactor and philanthropist; after his death in 1919, more than 350 million dollars of his wealth were bequeathed to several foundations, and another 30 million were allocated to various charities. His donations created nearly 2,500 free public libraries bearing his name: the Carnegie Libraries. During the game, you will recruit and manage employees, expand your business, invest in real estate, produce and sell goods, and create transport chains across the United States; you can even work with important personalities of the era. Perhaps you will even become an illustrious benefactor who contributes to the greatness of your country through deeds and generosity!

This is how Carnegie is presented to us, a design by Xavier Georges (Carson City, Ginkgopolis). First published in 2022 by Quinned Games after a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. The artwork is handled by Ian O’Toole (On Mars, Irish Gauge, Black Angel).

It is published in Spanish by Maldito Games (the game is completely language-independent except for the rulebook). It allows for games for 1 to 4 players, with a suggested minimum age of 14 years and an approximate duration of between 120 and 180 minutes. The MSRP is €65. For this review, a copy of the Spanish edition by Maldito Games was used, which the publisher kindly provided to us as a review copy.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Go to Personal Opinion

Components

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom), measuring 31.7×22.7×10 cm. (a rectangular box similar to that of Caverna or Fields of Arle), we find the following components:

• Central Board (cardboard)
• 8 Timeline Tiles (cardboard)
• 4 Action Markers (wooden)
• 4 Optional Action Tiles (cardboard)
• Start and End Tile (cardboard)
• 32 Department Tiles (cardboard)
• 49 Cards (57.5×89 mm):
  • 45 Solo Mode Cards
  • 4 Player Aids
• 16 Project Strips (cardboard)
• 4 Company Boards (cardboard)
• 60 Employee Figures (15 in each color) (wooden)
• 120 Player Disks (30 in each color) (wooden)
• 45 Goods Cubes (wooden):
  • 40 Value 1
  • 5 Value 5
• 90 Banknotes (cardboard)
  • 40 Value 1
  • 30 Value 5
  • 20 Value 10
• Timeline Marker (wooden)
• First Player Marker (wooden)
• Rulebook

How to Play

Carnegie is an economic eurogame in which we will have to manage a company across North American geography through an action selection system where we have a matrix with four possible actions (the rows) and a series of advancements (columns) that mark a specific region. On each turn, the active player simply chooses one of the tracks and advances the corresponding marker one space to the right. This triggers first the bonus phase associated with the region, through which players can recall workers in that region to trigger income (associated with the region and the projects built nationwide). Subsequently, all players will be able to perform the same action. Both the bonus and the action are resolved in turn order, starting with the active player and proceeding clockwise. The power and variety of actions will be determined by the personal company board, featuring a series of departments where players will move employees to activate action points when the action associated with them is triggered. Many of these actions will require the employee to travel to the region where the action takes place (allowing them to be recalled during a bonus phase). These actions will allow players to obtain development points (to unlock new projects on our personal board or progress on the regional tracks), employee movement (to reorganize meeples in our office), project construction (placing different types of projects on the board, with a reward for connecting major cities across regions), or generating income (producing goods, necessary for building, and expanding offices with new rooms that grant new effects). Some bonuses allow players to make donations, which translate into various end-game scoring criteria (with an increasing cost for each marker already placed). The game ends once all markers have reached the end of their respective tracks on the action board.

Key Concepts

Let’s begin with the Main Board. It displays a large map of the United States with many of its cities depicted. There are two types of cities: major cities, which require specific construction types (represented by circular spaces with a matching icon), and minor cities, featuring only one space and no construction type requirements. Major cities display a victory point value. These cities are divided into four regions: West, Midwest, East, and South (each with a representative background color). In each of these regions, there will be a key city with a network value. Associated with each region, we have a transport track whose progress costs research and development points. Each space displays a potential benefit that is activated whenever a player receives income from that region. Next to each track, there is a space for players to send delegates. The final space of each track can only be reached by a single player and provides an immediate benefit. These tracks are further divided into three segments, each associated with a mode of transport: wagon (red), stagecoach (yellow), and train (green). Players will score at the end of the game if they manage to connect key cities based on the lowest transport level among the regions where those cities are located (there is a chart in the upper right area showing the points earned and the different combinations). In the upper area, we find the donation table, which allows players to activate scoring criteria at the end of the game. Each donation carries an increasing cost. Surrounding the board is the typical score track with spaces numbered from 0 to 99.

