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CNN Sports Ticker posted:That looks intense and amazing. Everyone passes then, and the Stock round is over. Back in the Operating rounds, the HKR did not have enough cash to buy a train, so I finished its turn. Tekopo is up with the NJR
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Apr 6, 2014 05:44
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Orvin posted:Everyone passes then, and the Stock round is over. Back in the Operating rounds, the HKR did not have enough cash to buy a train, so I finished its turn.
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Apr 6, 2014 11:23
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The game start. Regionals that didn't get formed in this game were the GSWR (Dublin), W&W (Warsaw), SFAI (Milan), MAV (Budapest), DSI (Kopenhagen) and MIDI (Bordeaux). I managed to get the Wien Sudbahn Private (free token, didn't feel like this privates was worth it), the H minor (acts like a free port authority, probably not worth it) and the 4th and 8th concession, which I used to start the SFR (Rome) and CHN (Barcelona), with an aim to get a token in Madrid then use my Italian holdings to create a base of operations to Constantinople for the CHN. At the end of the first set of OR (I'll call it OR 1):  All pretty standard really, you can only ever buy a single 2+2 so there isn't really any space for shenanigans. OR 2:  We had a couple of people pulling ahead by the end of OR 2 since they managed to get a lot of 3 trains in their companies. Early cash is really important in this game since income at the start of the game can give you quite a lot. Our strongest player that manages to always do well in first plays pulled ahead, while our weakest player (which floated 4 regionals after everyone else had cherry-picked theirs) predictably came in last. Everyone else was sort of middle of the pack. The eventual winner won using a Russian Company. My zones were Italy, which I had almost exclusive rights to except for the minor that started in Sardinia (not as crazy as it sounds since the owner had the PLM).  I was also in Spain/Portugal, with the CHN, which I reckon is the best long-term regionals since it has a token in Barcelona already, the only port (and a Y town) that leads directly into the Sea of Sardinia.  End of OR 3 (action shot of my hand shuffling chips on the upper left):  By this time Nationals were already beginning to be formed (and proved to be quite valuable, actually). End of OR 4:  Think I missed an intervening OR here, but this was more or less the position at the end of the game. I only came in 5th but I did my intended run of NY to Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Naples, Taranto to Constantinople.  So, thoughts? Well, I loved it and almost everyone else loved it and is willing to play the game again, which is more than could be said about 18C2C which everyone had given up as a broken, boring mess by the end. As a partial cap game, 18OE doesn't have the tension of a full cap game but it is designed as a train permanent train game, and it works well within that particular design space. What I liked most about the design was the relative balance between the different areas: the UK is good but it is very congested, France is much the same, Germany has a load of regionals so gets contested as well, Iberia has some nice routes and lots of dots which are good for local trains, Italy has a wonderful Metropolis -> Y City -> Y City -> Lots of dots -> Y City run, Austria-Hungary is a bit weak but has access to many Metropolises and can do an OE run from Berlin early and Moscow is much the same. The game really shifts focus well: regionals are good because of cash flow but you eventually want to form a Major because it gives you so much more options. Nationals can be extremely good early to develop your area as well, as well as doing shenanigans with your trains by buying out the soon-to-be-rusting trains of the majors. I think it is important to at least have one national within your portfolio because otherwise your options are severely decreased. The game does get speeded up by the end by the presence of nationals as well, since you should be able to keep track of how much got upgraded within your particular area. The OE run is important but it isn't something you want to rush to, since the three jumps are better at the end of the game than at the start. What felt weird was that the majors had always enough cash and good enough runs to keep going forward in the stock chart: this, although it appears to be short and has sliding along the top, is properly paced in that once we reached the end of it the game was pretty much over. I think we didn't sell shares enough: this can really hurt someone since it means they can't slide along the top and get an advantage that way, but the large number of players was more conducive to you holding on to your shares since there were only so many good companies. Privates felt really crappy and unnecessary although some of them had good powers. They are 1880-style privates but they aren't as good as minors. Minors have overall awesome powers and probably should be focus on due to how flexible they are in comparison to privates. Concessions are important: they allowed me to lock out Italy by closing the SFAI for example, since that was my first action after I got all of my stuff floated. Stuff I sort of disliked: port tokens, especially the fact that they