With Hippodice drawing near it is time to dust and prune about the edges.

• New rules for ‘Ohana Proa.

• New Player Aid for ‘Ohana Proa.

• New Rules for Muck & Brass

The changes aren’t large. I’ve shortened the end-game in “Ohana Proa a bit, hopefully lopping off 10 minutes or so, and allowed a pass action and end-game qualifier for Muck & Brass. I’m not convinced the latter is necessary but it is at least consistent with the rest of the pattern.

Gulf, Mobile & Ohio by Eddie Robin is a member of the Winsome Games 2008 Essen Collection and it is an odd game, a curiously odd game. Every player I’ve taught it to has exclaimed what a strange game it is!

On the face of it the game is relatively simple. Across player turns a variety of companies start and grow, worm-like from their start locations to connect to other cities and each other. There are 25 companies, each represented by two shares, a founder’s share and a secondary share. Initially only 8 companies are available, scattered about the edges of the board. During the course of the game additional companies from the rest of the 25 become available based on the activity of earlier companies. Victory points are earned by connecting companies to cities and to each other. Money is used only as a funding source for winning shares which give the right to build with a company.

Physically the companies are represented by coloured cubes placed in hexes. The restrictions on cube placement are simple:

1. A railway company must start with a cube in its home city
2. Company cubes are placed in hexes adjacent to one or more cubes of the same company
3. One one cube may ever be placed in an empty/clear hex
4. No cubes may be placed in the gray mountains
5. Any number of cubes may be placed in cities
6. No cube may be placed such that its ownership cannot be traced unambiguously back to a single railroad company.

Given that the colour of cube used by a given company is dictated by which cube colour is most plentifully available at the time the company was founded, that last placement rule is a doozie. In short it means that every worm-pattern of cubes of a given colour for a given railway company is surrounded by a one-hex penumbra of hexes not containing that colour – and the player does not get to chose what colour that is (and thus what other colours it can connect to.

Structurally the game is a process of iteratively managing timing, opportunity and positional advantage. This is not a game of building up companies, establishing an economic powerhouse, carefully assembling synergistic systems or running faster. This is a game of ensuring that other player’s choices are minimally profitable for them and that your choices sum to be (a little) better timed and a little more profitable than their’s. The game is a minuet dance, a delicate series of fencing moves, parries, ripostes, lunges and recoveries, each one a tactical dance move carefully gauged to give little ground to others while grabbing every advantage possible. Advantages are often measured in single dollar differences.

While the shares are made available via player-selected auctions, winning a share has little long term implication. What is being auctioned is the opportunity to build for a given railway company. Building is done both to gain victory points¹ (building is the only source of victory points) and to minimise or constrain the opportunity afforded to later players by that build. The bid money is spent directly on building track for the company with any unwanted or unspendable excess discarded. As the mesh of railway lines extend to new cities, railway companies that start in those cities become available for auction. Thus each build can also extend the set of companies available for auction by later players and so builds are carefully gauged, often with extra cubes unprofitably placed simply to prevent or discourage victory-point-generating connectivity by other colours. Sometimes shares will be won and no track built at all (all the bid money simply discarded) as building would create too much victory point opportunity for later players, either by exposing the colour for easier connection by other companies and players, or by making more companies available in the game which offer too much positional opportunity to other players. Measuring opportunity cost, both for yourself and others is a constant challenge.

In short, often, usually, later players are able to get more victory points for less cash than earlier players as they can build to connect to the colours already present on the board. However someone has to go first and if you never go first you’ll never win either. Remember that bit about how company colours are determined? Carefully tracking, controlling and predicting what colours will be available when and to whom, and thus what companies could build to connect where and to how many other colours is the logical centre of the game. It all depends on what shares are auctioned when and by which player in turn order considering the balance of cash holdings across the set of players. This is the core of the dance: watching cash holdings, opportunities, turn order, and income and selecting shares to auction and bidding and forcing others to bid exquisitely close to the line. Single dollar differences can make a huge difference – even if those extra dollars in a bid are discarded as opportunity cost in order to not build track or are used for blocking builds to prevent other future connections.