The game takes place over 20 rounds, tracked using the Timeline Tiles. These connect to form a 4×5 matrix enclosed by two end tiles (the fifth column is printed on one of these pieces). Each space indicates a region that can be activated or a donation phase.

To track game progress, there are four Action Markers. There is one marker for each action type. On each turn, the player chooses one of these markers to determine the action to be resolved, along with the activated region or donation phase. If a marker has reached its maximum, this region or donation will be activated by advancing the next marker below it that has not yet reached the end.

Each player will have a Company Board into which 4 Project Strips are inserted, one for each construction type that players can build in the map’s cities (housing, commerce, industry, and public infrastructure). Each of these strips shows on the gear wheel at its end the costs and benefits of each construction as it is pulled out of the board (they start the game fully inserted). Each visible segment shows a benefit topped with a disk (as a future construction) received when the income phase is triggered, along with the cost in research and development points required to pull out the next segment. On the board, there are 16 spaces for departments, with 5 departments already pre-printed. Each department features spaces for employees (some with an activation cost). The top area displays the action to which it is associated and the effect per active employee. In the third space of the bottom row, we find the company lobby, where employees wait to be assigned.

During the game, players can expand their company with new Department Tiles. These are placed in empty spaces on the board adjacent to at least one existing department, providing victory points at the end of the game depending on their location. Each tile shows 0 to 3 employee placement spaces in its lower area. In the upper area, the symbol of the action associated with the department appears, along with its effect. There are two types of effects: beige for effects triggered once per active employee, and purple for passive effects.

Each player has a workforce of Employees. These employees follow a peculiar cycle: they begin lying down in the company lobby. Using specific actions, they can move between departments, becoming active (standing up) by paying the cost indicated on the space (if applicable). Each employee activates their department once when the associated action is resolved. Some departments require these employees to be sent out as delegates to regional missions, remaining there until the chosen action at the start of the round matches that region, triggering an income phase if the player recalls at least one employee back to their company lobby. Players can expand their workforce through various bonuses. Employees active at the end of the game award victory points.

The Disks, besides serving as markers on regional transport tracks and the score track, are used to track donations made by each player and represent constructions in various cities after being removed from project strips.

Money is one of the two basic resources in the game. Its primary uses are paying to activate employees according to department requirements and making donations to unlock end-game scoring criteria.

Goods are the other resource to manage. They are required to acquire new departments and build projects in cities. Goods can be exchanged for money at any time (though not the other way around).

That is enough to get started.

Setup

1. Set up the main board in the center of the table.
2. Form a general supply with money and goods.
3. Shuffle the timeline tiles, stack 4 face-up or face-down, and connect them with the start and end tiles. Return the rest to the box.
4. Place the action markers in their corresponding spaces on the start tile.
5. Shuffle the department tiles and randomly return 4/8/16 tiles to the box in 4/3/2-player games.
6. Each player chooses a color and receives:
   • A company board.
   • 4 Project Strips inserted into their personal board on whichever side they choose.
   • 30 Disks (place 3 on the visible spaces of the project strips, 1 at the start of each regional transport track, 1 on space 0 of the score track, and the rest in a personal supply).
   • 15 Employees (place 1 on the leftmost free space of each department on their company board, 5 in the lobby, and the rest in a personal supply).
   • $12 from the general supply.
   • 4 Goods cubes from the general supply.
7. In games with fewer than 4 players, some donation and city spaces must be blocked. In 2-player games, place 18 disks of an unused color, while in 3-player games, place 9 disks. Use the solo mode deck to determine placement. Shuffle and reveal cards, placing a disk on the leftmost space of each city shown in the fourth row, and one disk on the corresponding donation space.
8. Choose a first player randomly and give them the first player marker and the timeline marker.
9. In 4-player games, all players receive an optional action tile. In 3-player games, only the last player gets one, and in 2-player games, no one receives it.
10. Now, starting with the player to the right of the first player and proceeding counter-clockwise, each player chooses a department tile from the display as their first department to build (placed next to the company board).
11. Starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, each player gets 6 movement points to move their employees. Once all players have spent their movement points, they may activate their employees (free if on spaces with no cost, paying the cost if on cost spaces).