give two sea zones in phase 7-8, really make port authorities unnecessary, although they do require some good set-ups to use properly. Apart from that I think the sea movement was done in an alright way: it's not overwhelmingly more powerful and you really need to plan for it to use it well. Another thing I didn't like was the fact that Greece is a wasteland where no one has any reason to go to: you can just skip it as you still need to hit two sea zone to get in/out of it. You might as well miss it altogether if you are heading for Constantinople. Maybe if Athens was a Y city it might be worth thinking about going there but as it stands it really is stupid to go through it. Eastern Austria-Hungary and most of the Balkans are also a waste-land. As I said, I think the game is balanced well and I can see any region of the board managing to get good runs. I like the focus on building up your country first and how the different track right zones affect each other. For example, even Scandinavia can get some extremely good runs, although they will struggle to make an OE run: a prime target for nationalisation. The OE run feels better than the equivalent East to West of 18C2C since it isn't the end-all and be-all of the game: it is important but can be left for later, or earlier if you want to make your rns better immediately, both are viable strategies. Thanks to the sea zones, almost all areas of the map can reach constantinople, which helps with the balance of the game. There aren't any overwhelmingly bad regionals, although as blackmongoose pointed out, the GSWR Dublin regional is a bit crap, since Ireland is not that great an area and the LNWR is much better in all respects and can do exactly the same thing as the the GSWR. The nationals can really change the game: for example, in Spain, only my major was left and the other two companies were regionals, which meant my runs were much better since all the dots and towns were constantly upgraded by the two nationals. Nationals can run for a LOT of money in the end game, although you want a major in order to get the stock jumps from the OE: all in all, they feel very much balanced against each other. Unlike 18C2C, this game feels like it has been second tested quite thoroughly. The end of the game comes in a sensible pattern and just when the game would start to get boring: the abbreviated turn at the end also helps. Unlike 18C2C, you aren't building bypass after bypass after bypass by the end, and the lack of bull tokens means that tokening is more important in the game, but at the same time it isn't necessary for you to do the same, boring NY to Chicago to West Coast run that you HAVE to do in 18C2C, which just leads to the endless by-passes of that game. The Regionals/Majors/Nationals are also a better mechanism than the Systems present within 18C2C, which instead of speeding up the game, slow it down and also allow you to do stupid 'with-hold with one shell, run with the other shell' crap that is endemic of 18C2C and which drives all tension out of the game. 18OE does have faults, as I listed some before: downtime is still incredible and one of our guys got extremely bored since all of his companies were clumped together. Everyone else, however, was having fun and there was still a lot of planning necessary while other players played. The game can become a clusterfuck: there is quite a lot of inter-company share buying and it is hard to keep track of what you are owed while several people are running at once (necessary to keep the game going). The start of the game can be quite slow since there are 30 companies floating, but by the middle when majors and nationals especially are formed, it can be a bit faster. We spreadsheeted the end of the game, which is something I really encourage anyone to do. Another issue with the game is that due to the locked number of regionals and the fact that most of them are started in the first Stock Round/Concessions, not many shenanigans happen: you want to hold on to your companies because if they fold you won't be able to open anything else. I think this is fixed by having a lower number of players however. This did leave us with just being able to buy into other companies rather early in the game, which made the SRs just an efficiency exercise, although it still had interesting decisions on when to float majors/when to merge minors in etc. Playing with 8 players seemed a tad unbalanced: not enough to break the game, however. My group agreed that the sweet spot is probably 5 or 6 and we will probably play with this number of players next time. In terms of endorsements, a couple of players stated they might be interested in buying the game now that they had tried it and all except one said they would be willing to play again. At the end of the game everyone was already madly thinking about what sort of strategies they would try next time: this was helped by the fact that everyone was only a couple of thousands behind each other. When we finished playing 18C2C, everyone was glad that it was over and liked the experience, but would probably never play again. 