Ultimately shares also pay dividends at a fixed rate of either $5 or $3 per share. Shares are the income source the players use to fund future auction bids. Establishing a good income source is unsurprisingly important but is also not as critical as maintaining a tight control of opportunity and timing. A player low on cash often has better potential advantage to manage opportunity than a richer player who must balance their choices across more players and a wider bid opportunity variance. Thus a low cash player can re-establish themselves by very careful management of what is auctioned and what is built when and where as the richer player waits to swoop in with their cash behemouth. They can effectively force the richer player into ungraceful diseconomies simply because the rich player must spend their money or lose their positional advantage. This is not easy and is near impossible if the gap grows large, but it can be done and it is a wonderous thing to behold when done well.

Passing, a player passing on their entire turn, is a common action choice as part of the dance of opportunity control. Much like in King of Siam, passing is a way forwarding the onus for an unwanted decision to a player who cannot afford not to make a decision². Of course they will attempt to make the decision that offers the east opportunity to the other players while also preserving their own victory opportunity, but careful play will limit their available choices while moving turn order forward to something more attractive to you. In this way the dance is lurchingly moved forward to the next unwilling player.

It is hard to describe Gulf, Mobile & Ohio as a strategic game. It is also hard to describe it as a tactical game. The decisions made each turn seem entirely tactical, but rest on an analysis that should extend out 2, 3 or even 4 turns into the future as the opportunity implications are assessed and weighed. This process seems tactical as that analysis needs to be performed on every turn given the current play state but also seems strategic as the look-ahead is fairly deep and there are core patterns in the game which can be built and leveraged.

Expect your early games to be filled with runaway winners. It can take a while to comprehend how to use the tools that the game provides. I’ve played about half a dozen games now, all with either 3 or 4 players³ and do not yet feel I’ve a good grasp of the game’s depths. I’ve merely seen a few small patterns and the hints of many more in the wings⁴.

The picture below shows the end of a 4 player teaching game. The player closest to the camera (green) won in the last two turns of the game despite being behind in points but marginally ahead in cash and income for the entire game.

Perhaps oddly I find 4 player games far easier to teach than 3 player games. The edges are a bit softer and the timing controls are a little less fragilely unstable with 4 players than 3. There is enough to digest and dance with here that the extra ease granted by a 4 player game is welcome learning space. However for those same reasons I find the game noticeably improved with 3 players. That’s where all the safeties and guard rails are off and every decision is filled with knife edges.

This weekend we visited the Northern California Renaissance Faire:

Picture gallery

Having fought through much of the three day weekend with the Neuland-style action track for Muck & Brass, I’m calling it quits. It is not a good fit for the design. The mechanism has a number of interesting properties but they will be better used elsewhere.

I am haltingly, gingerly, considering the idea of setting up a small vanity press for my games. The initial target would be my Age of Steam expansions. Once past that only the gods know if it would fitfully stagger onward or die on the vine. But what to call such an ad-hoc publishing company? Suggestions for names are welcome.

In the prior discussion I defaulted without examination to moving forward in the event of a collision¹. Why?

If collisions do not trigger slides then either it must always be possible to avoid a collision (easily proven impossible in 4+ player games) or there must be an ordering function for players resident at the same action slot, perhaps a FIFO or LIFO. Both queue forms have their interesting aspects with LIFOs perhaps being the more interesting as later players can get an instant second turn by ending atop a prior player, perhaps to the earlier player’s discomfort (making turn prediction more difficult and yet more valuable).