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Carnegie plays out over 20 rounds. In each round, the active player performs the following steps:

1. Choose Action. The player advances the action marker to the next space on the right of one of the four timeline tracks. If this marker has reached the end, flip and advance the next available marker below it.
2. Event. The space occupied by the action marker (or flipped timeline marker) triggers an event that players resolve in turn order, starting with the active player and proceeding clockwise:
   • Income. If a player has at least one delegate in the matching region and recalls at least one (moving it to their lobby), they trigger an income phase, earning rewards from their project strips plus the benefit from their marker position on that region’s transport track.
   • Donations. The player may make a donation costing $5 plus $5 per previous donation they have made. They place a disk on the chosen donation, blocking it for opponents.
3. Departments. Starting with the active player and proceeding clockwise, each player resolves every department matching the chosen action. Each department must be fully resolved before moving on to the next (if players can choose the resolution order). In each department, a player can perform the effect once per active employee (who remains active unless required to be sent as a delegate).
4. Activate Employees. Starting with the active player and proceeding clockwise, each player may activate inactive employees in departments by paying the required cost.

This concludes the round, after which the action selection passes to the player on the left (if a timeline marker was flipped, flip it back face-up).

Players with optional action tiles can choose to use them during a turn to resolve a different action than the one selected.

The actions that activate departments are:

• Human Resources. These departments allow moving employees across company departments using movement points. Each movement point moves an employee to an orthogonally adjacent department. Moving an active employee lays them down. Players can move employees onto empty spaces, waiting for a department tile to be built there.
• Management. These departments allow acquiring new departments (paying their cost, with no duplicates allowed) or gaining income (money and/or goods). Some departments require sending employees as delegates to a region of choice.
• Construction. These departments allow building in cities. To build, take the leftmost construction from the corresponding project strip and pay the required goods cost. Place the disk in any city (matching symbol requirements if any). If placed in a minor city with a bonus, gain the reward based on your position on that region’s transport track. If the action requires delegates, place them in the region where the construction takes place.
• Research & Development. These departments provide development points to spend between unlocking project strips (each section has an R&D cost) and/or advancing on transport tracks (each segment specifies the required R&D cost). Unused points are lost. Reaching the final space of a transport track grants an immediate reward, and no other player may enter that space.

Game End

The game ends after round 20. Players proceed to final scoring, adding the following to their accumulated points:

• 3 Points if the optional action tile was not used.
• 1 Point per standing Employee on the company board.
• 2 Points per Department built in the bottom three rows of the company board (starting ones excluded).
• 3 Points per Department built in the fourth row.
• Visible points on project strips.
• Victory points for connected major cities (sum the network values of connected cities and check the minimum transport level across them to determine points from the chart).
• Victory points from cities containing at least one of your disks.
• Victory points from donations (maximum 12 points per donation).

The player with the most points wins. In case of a tie, victory is shared.