18OE is more than an experience: it is an actually working game that feels playtested, played-through and finely balanced in order to provide an enjoyable experience for all. 18OE, as someone in the group said quite eloquently, was the game that they had wished 18C2C could have been. Of the two, there is a clear winner. The production qualities of the game are amazing and really all components are top notch. The gap in the middle was barely noticeable and as predicted, did not impede the playing of the game. The stock chart worked well, the game map is amazing although i wish it had graphical representations of mountains and rivers, but the space for the shares on the side of the board seemed superfluous: you could just keep the extra shares and tokens on the regional charter and keep them flipped instead of wasting so much space. Seems like a weird design decision. One thing that was really missing was a income tracker: with such a big game, you need a way to see how much companies are running for and this wasn't possible without guesstimating based on the number of trains presents in a company: I might print something out and laminate it, since there should be extra large tokens available once a company becomes a major. The only thing I'm worried about is losing pieces because there are so many of them. Our setup actually used a ping-pong table with a felt cover on top of it to prevent the map from moving around: this was perfect because the ping-pong table was wider than most tables and thus allowed enough space to everyone to have their charters around it. We still required a separate table for the stock market, however: this game is a true monster game and even though it has been shrunk down, a standard table will not hold most of it. I think, overall, it is a wonderful game and I really can't wait to try it again: I think we might give it another try in a couple of months, which I am excited about, or maybe we will try to play one of the shorter scenarios to see how they go. The 12 hour play time seems correct: we managed to set up, play and pack up within that time limit, with everyone playing relatively fast. It is still a full day of gaming however and you have to push people to analyse outside the time when they need to run. Overall, I really can't recommend the game enough. The price tag is steep but really, in the realm of monster 18XX games, this game is really unique and probably one of the most playable long 18XX games I have ever played.
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Apr 6, 2014 13:02
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Thanks a lot for the detailed post Tekopo, now I want to spend too much money -- good game, good production quality, and the game exists  How did the shorter/easier scenarios in 18OE look for time and complexity? Do they still need the table space of the full game?
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Apr 6, 2014 13:31
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rchandra posted:Thanks a lot for the detailed post Tekopo, now I want to spend too much money -- good game, good production quality, and the game exists
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Apr 6, 2014 13:33
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The playbook seemed to imply that the port authority was more for early game sea routes than for endgame sea routes. Especially since port authorities reduce the overseas tile and token placement penalty. Although I wonder why the port tokens have their reduction increased for the endgame. Were companies switching to ocean runs late game, or had the stuck with what they were running most of the game?
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Apr 6, 2014 14:52
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Orvin posted:The playbook seemed to imply that the port authority was more for early game sea routes than for endgame sea routes. Especially since port authorities reduce the overseas tile and token placement penalty. Although I wonder why the port tokens have their reduction increased for the endgame. Were companies switching to ocean runs late game, or had the stuck with what they were running most of the game?
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Apr 6, 2014 14:58
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It is now Blackmongoose's turn with the JHA. What is also kinda odd, is that the port authority only gives two sea reductions across all your trains, while a port token could be used by each train you own. It would seem to make something like London with its port a really good place to start and just have each train go to a different open port early in the game.
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Apr 6, 2014 18:08
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Orvin posted:It is now Blackmongoose's turn with the JHA.
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Apr 6, 2014 18:10
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I'm surprised the H minor wasn't worth it, it seems like a really useful power for running into somewhere you don't have a token (or using a 1-ferry that doesn't hit a city). It is really dependent on location though I suppose. Tek, you're up in 1880.
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Apr 7, 2014 16:09
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It was sort of useful for me: it meant that I could do a madrid to constantinople run fairly easily. I just wish that it affected token prices as well, like a port authority does. I guess with the setup that I had in Italy and due to the fact that I secured my ports in Naples/Taranto I wasn't as worried about it, and it did help running to NY in the early game as well. I think in retrospect I could have used it better/folded it in earlier to make use of its power.