Stacking seems inevitably less interesting. Collision sliding offers a few clear interest-benefits:

1. A slide moves the subject player further around the ring thus making their next dividend closer/sooner
   • Situations can be crafted which allow multiple positions to be collision-slid
2. Collision sliding encourages players to chose actions which use/absorb the lost action point. Because this value cuts in both directions, Development gets an extra boost encouraging a slightly more Development-centric game than Expansion-centric
3. Unpreventable slides (can) force players to waste action points in non-income producing movement

Meanwhile almost the same multiple-turn opportunity remains, just trimmed by one action point to not include the collision point.

More simply collision-sliding offers an additional decision: To slide or not to slide. Each side of that decision has significant effects on turn order – effects which are interesting for the subject player and interesting for other players to predict and arrange afore-hand.

Isaac Bickerstaff (Verkisto) posted new share images for Wabash Cannonball and the Erie expansion (Wabash.pdf, Erie.pdf) a while back. I’ve dawdled on doing anything with them as I was mostly content with the originals and wasn’t yet sure how I physically wanted to produce them. This afternoon I finally got off my kiester and made them.

A laser printer produced good enough copy. I’d hoped to mount back-to-back copies so as to make double-sided shares (unthematic but simpler to handle), but in testing that proved overly difficult within the desired tolerances. The next stab was at cold laminating and then cutting to shape. The plastic laminate would add thickness and the paper would provide its own colour (on one side at least). I’ve done this before for other games, and it works well enough. But fate had it that the cold laminator was on the other side of town, an Office Max was in the middle, and I needed to stop at the Office Max anyway to get some more wet erase pens for Pampas Railroads since my red pen exploded last week¹. Oh, and I’d just bought a few bags of penny sleeves for Tahuantinsuyu’s cards. A quick check revealed that Isaac had thoughtfully sized his share images to fit penny sleeves perfectly!

1. Two packs of 3”x5” index cards from Office Max
   • One in five colours (red, blue, yellow, green and purple – available in rainbow and day glo, I chose rainbow as slightly more pastel/muted)
   • One in stripes (red, blue, yellow, green or purple against white – again picking rainbow instead of day glo)
2. One stick of liquid permanent glue with applicator
3. 20 minutes with the glue and a rotary cutter

I put the unlined sides of the cards to the back, leaving the lined sides to be covered by the glued on shares. This lets the shares effectively be double-sided without the effort of having to register both sides. While most of the colour matches are obvious, I used purple for the Wabash and purple/white striped for the Erie. The moisture content of the blue warps them almost immediately – they are now sitting in an ad-hoc vise atop my water heater to dry out into flat form. They look rather nice! It would have been nice to find gray index cards for the Wabash, but that was not to be. It is possible that other stores carry them (I haven’t researched). Isaac’s Erie share is an odd shade of purplish tannish gray rather than the straight tan of the original. A purple/while stripe seemed an acceptable compromise.

Given that we mostly play on Ted Alspach’s redraw of the map (much larger and more colourful), these replacement shares will mean that the wood cubes are the only original component I use in play. Given how much I like and admire Winsome Game’s game art in general (it is the model of functional clarity), and have repeatedly said so publicly, this is rather oddly hypocritical. Huhn.

I’ll try to remember to get some pictures posted. With luck we’ll play with them tomorrow.

The Neuland action-track, even Thebe’s simpler version, is just an action costing/selection mechanism akin to the rondel that Mac Gerdts has been so fond of using. The track controls turn order and expresses choices in terms of action versus cost where the cost is implied against turn order. Key to the whole pattern is differentiation both in terms of board position and action track position. This localises values to that the turn order ramifications of subsequent action choices are significant.

Neuland does this through the combination of three patterns:

1. Food and Wood must (nearly) always be protected through occupation/production
2. Players must consume their products each turn or lose them at the end of their turn
3. Players ending with their action market on a slow already occupied by another player must slide forward to the next free slot

The result is an accelerating wave front of consumption, driven from behind by the constant input of food and wood and fanning out into ever more orchestrally difficult complexity in the mature mature products. The wave front collapses when products must be discarded rather than consumed¹ and around point-producing buildings consume of mature/complex products, allowing the player to reset back to a simpler world² and begin the next heady climb³.