Variants

Solo Mode. A 2-player game is set up. The AI opponent uses a row of cards with victory point values (0/1/3/6/10), a set of disks, and an action selection deck. There are advanced cards and standard cards, creating a 20-card deck with varying ratios to adjust difficulty. These cards determine the action activated by the bot. Each action is resolved according to card parameters (for movement, cards shift right, giving points to the bot; for management, the bot takes department tiles; for construction, disks are placed in designated cities; for R&D, transport markers advance). The bot scores points based on card positions, acquired department tiles, occupied cities, and progress on transport tracks.

Personal Opinion

Good old Xavier Georges was one of those authors whose designs could be counted on one hand, boasting a magnificent trio consisting of Carson City (check out its tocho-review here), Ginkgopolis (check out its tocho-review here), and Troyes (check out its tocho-review here), alongside Alain Orban and Sébastien Dujardin. Those three games are to blame for why anything published from this gentleman’s mind must be taken into account.

A new design by Xavier Georges had been anticipated for a long time, as since Ginkgopolis was published in 2012, we had only seen his name on covers for re-imaginings of previous games such as Black Angel (check out its tocho-review here), a space version less impactful than Troyes, the dice version of Troyes (wasn’t it already a dice game?), or the card version of Carson City. That is why when Carnegie was announced, expectations went through the roof. Let’s see if it managed to meet them or perished in the attempt, not without first thanking Maldito Games for providing the review copy that makes this tocho-review possible.

In Carnegie, players become North American entrepreneur-philanthropists aiming not only to gain personal wealth, but also to give back to society by erecting public infrastructure and making major donations to various causes. You start with a modest company, few departments, and a workforce that can grow by up to fifty percent during the game. Each department is linked to one of the four possible actions that can be chosen across the twenty turns of the game.

Thus, the general concept of the game is moving employees around the company board to place them in departments, and when an action triggers a matching department, resolving its effect once per active worker inside. Many departments will require sending employees on regional missions across the board, staying there until an event triggers that region, allowing players to recall delegates to gain income and return them to the lobby to be reassigned later.

With this income, players can expand their company with new departments or build projects in map cities, increasing the money and/or goods generated in future income phases. Money and goods are required to execute most actions: money to activate employees and make end-game scoring donations, and goods to purchase new departments or place project disks on the map.

Through these constructions, players score victory points and aim to build network connections between specific cities, as end-game bonus points are awarded based on connected key cities and transport levels in those regions. Transport levels and project availability depend heavily on research and development.

This covers, in broad strokes, what players aim to accomplish across the four available actions. What I haven’t mentioned yet is the action selection mechanism, which has been quite trendy in recent years (if you are reading this tocho-review far in the future, I’m referring to the late 2010s and early 2020s). I am referring to the “action following” system selected by the active player. Something older than dirt, tracing back to 2002 when Andreas Seyfarth claimed the BGG top spot with his masterpiece, Puerto Rico (check out its tocho-review here).

This mechanic means the active player chooses an action, and every player executes that same action. In Puerto Rico, the active player gained a privilege for choosing the action while blocking others from choosing it that round. In Carnegie, however, the active player gets no special privilege (other than acting first) nor is any action blocked, as the game is not structured into traditional rounds.

The real key here lies in the event triggered when choosing an action, which is the game’s strongest concept, even if it’s simply a fresh take on action privileges. In both Puerto Rico and Carnegie, success comes from not wasting actions. Therefore, when selecting an action, players must carefully assess opponents’ situations to maximize their differential advantage. It isn’t just about choosing what helps you most right now, but what yields the largest gap in efficiency over your rivals.

This evaluation centers on resources and active employees. If an opponent lacks goods, it’s the ideal moment to choose a construction action, leaving them unable to place disks. If an opponent is low on cash, triggering a donation event lets you swoop in and place a disk before they can afford to.

Above all, active employees dictate player readiness. Construction actions often require sending employees out as delegates, leaving players short-staffed in that department immediately afterward.