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Apr 7, 2014 16:15
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CNN you are up, use the more recent file please.
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Apr 8, 2014 22:44
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I don't think there is anything useful I can do this stock round, so I will pass when it gets to my turn.
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Apr 9, 2014 00:08
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Done, at last. You're up Tekopo, sorry for taking so long just to pass.
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Apr 11, 2014 12:07
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I think BM is up.
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Apr 11, 2014 21:20
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Orvin posted:I finally finished punching and stickering my copy last night. I think all told it took something like 6 hours to do it all over a couple nights watching TV. Mine's waiting for me at my front desk and even though I'll likely never get to play it, I'm entirely too excited.
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Apr 11, 2014 22:20
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Tekopo posted:I think BM is up. It looks like there is a case of having the game saved twice at the same timestamp. The savegame with Blackmongoose (2nd to last) looks to be further along. Although, unless BM is going to sell a share of his own JHA, there is probably nothing that will happen on BMs stock turn. I will definitely be passing when it gets to me though.
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Apr 11, 2014 23:39
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I passed for myself and Orvin, so CNN is up
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Apr 12, 2014 20:22
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I need to find time to put some actual effort into a post, but I got to play a short scenario of 18OE on Friday. It was a 2 player game involving France and England. We both enjoyed the game, and my opponent liked it enough that he is willing to give it another try, hopefully with 3 or 4 players next time. I wound up with 3 french regionals (NE, SW, and SE), a minor in the French Mediterranean port, and a minor in the prebuilt city northwest of Birmingham. The concessions turned out to be quite important, as my opponent had priority and got 2 of the 3 concessions, so he got his choice of the regionals, while I quick threw out my minors where I thought they would be the most useful. I then had to burn a turn to remove the Irish regional so I didn't get stuck with a lone regional off on its own. I wound up making good use of my regionals to control the south of France and made good money even though I did not get a token into London or Paris until late in the game. I had shares and cash on my opponent by mid game, but I ended up making some mistakes. First up was not taking the free pullman that came with the M private until some point in the 6 phase. That was at least 1-2 operations without the extra income. Also, I wound up taking the cash in from the OE run instead of the stock push. That probably cost me the win. I lost by 700, and by the end of the game, 3 spaces on the stock chart was 100. It enabled me to get permanent trains a little earlier, but one of my companies wound up with only a single permanent train. Play time was about 5 hours, but we were stumbling through some of the rules. I think a third person would have made the game a little more interesting, as we didn't really have much of a choice of shares to buy once we were full up on our own. I do have some pictures that I need to post up at a later date.
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Apr 14, 2014 23:51
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What did you think overall, Orvin? What did you like/didn't like? Really interested in hearing the views of other people concerning the game. I do think that using the OE run to get money is a mistake. Ideally you should have enough money for both trains, especially if you are good about pumping cash into a company by buying trains that are going to die anyway. Did you have any nationals?
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Apr 16, 2014 15:37
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I think I liked it, but I would need to play it a few more times. I think even the short scenarios need 3 players to work better. One of my companies that made an OE run had 3 shares in the company still. The stock value increase would have put enough money in the company when the shares sold, but I couldn't be sure that the shares would sell in the next SR. We both messed up a little on getting a national. We each had a regional with a 3+3 train that was running well, and we didn't have the cash to grow it into a major after each converting 2 other regionals to majors. So the situation was I buy a 6 train at the end of a second OR, and force us to make a major that would have no train and be forced to raise the cash needed to buy a 6 or 7 train. So I stalled on the six train a round so we could see how the nationals performed. I was then able to quick buy two of the 4 trains over to my major in preparation for it becoming a national. It turns out that a national with two 4+4s run really well in small scenarios because the regions get really built up with such a small area. On the whole, with everything scaled back to the small scenarios, things are too balanced for the first majors to run badly with a combination of 3s and 4 trains. Also, since you can't go from regional directly to national, there isn't a good reason to make a national when the 4s break. Maybe with a few plays, the upcoming train rush would be recognized to push all regionals up to majors. But that runs the risk of leaving one major vulnerable, or all your majors short on capital.