The key here is differentiation. Differentiation is required by any temporary emergent alliance game else the alliances have no value gradients to form around. Like both Pampas Railroads and Wabash Cannonball the current initial share auction in Muck & Brass establishes a couple primary points of differentiation:

1. What shares are held by whom at the end of the auction
2. Total cash holdings (and resulting turn order)

However those differences are too small for Muck & Brass. Unlike Wabash Cannonball and Pampas Railroads, companies are poorly differentiated in Muck & Brass as their long-term income potentials are mostly dependent on action selections that surround the early mid-game (access to London and merge opportunities). Again like Wabash Cannonball and Pampas Railroads, Muck & Brass uses competition for limited action supplies to provide the rest of the differentiation. Any replacement action selection and turn order system will need to at least equal that level of differentiation if not improve on it, and there are a few problems.

Unlike Neuland, Muck & Brass does not have an oscillating wave-front of commitment. Actions will generally not be selected in large sets, rather a player will take an action (sliding forwards Neuland-style as needed) and the player furthest behind on the action track will take the next action (usually a different player). The result is that opportunity cost becomes significant – not opportunity for self but opportunity afforded to others. A large/expensive action which passes over other players affords them the opportunity to perform multiple smaller/cheaper actions before the expensive-action-player can react.

This has large implications for the numbers selected. If, for instance, all the costs are even values, then the players will rapidly sort themselves into sets, the odds and the evens, with transfers between sets occurring only on collisions⁴ All odd costs also has the same behaviour. Having the action cost values close to each other suggests that collisions will be more frequent, but also suggests that players will select actions in part to avoid collisions (they might as well spend the action they’d otherwise lose by sliding forward). The intersection of these two patterns arrives when some costs are multiples of other costs. Multiples suggest phase relationships with the parity of the modulo affecting action selection in order to avoid collisions, Additionally there’s a relationship between the size of the average action cost and the number of players. For instance if the costs are 1/2/3 and there are 5 players in the game, then after a few turns every action choice will result in a collision.

The significant attributes appear to be:

1. Odd/even spread of costs
2. Ratio of average cost to number of players
3. Density of action cost values
4. Average rate of collisions
5. Strength of set-formation among players along parity lines
6. Breath of action cost range in terms of cost-multiples

And of course:

1. Length of action track as a function of action costs as a determinant of dividend rate

Hurm. I was looking at 1/2-2/3-4 as action costs, but that seems clearly poor, especially when compared to player counts. 2/5-3/5-7 seems attractive. This is going to take some work.

As a total aside, I’ve also been toying with an extension to the Capitalisation action:

- In addition to the normal behaviours a player holding a clear plurality of shares in a company may have that company reclaim any one of its shares held by any player for a sum equal to twice the current dividend value of the share

I ran some thought models last night. They didn’t work so well. Today’s talk with Tim on #bgdf_chat summarises well enough:

[2008-08-29/12:51] <clearclaw> The Neuland action system has problems as described – it forces all players to ally equally.

[2008-08-29/12:51] <gamesonthebrain> How so?

[2008-08-29/12:52] <clearclaw> You want to make money on every player’s turn when they cross the boundary. Thus you want to invest in everything they hold a plurality in.

[2008-08-29/12:52] <clearclaw> Similarly you only want to forward companies you at least hold an equal share in.

[2008-08-29/12:53] <clearclaw> But that’s due to the definition of when/how dividends get paid.

[2008-08-29/12:53] <gamesonthebrain> Right, which can be changed

[2008-08-29/12:53] <clearclaw> Yep. Changing that constraint can change everything.

[2008-08-29/12:54] <clearclaw> I’m toying with having everything the player is invested in pays out, just to that player.

[2008-08-29/12:54] <gamesonthebrain> I did’t realize until today that Neuland’s turn order system is fairly different from Thebes

[2008-08-29/12:54] <clearclaw> That does really interesting things to the incentives.