This gives department tiles central importance, as they allow players to differentiate their engines. At setup, a limited pool of department tiles is made available. These are scarce (at most 2 copies each), and finding strong synergies between them is key to maximizing action turns. This feels very reminiscent of games like Endeavor (check out its tocho-review here) or Kemet, which also brings us to one of its weak points, as discussed later.

Naturally, one issue present in Carnegie is inherent to its core mechanic: unintended kingmaking. Just like in Puerto Rico, a player misreading the board state might make a call that benefits an opponent far more than themselves, drawing groans from around the table. It’s a game where table talk and table talk persuasion are constant necessities. But that’s a known trait of follow-action mechanics rather than a surprise fault.

The main complexity of Carnegie lies in mastering the employee cycle and understanding how sending them off as delegates fuels your economic engine. Building projects without triggering income phases is useless, which requires keeping delegates deployed in target regions. But spreading employees too thin starves your company departments of activation power. This delicate balancing act is the star mechanical concept of Carnegie and takes time to master, but once it clicks, the gameplay opens up beautifully.

It is an eurogame with a distinct economic flavor without being a pure economic game, as victory still comes from victory point optimization. However, building a smooth income engine is essential as actions grow more expensive. In that sense, it loosely reminds me of Alma Mater (check out its tocho-review here) for its economic backbone and resource flow. Both games offer a satisfying sense of momentum when your economic engine runs smoothly.

So much for the positives, because in my view, the game has a couple of rough edges that keep it from absolute greatness. The first, as hinted earlier, is the department selection. Born from a Kickstarter campaign, the backer edition included a massive variety of content, extra donation tiles, and a wide array of department tiles. The retail edition features a scaled-back set of 16 department tiles (4 per action type), which can feel repetitive over time.

Since departments provide strategic differentiation, it doesn’t take long to feel like you are exploring similar paths every game. While not broken, you’ll quickly crave the expansion tiles (which thankfully were released separately). Replayability takes a slight hit, though sharp player interaction keeps games engaging despite the static tile pool.

Player count scaling is another drawback. Carnegie is a wonderfully tense contest at 4 players, but loses steam at lower counts. At 2 players, it feels flat, as tracking opponent moves becomes trivial and action timing loses its surprise bite. At 4 players, managing turns between choices is a tight, demanding puzzle, and board space competition on the map is fiercely contested.

The dummy setup for blocking spaces in sub-4 player games also feels somewhat clumsy and tedious to set up. To make life easier, here is a link to a helper tool that generates setup layouts for player counts, covering map markers, donations, and department displays.

Overall, while not flawless, Carnegie delivers a solid experience that will land well with fans of economic-leaning eurogames who don’t want a full-blown heavy economic simulation like Tin Goose (check out its tocho-review here) or Brass (check out its tocho-review here). Mechanically approachable, it demands strategic foresight to play well.

As for production, Quinned Games delivers its usual high Kickstarter-era quality. Cardboard components are thick and sturdy, cards feature linen finish with good snap (mostly used for solo play, so sleeving isn’t strictly necessary), and wooden pieces have great density—especially the timeline markers. The rulebook is clear and well-organized.

Visually, Ian O’Toole delivers his signature pastel aesthetic, dominated by muted greens and browns. It shares visual DNA with his other map-based titles, but remains functional, crisp, and easy to read. Iconic graphic design and clear iconography throughout. The cover artwork depicting a somber, brooding Carnegie is understated, though perhaps less eye-catching than expected.

And let’s wrap this up. Carnegie is a medium-heavy eurogame featuring a follow-action mechanism where the active player dictates the action for everyone. Players expand across the map, build networks, and activate end-game scoring criteria. While the core selection rules are simple, action choices carry deep tactical weight. Player interaction is subtle, rewarding those who exploit opponents’ temporary vulnerabilities. On the downside, scaling is weak below 4 players, and the retail base game lacks tile variety, which can lead to repetitive plays. Overall, however, it remains a very fine design. For all these reasons, I give it a…