After receiving the rulebook the second race of Cubitos was a bit easier but also included more busting and my gamble for the shortcut payed of… because I won. It’s a fun race and quick to play. We already set up the cards for race 3 in the box and puzzled over how the dice sre going to work in conjunction 
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Got a one-off game of One Deck Dungeon in. Ended the game a mostly dead Warden, but managed to defeat the Mud Golem at the last second.
This was the first time using a playmat, which I was pleasantly surprised by.
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Finishing up an async game of 1889 Shikoku railways about now.
Game was mostly uneventful for me, being an investor for the most part, until right at the end when an unexpected (only unexpected because I wasn’t paying attention, looking back the build up to it was obvious) diesel push forced me to blow all my money on a diesel engine. The other player hit hard by that sold his trains from one company to another for ￥1, and dumped all his stocks “for fun”, leaving me in control of another train-less company.
Overall, a long and dull experience, punctuated by only one moment of interest, that wasn’t that interesting. I’m glad I decided to try out an 18xx before I bought or made any, as I’m now pretty sure it’s a genre I have no interest in. Part of that is probably down to the async play, and having to tab between information to see what is going on (and not doing so sufficiently), and part is because I was effectively unable to take part in the map building for a long while just because turn order and other player decisions made it impossible to become a company president for a long while. But even so, I’m not keen on diving back in to find out if my first experience of 18xx was an outlier.
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I can’t blame you. It’s not for everyone.
However, I will say two things:
Thing the First: 1889 is rather uninteresting compared to what I’ve seen in other, more modern designs.
Thing the Second: Async 18xx is awful. I refuse to play that way. I need the immersion that a real-time experience brings in order to bring the game to life. Otherwise it’s just a spreadsheet and a map of, well, Shikoku in your case.
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I think the impact of async will vary from player to player. As it’s the only way I get to play games these days, and not something that normally bothers me (much, I mean, of course I would always prefer to play real-time), I think the impact on my experience should be minimal - if anything, I like having the time to think, especially on a learning game.
Your second point though… 1889 came to me highly recommended, and it seems it is popular enough that there are plans to bring it back into print, competing with the latest releases. Now that I understand basic 18xx terminology though, perhaps I’ll understand something if you outline how modern designs are better?
1889 is “1830, but Japan”. It has a limited track selection and the game is almost exclusively about the following, in equal measures:
- Sabotaging the track of your opponents’ companies (and in this respect, the tiles available for Kotohira are particularly brutal to inexperienced players) – a.k.a. “tragic track”
- Cashing out every last penny from any company you are in charge of
- Weaseling out of having to buy a Diesel out of pocket
And the following in the greatest of measures:
- Dumping broken companies on your unsuspecting opponent
It is a brutal, cutthroat game, but the interesting bits of 1889/1830 is in the parts of “positioning to dump a bankrupt company on your neighbor” and almost not at all about building a rail network and making good runs with your trains.
There are, roughly speaking, two schools of design for 18xx games. “Financial Shenanigans” and “Run Good Companies”. 1889 is on the financial shenanigans side, but at the lower end of what’s possible. The companies in the game don’t give a lot of variety for how to get money out of the bank and into your pocket.
I, personally, like the “Run Good Companies” games where you get your companies, and there’s a reduced risk of going bankrupt (some games just make it impossible, in one way or another), and then it’s a competition to see who can develop the best network and run the best routes; this often loops back around to the “tragic track” concept – laying track that makes your opponents’ plans much harder or impossible. So in these games, the battle of wits is fought with, to some degree, track tile usage, but often it’s a competition to see who can utilize the track that everyone builds the best, as measured by money in their pocket and share valuation.
Unfortunately, the “financial/operational” dichotomy isn’t perfect. There are some interesting 18xx titles that mix up a lot of aspects found across many different 18xx games.
I think 1849 may be of interest to you, based on my perception of what you do and don’t like in games. 1841, too, but that one is out of print. I haven’t played it, but I’ve been told that 1882: Assiniboia is a tight-yet-brutal design that streamlines the 1830/1889 experience down into a shorter game with more sharp edges.
My favorite (though I’ve only played it solo, so far) is 1862: Railway Mania in the Eastern Counties. No bankruptcy, you can own 100% of a company and if it loses its train, you can just throw it in the bin and move on. It has 3 different train types (trains that run differently through tiles) and 2 different company styles (Full-capitalization, such as what you learned in 1889, sell 5 (or 6, I can never remember which game has which percentage) and you get ten-times par into the company treasury; and partial-capitalization, where the company floats after 5 shares, but only gets five-times par for its capital, but future shares are sold from the company itself at market value, rather than the IPO at par price, and the price paid goes into the company treasury.) I think it’s a bit of a blend of “financial shenanigans” and “run good companies” and it ignores a lot of the standard 18xx tropes.
EDIT: I know I didn’t come to a conclusion. There probably isn’t one to make unless you find yourself with another opportunity to play a different game in the series
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I guess one more thing:
If it was your first time playing and you didn’t launch any companies of your own, you had near-zero chance of winning
If I hadn’t lost interest and been stupid right near the very end, I think I would have won handily.
(I did have one company, but it wasn’t in the first tier of floated companies, coming into play in phase 4)
All I had to do at one point was sell stocks instead of passing.
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Ahh, I see.
The investor-only strategy has some prickly edges; it means in order to have enough shares in something to stay competitive, you must expose yourself to the risk of having a company dumped on you.
And company dumps can be engineered; so a player in second place that controls 2 or 3 companies can, often, sacrifice one of those companies and dump it on a game-leader. So be wary of holding 2 shares of 2nd place’s company if you are in the lead
It was actually my own company I had to sell stocks for.