[2008-08-29/12:54] <clearclaw> I’ve never played Thebes so can’t comment.

[2008-08-29/12:54] <clearclaw> Neuland is a favourite though.

[2008-08-29/12:54] <gamesonthebrain> In Thebes, the person in the back of the line always takes the next action

[2008-08-29/12:55] <gamesonthebrain> So the actions would be much more broken up

[2008-08-29/12:55] <gamesonthebrain> If I was on space 4 and you on 3, it would be your turn

[2008-08-29/12:55] <clearclaw> Ditto Neuland except that in Neuland players get to keep using actions until they quit, as long as they don’t pass themselves.

[2008-08-29/12:55] * clearclaw nods.

[2008-08-29/12:55] <clearclaw> That is finer grained.

[2008-08-29/12:55] <gamesonthebrain> If you took a 1 AP point action, you’d then be on “top” of me, and thus still your turn

[2008-08-29/12:55] <gamesonthebrain> Ya

[2008-08-29/12:55] <clearclaw> I’m thinking of that graining for this game.

[2008-08-29/12:56] <clearclaw> Tinner’s Trail is somewhat similar.

[2008-08-29/12:56] <gamesonthebrain> Yes… the only real difference is the fixed round in TT, and the “top” person does not go again…

[2008-08-29/12:57] <gamesonthebrain> Like you said in our chat the other day, the finer grained Thebes system might make the game substantially longer

[2008-08-29/12:57] * clearclaw pondering.

[2008-08-29/12:58] <clearclaw> I am liking the idea of paying just the active player for everything they hold though. It feels like it might work.

[2008-08-29/12:58] <gamesonthebrain> It certainly would be easier

[2008-08-29/12:58] <gamesonthebrain> Less fiddly

[2008-08-29/12:58] <clearclaw> As for game length, that’s also a question of end-definition. That can be adjusted.

[2008-08-29/12:58] <clearclaw> It also makes the play decisions, especially Capitalisation, much harder.

[2008-08-29/12:59] <clearclaw> Very odd tempos.

[2008-08-29/12:59] <clearclaw> Very hard to predict.

[2008-08-29/12:59] <clearclaw> Strange effects on alliances.

[2008-08-29/12:59] <clearclaw> I don’t think I understand what it will in fact do....

[2008-08-29/12:59] <gamesonthebrain> Sure, but at least it is completely controlled by the players

[2008-08-29/12:59] <clearclaw> There is that advantage. Players are my favourite source of randomity.

[2008-08-29/13:00] <gamesonthebrain> It’s hard to say without testing it, but it sounds perfect to me

[2008-08-29/13:01] * clearclaw grins.

[2008-08-29/13:01] <clearclaw> I have more models to run.

[2008-08-29/13:01] <gamesonthebrain> Let me know about the results… my email is gamesonthebrain@---------.com

[2008-08-29/13:02] <gamesonthebrain> As I said the other day, I have an experienced train gaming group ready to playtest

[2008-08-29/13:04] <clearclaw> Hehn. Wilco. I suspect the blog and the IRC here are the best channels until it gels.

[2008-08-29/13:05] <clearclaw> Thanks

[2008-08-29/13:06] <gamesonthebrain> Fine… I’m on here a lot more now with the new IRC channel

The real key is the control of what pays when as that drives the incentives that drive alliance formation. That prediction by the players is (going to be) the base on which they determine their interest and thus their action selections.

I’ve been wanting to get back to work on Colonial Zoo for a while now but every time I start re-assembling my thoughts they veer off and turn into odd ideas about Trade Winds and/or Muck & Brass or some collision of the two. It has been frustrating.