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Apr 16, 2014 15:54
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Remember that companies can sell their own shares during ORs as well. That's just another reason to take the triple bump - if you can make it to a ledge, you can get a good amount of capital into a company by having it sell its own shares without hurting the price too much. I also did the England/France scenario, and I think one of the Eastern ones might have been better, since E/F is fairly cramped and there's not too much interesting track stuff happening. The Regional -> Major conversion is definitely the part of the game I have the hardest time figuring out a good strategy for, since there's so much to account for (like that regionals can't become nationals, which tripped me up when the 4's broke earlier than I thought and the company I had planned to nationalize was still a regional).
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Apr 16, 2014 17:30
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I had thought to do something like that with my second major. But the end result would have been a wash. I had 3 shares in it, and if I sold them to the open market, it would have dropped 2 spaces in the market. I would have gotten roughly the same amount of money with only one space increased in value. At that point I figured it best to just take the OE run money in and see how the game turned out. It was a learning game, so I wanted to see how different ideas worked out. My opponent had decided to take the share value increases, so I was also interested to have some hard proof how things worked out. As I stated before, I definitely want to play again, but I think with more than 2 players. I am debating on bringing it to a small event at someone's house this weekend. I will probably bring it, but I don't think I will make a push to get it played. Luckily my opponent from last week has a table big enough to play it in a back room. He has offered to try and get another player or two, and to leave the game set up for the week or two it would take to get played on Friday evenings.
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Apr 16, 2014 20:35
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Tekopo posted:What did you think overall, Orvin? What did you like/didn't like? Really interested in hearing the views of other people concerning the game. I'm not actually sure it's a mistake - if you convert early enough, you will have some spare stock jumps anyway, and if you're already sold out (like yours and Scott's company in our 8 player game), the money means one fewer split or more money for shennanigans.
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Apr 23, 2014 16:37
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Gonna play another 7p game of 18OE this sunday. Will report findings, but probably won't go the full AAR route.
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May 1, 2014 22:53
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Sorry for the huge delay. Won't happen again. Tekopo, you're up.
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May 3, 2014 00:12
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Which 18XX game is the best one for two players that I don't have to send an international letter to an old man's garage to buy?
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Jun 29, 2014 06:37
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'Actually being available' limits your choices to 1830, pretty much. I haven't tried 1856 with 2 players, though, but even though it was printed by Mayfair, it is really hard to get.
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Jun 29, 2014 09:55
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Has anyone had any recent dealings with Deep Thought? A guy in our group placed an order ~ 2 years ago that we're still waiting on. There's a couple I want to order but if it's literally going to be 2-3 years I don't think I can commit to that. "Currently there is about a 7-11 month backlog of orders"
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Jun 29, 2014 15:36
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inferis posted:Which 18XX game is the best one for two players that I don't have to send an international letter to an old man's garage to buy? 1860 and 1862, both by Mike Hutton. I'm pretty sure 1862 is still available and '60 shouldn't be too hard to find.
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Jun 29, 2014 16:31
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Admin Understudy posted:Has anyone had any recent dealings with Deep Thought? A guy in our group placed an order ~ 2 years ago that we're still waiting on. There's a couple I want to order but if it's literally going to be 2-3 years I don't think I can commit to that. I wouldn't count on anything from Deep Thought games any time soon. I know I have had an order in for over 2 years, and I am 397 in the queue. I started somewhere in the early 500s.
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Jun 29, 2014 21:38
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I am currently 466. On the 4th of October 2012 I was at 585 (you can see a post of me in this thread stating as such). That's an average of 0.19 spaces per day. At this rate I will get my game in 6.7 years, give or take.
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Jun 29, 2014 23:11
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Tekopo posted:I am currently 466. On the 4th of October 2012 I was at 585 (you can see a post of me in this thread stating as such). That's an average of 0.19 spaces per day. At this rate I will get my game in 6.7 years, give or take. The rumor is that he is no longer updating the database but is still actually producing games. I don't believe that though.
