Kewl! So we’ll start Monday 13th July, 5pm UK time (GMT +1).
Drop me a PM in advance if you want to play and I’ll get you an invite to the discord server for the voice chat while we play.
The question is, which title? I’ll put forward 1861 for being operational and frequently mentioned as a better early play experience or 1846 for being famous and starting with a draft. I am not set on it being 1 of these 2 but we need a place to start.
I’m eager to try an Lonny Orgler title (18CZ, 1854, 1824, 1848 – 24 and 48 would be some required reading for me).
That said, I have 61 fulfilling soon (well, soon-ish), so I’m interested in that one as well.
I’ll conclude by saying: I’m open to anything
Having also backed 61 that was part of my motivation for suggesting it. Along with it being accessible. The mod looks good too.
I’d definitely be keen to give 54 a whirl on account of having 44/54 as well.
@pillbox @Name1ess given the lack of contact I’m going to assume we haven’t hit playing today. Let me know if the future suits 
I’ve blocked out time on my work calendar indefinitely starting at (North American CDT) 11am; some days of the week I’d be able to stretch to 2 hours, likely; other days I will be limited to 1 hour.
I would propose, everyone’s schedules permitting, we do a “Session 0” to do a tech test and have a realtime conversation about which game we shall play and what cadence of sessions we would like.
Good idea!
Im in for session 0. What time?
Does 5pm BST work?
Side note from a non-participant - if you click on the “calendar” icon (last but one on the editor toolbar, which itself is hidden by default on mobile but will pop up if you click the hamburger), you can specify a time+date with multiple zones automatically.
So for example
2020-07-14T16:00:00Z
will show the site-default time zones if you hover over it, and you can edit it to show others.
EnterTheWyvern, lalunaverde, and I met today to verify Tabletop Simulator and Discord were working well for us. We poked around the 1861: The Russian that Eats Trains† TTS mod to ensure we had a good idea how the scripting worked.
We are currently planning on starting our game 2020-07-15T16:00:00Z (using the black-magic time-calculator Roger was talking about)
@Name1ess – are up for TTS? Does Wednesday work for you?
†: I made this part up
Hi, apologies but I was unexpectedly really busy today and I’ve only now had a chance to sit down and respond.
Wednesday at 17:00 BST for 2 hours is good for me. I do have Tabletop simulator but I’m a novice, is there anything that I need to do to prepare beforehand?
We won’t be pushing TTS to its limits by any stretch of the imagination; it will just be basic click-and-drag manipulation of the various components. I don’t anticipate you should have any issues but we can be accommodating and work through most difficulties you may have.
In the meantime, I recommend reading up on 1861:
1861_Rules_2.0_web.pdf (1.3 MB)
This is gonna be my first 18xx game outside of the “My Little 18xx” games of 18Chessie and 1889.
My sum total of plays in the genre is 3 games of 1889.
I don’t get the impression this is a full bore title either. Reading the rules last night there appears to be no player bankruptcy and the nationalising rules are described by the designer as friendly. I think 1889 is more a ‘no training’ wheels game than this or 18Chesapeake. Plus with no expert players in the group I think not many mistakes will be fully exploited quickly if at all.
We’re off to a great start!
We completed the Privates auction where we, all 4, took drastically different approaches and landed in equally different positions.
LaLunaVerde (if I recall correctly), ended up with no privates but was able to fund 2 Minors, both significantly more than R100 (I don’t recall the specifics); additionally, both of his Minors started with routes already (or near as makes no difference) printed on the board.
Name1ess ended with a single Private that should harmonize well with his Minors.
I grabbed two Privates and was able to squeak open 2 Minors at R100 each at the end of the auctions.
EnterTheWyvern has a strong lead in Privates income but ultimately was only able to start a single Minor in the first Stock Round, but start it with a lot of cash (R140).
I was just re-reading some rules and determined I may have cheated. I think the SV is one of the “Phase 3” Minors and was sorted wrong in the TTS mod.
EDIT: I’d like to know what you all feel would be sufficient to “make it right”. I’m amenable (but hesitant) to rolling back to the SR. Other options could include “putting an asterisk on the game”, “delaying it operating again until an OR after the Phase 3 begins”, or “substituting it for a valid choice and letting that other choice do an OR1 turn instead of the SV”.
EDIT 2: I realize now I made a poor assumption about the sorting/order of the TTS mod. The “Phase 3” privates are the top-most 6 Minors, not the right-most 6 Minors.
EDIT 3: I’ve tried to think through what I would have chosen to do if I realized in SR1 that I could not start the S-V. I think I would have started only the M-NN at R140 and planned to open the S-V once we were in Phase 3.
As this is almost a training game as we get to grips with the rules I’m quite happy for you to reset or rollback as you see fit.
Maybe something like swap it for geographically closest valid minor at same price would be a reasonable fudge?
That was my first thought as well. Unfortunately, there are no valid Minors in that quadrant of the board.