The main thought for Muck & Brass is that the Pampas Railroads-style action selection mechanism isn’t sufficiently expressive. It provides interesting choices, but they tend to short-term tactical due to the ever-shifting turn order¹. Both Pampas Railroads and Wabash Cannonball exploit right/left binding as a way of providing enough certainty for alliance formation. My largely certain assumption is that fixed turn order isn’t required for emergent alliances, just merely helpful. Emergent alliance formation can still operate in games with variable turn order, as seen with Han’s Riding Series.

Without admitting a problem, perhaps a more free-form action system would make the game more interestingly phase-driven and thus cast a stronger structural light on the game of mergers? Additionally such a system might offer some of the long-term certainties that are missing with variable turn order and thus allow for more interestingly strategic decisions.

The thoughts were solidified by a discussion with Tim Harrison (GamesOnTheBrain) on #bgdf_chat:

[2008-08-27/10:46] <gamesonthebrain> hmmm… JC… I just had an idea… you remember my basic description of my holy grail train game above… I wonder if the Thebes/Neuland AP thing would work well in a game like that

[2008-08-27/10:50] <clearclaw> The Neuland turn-order pattern will tend to drive a longer game.

[2008-08-27/10:51] <clearclaw> Think about it this way: How many turns per player and how many rounds per player per game.

[2008-08-27/10:52] <clearclaw> In general players should have 10-14 turns in non-epic games which feature non-trivial turns. Less and the game is too short to build interest, longer and it bloats.

[2008-08-27/10:52] <gamesonthebrain> Ya, you’re right

[2008-08-27/10:52] <clearclaw> (there are of course exceptions)

[2008-08-27/10:53] <gamesonthebrain> I do tend to like games that have a lot of short turns rather than few long ones though

[2008-08-27/10:53] <gamesonthebrain> like the rondel games

[2008-08-27/10:56] <clearclaw> The Rondel games are interesting. All the rondel really does is present a specific choice-costing structure on each turn.

[2008-08-27/10:56] <clearclaw> His next game does exactly the same sort of choice-costing, just without the rondel and thereby affords a somewhat more interesting graph of choice-relationships.

[2008-08-27/10:56] <gamesonthebrain> I’m really looking forward to princes

[2008-08-27/10:57] <gamesonthebrain> sounds like a must buy for me

[2008-08-27/10:57] <clearclaw> My sense however is that for a game turn to be interesting a player must manage 5-7 (not more!) discrete elements, and must make at least 3 significant and inter-related decisions.

[2008-08-27/10:58] <clearclaw> But that may be more revealing my own preferences than setting an abstract guide.

[2008-08-27/10:58] * clearclaw nods. It does sound interesting.

[2008-08-27/10:58] * clearclaw says things about the implications of the rule of seven etc.

[2008-08-27/10:59] <gamesonthebrain> with the AP thing, wouldn’t a successful player have to be thinking several turns ahead in order to do well? thus, it seems, they would have to be managing 5 or so elements and be making 3 significant decisions per turn.

[2008-08-27/10:59] * clearclaw nods GamesOnTheBrain

[2008-08-27/11:00] <gamesonthebrain> I agree that it might make the game way too long though

[2008-08-27/11:00] <clearclaw> That think-ahead can be one of the dimensions managed on the turn, thus allowing the choices contained within the turn to be simpler. Goa does that trick particularly well.

The brief thought is to make the following changes:

1. A Neuland-style action point track (length TBD, probably in the 7-9 range))
2. One location on the track is called out (colour or other marking)
3. Players may perform any of the standard Capitalise/Develop/Expand actions in the normal manner
4. Each action has an associated AP cost, eg Capitalise 3 AP, Develop (single) 2 AP, Develop (double) 3AP, Expand (single) 1AP, Expand (double) 2AP
5. APs result in the player’s token orbiting the Neuland-style track in the normal manner
6. Turn order is dictated by the action point track Neuland-style (very uncertain about this)
7. Should a players action take them to or past the specially marked location on the action track (cf Imperial’s Investor rondel location) then all the companies of which that player is the plurality shareholder pay dividends

Methinks I need to run some simulations.