Good point though. Even if I had done so, the “sell all trains for 1Yen to crash a company” thing might have been a way for another player to kneecap me. I have to say that seems an odd interaction, almost impossible to sidestep, especially if you aren’t tracking the priority deal closely.
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That interaction, I believe, is the crux of why 18xx has been a thing for so long. It’s evolved from that in many of the designs that stray from the 1829/1830/1835 pedigree.
Winning despite your opponents doing everything in their power to kneecap you is the essential 18xx experience.
No, that’s not quite what I meant. I like the idea of offloading a company with rusted/about to rust trains, or failing in some other way, on another player.
Selling all the trains from a successful company to another company for 1 Yen, then selling all your stocks, all without a chance for another player to react, seems like an odd interaction.
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Most of the local 18XX players locally prefer the financial ones it seems.
I don’t like it because of the reasons said. I’d much prefer an out for a lesser penalty than the very ‘gotcha’ feeling of dumping a company, or better restrictions on selling trains cross companies.
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Yes, the ability to sell a railway’s last train for a penny seems odd thematically and mechanically.
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I found that odd too when I played it the first time. This is why I was keen on trying Mike Hutton’s 1862 Eastern Counties and 1860 Isle of Wight as corporate dumping isnt a viable move.
1817 also remains my fave financial game as the mechanisms feel “rational”. I tried to cheat the game on my play with Wyvern and my friends but it’s not easy to do financial shenanigan in there. However, 1817 takes a looooong while, but 1862 is pretty quick. Hutton designed it to be a relatively quick one.
However, in general I still end up preferring Cube Rails and Imperial/Imperial 2030 as it emphasises cross investment and often punishes soloing. Or play a Splotter if I want a heavy one.
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Played MarraCash. Another old beigey game. Same designer of For Sale and Medina. You move visitors in Marrakesh in groups and they go to the shops of their colour. (E.g. Blue visitors go to blue shops) These shops you get via auctions.
So there’s strong shared incentives here. You might just sit back and let your friend move those group of visitors because they’ll go to your shops without you spending an action.
But there’s commission fees too. Auctioneer gets a cut of the winning bid for being the auctioneer. The mover of visitors gets a cut depending on how much profit from each shop owners. Do you want to move a group to your shop, or d you want to move another group instead to get a cut? If you slack on the latter, your friend would just move them to their shop, gets wads of cash, and they get 100% of the money. A beigey keeper.
Steampunk Rally Fusion - I enjoyed this. Incredibly unpretentious. It’s an engine building game and the game’s theme is a steampunk themed race where you literally build the engine of your vehicle. Certainly light years ahead in fun compare to your usual boring Euro fare of colonising the Americas.
Polis: Fight for the Hegemony - it’s been a while since ive played it. Still fun 2 player Euro with combat. Im gonna give the 2020/2021 reimplementation a try.
Polynesia - ooohhh a logistics game! A bit dry despite the wonderful production. But very strategic and interactive.
Northern Pacific - more NorPac! Still fun.
Antike Duellum - Antike for 2 players and it works. Need more plays but it seems that the winner can be determined a few VPs before you reach the requirement. A perfect complement for my copy of Antike 2.
Hellas by Franz-Benno Delonge. Didnt like it. Often leads to a degenerate arms race. Voyaging is unused once the arms race and fighting starts.
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Just returned from a Moday Night Games Eve with the Guild in Napier, and gosh, I was missing it. I have missed it for two weeks, and I needed gamers games. It has been three weeks with only a physical game of Forbidden Island, that wasn’t enough for my games addiction
First we had a game between 5 of Mission: Red Planet. Despite being a bit lost by the first round of resources and not getting anything, I think my strategy paid off, and I managed to come back, and finished second by only two points. Really enjoyed it, a simple game, a bit chaotic but manageable. Definitely surprised me very positively.
We followed it with a couple of rounds of Straw. So similar to Uno, I managed to win the game when they cornered me with a 50 and I had the straw. I even looked like “Oh no, you got me” 
Then we went onto playing New York Slice. I did terribly at this, I went for an early special that gave me bonuses for different slices of pizza, but on the very last round two player nulified my numbers with more slices, so ended last with a sad 7 points.
To finish with, we played Werewords, with a variety of numbers, from 5 to start with to 8 and 9 the last few games. It is always an easy one in the Guild to get people to join in. I did managed a couple of lucky escapes with the Seer, and when we were two Werewolves we caught the Seer a couple of times. Did terribly once as the Mayor-Werewolf, they got the word really quickly, and couldn’t guess the Seer, so I went by chance and lost. A total good hour and a bit of the game (probably a dozen games) to top off the night.
Nice. Cannot wait for everybody to be able to play games for real. It is sooo good. Get jabs, everybody!
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My partner and I have been playing a fair bit of drop it over the weekend. It has the feel of a dexterity game but I’m not sure it really is. It’s more of a game about predicting the consequences of physical interactions while trying to make it hard for your opponent to score well and maybe deciding the right time to use the best items for scoring will also hinder you and your opponent.
I quite like it. There feels like a layer of strategy that reveals itself over several games. I don’t know if this is the kind of emergent strategy that develops upto a fairly low level or if it becomes the case that each strategy can be countered into an ever evolving battle of wits.
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Ahhh. This one has been on my “omg why didn’t I buy it while it was available” list for a while… because Mars. You are not helping 
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It’s in my “good game but do I really play it enough for shelf space” list. 
It’s a fun game, but it feels like it should be a small box game to me.
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