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Jun 30, 2014 00:06
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Played another game of 18XX after a pause of 2 months or so, I almost had the shakes. We wanted to play 1842 (norther Germany!) but the owner had forgotten to bring the brown tiles for it so we played our good old standby of 1824 instead. The game isn't as good 3P as 4P but it was still enjoyable: my three company strategy didn't work out though so I was 5 shares down by the time we finished. Still an enjoyable game and probably the best game of 18XX I've bought, I would recommend it if you can get a copy.
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Aug 13, 2014 10:51
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Just read yesterday that DTG is setting up expedited orders of 1846, 18NY, and 1817. All aboard games is offering 1817, and Golden Spike Games is offering the other two. They are only offering ready to play kits (money is optional), and seem to be about a $20 to $30 premium over DTG prices. I think they may be willing to ship internationally. I have heard it is only a couple of week wait at this point. The owner of DTG realized there is a large demand for those games, and franchised their production. The designers still get their royalties, so that is good. I am on the fence about ordering 46 and NY. One person in my group has an order for 46, but it is supposed to be one of the better fast games. I am also interested in 18NY, but a little worried that having 11 minors will bog the game down at the start.
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Aug 20, 2014 21:48
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46 was my first 18xx and it's a good short/beginner game but since it's partial cap it isn't about manipulation of the stock market but more about creating one good company. It's what I call a 2 train game because you can almost always get a permanent in a company so it's more about getting two trains/east west routes.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:01
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I had played 1846 once, awhile ago, and I do remember enjoying it. I would like another fast game to choose from, and I am hoping that dealing out the private companies mixes things up a tiny bit. As it stands, the only other "short" game that gets played is 18EU, but that game can very easily be lost in the initial auction. I also got a chance to play two games of 18OE at a mini convention a couple weeks ago. First game was a teaching 4 player game. Two players had never played before, me (played once), and another player who had played multiple times. We played a medium scenario that used Russia, Austria, and Italy. In hindsight, I either shouldn't have started one of the Serbian companies, or very quickly nationalized it. I forgot that extra cities for a national are a flat $50, and that would have been really nice with 4 2+2 trains and only 3 cities on the map. Total play time was something like 9 hours after setup, with an hour break for lunch. Not surprisingly, the experienced guy won by a large margin. The second game was a 3 player full game. It was me, the experienced player from the other game, and another player who had played a demo game or two of 18OE at some point. I tried starting extra regionals for less money, but it didn't work out very well, as by mid game I was short on shares compared to everyone else. I think i learned that you basically have to withhold most of the early revenue to make sure you get 3+3 trains on most of your companies. The 3 trains and green tiles increase your revenue so much over paying out the early runs. I came in way in last the full game. I knew it was likely to happen when the experienced guy passed on starting a 6th regional in the second stock round. The other player and I debated just passing and going into another set of ORs with our extra companies, but we didn't want the game to drag on even longer than we figured it would. This gave him a significant cash lead the next SR, as he had money for extra shares, and his shares/companies ran well. The other player came in a reasonably close second place behind the experienced guy. Total play time for the full game was 12 hours with a short lunch break. The game was set up the night before, and we used the prearranged auction results. I think 3 players wasn't enough. There was too much to keep track of. A 4th or 5th player would have made things better. I do like the game, but the full game may be a little too long for anything but maybe once a year play.
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Aug 20, 2014 23:33
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Played some 18NY and I still mildly dislike the game, since it's a partial cap game with hex trains. It's alright but I still think there are major balance issues with it.
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Sep 24, 2014 00:12
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Cool, I get to host 1856 tomorrow! ...but I don't have poker chips. 
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Nov 2, 2014 02:00
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I played my copy of 1846 for the first time today (second time ever for the game). We figured out part way through that we didn't remove the trains needed in the setup for a 4 player game. It kinda messed with the early game. And things seemed to stall a bit on the green trains. I still think I like the game, but I need a few more plays to help figure it out.
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Nov 2, 2014 06:01
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