New rules.

New player aid.

The really short version is that my response to recent playtester feedback was overly generous and enthusiastic. The correct response is more conservative and curmudgeonly. I’m keeping the response to Slow Start, albeit slightly muted. That’s fine and even admirable. Automatic proa upgrades is not such a good idea. I considered that model extensively in the early development of the game and threw it out then, which I then forgot more recently. The game needs an additional drain on fish/shells for the first few rounds while the players build their networks. The drain doesn’t have to be big, but it has to be non-negligible. This prevents a too-early and crippling kula rush before the route-network can support it. I tossed out the ability to cash in kula for VPs immediately upon receipt as it destabilised the kula and VP markets in oddly feed-back-prone ways. The split kula remains as a fine way of maintaining off-turn player involvement while also adding pleasantly collusive elements, but the prestige and VP allocation is heavily adjusted with an eye to reducing the total number of manual transactions per turn and per gift.

Note: The kula/prestige/VP values are not final – I’ve not quite finished running models.

I also threw out the redundant About Fish & Shells section of the rules, which saved half a page. The only original material there was the statement that VPs could be discarded for fish and shells, which has been moved further up the document.

In summary two changes remain in the offing:

1. Adjusting kula/prestige/VP values
2. Pull in the end-game prestige line a bit (~27?) while also shortening the prestige multiplier brackets.

Kublacon saw another ‘Ohana Proa playtest with a response ranging from I want to play this again, I want to play it on Monday, bring it with you on Monday! to This is good but these bits need fixing. Happily all the complaints aligned with the extant problem list. Against my better and more generous nature the current idea is to make the following sweeping changes. They analyse Okay but I’m not sure I like the resulting picture, but suspect parental bonding for this latter.

1. Tone down kahuna:
   • 1.5x production rather than 2x.
   • When a market is delivered to an island over a player’s route that also has a kahuna on that island, the kahuna-owning player earns VPs for the delivery in addition to the moving player. This may allow VP doubling for one’s own kahuna. not sure yet (ie the models haven’t finished running)
   • Building a kahuna once both have been built teleports one of the pre-existent kahuna to the new location
2. Rejigger kula:
   • Rework all cost relations
   • Kula do not reward VPs upon receipt, but may be immediately discarded upon receipt for VPs or fish & shells
3. Gut proas.. Players proas increase by one every turn unless their proas are already larger than the turn count. Automatic proa increase may be refused in return for resources and players may buy ahead for standard cost. If they buy-ahead then the next free proa doesn’t affect them. This is a standard tide-that-floats-all-boats

The most interesting change here is gutting the proas. Automatic increment removes a primary concern from the game, but also adds a potentially interesting decision without affecting any of the other base structures of the game: buy ahead for this-turn advantage or hang back for this-turn resource advantage? Removal of VPs from kula receipt is a little less interesting as the primary effect is to make kula dumping (stale kula gifts to players earlier in the turn order in the second delivery round) less significant. The second order effect of adding a thin kula management layer to the kula dumpee is mostly uninteresting.

New rules and player aids are on the slip.

I’ve updated the income/action/etc sheets I posted a while back to version 1.3 to correct the mis-labelling of the action tracks and a few other typoes. Thanks go to James Ludlow (jdludlow) and Mark Hamzy (hamzy) for catching the errors – predictably I’ve yet to be able to play with my own aid! I also posted the files to BoardGameGeek in the Pampas Railroads area as version 1.3, but they are pending approval. Meanwhile the PDF and PNG versions may be found in the normal place.

A productive evening:

• Put in a double switchback exploration round for the start
• All players start with 2 explorers and 2 proas (need more resources too! forgot that)
• Advanced Game has been made default, Beginner’s Game added for the kahuna-less game
• Reciprocal kula implemented.
• First pass at new kula value/pricing done

So far the models look Okay, but I’ll probably need to adjust the Prestige Track end-point upward a bit to 37, 39 or 42 or so.

The new kula language:

There are (blue) fish and (red) shell kula items, each available in two values. Small value kula items may be enhanced to larger value kula items.

Kula token costs:

(Table here of values. In short, fish kula are 3 or 7 VPs, shell kula are 5 or 11 VPs and costs are 7 or 5 resources for low value kula (basic/beginner’s game), 17 resources for big kula, and 11 for upgrades.)

Players may only spend resources on kula if that kula item is immediately given to another player as part of a delivery (see Deliver). Enhancing a stale kula item (face down) to a larger value creates a higher value stale kula item (face down).

When a market is delivered to an island containing a market of the same colour, the moving player may give a kula item to each player with a route connected to the destination island. The kula item given may be newly purchased with fish and shells, or may be an item previously received from another player (optionally enhanced). The gifting player receives all the following:

• 1 point on the Prestige Track for giving the kula item
• 1 point on the Prestige Track if it was a large kula item
• 1 point on the Prestige Track if the kula item was just bought with fish and shells for this gift
• 1 point on the Prestige Track if giving the kula item to a player with a kahuna on the destination island

The player receiving the kula item receives half the value of the kula item as victory points rounded down, or full value if their kahuna was present on the destination island. They also receive one victory point for each kula item they already possess.

Upon receipt of a kula item, the recipient may immediately give a kula of the opposite type in return to the giver and may spend fish and shells to buy a kula for this purpose. In this case the player reciprocally giving the kula receives:

• 1 point on the Prestige Track for giving the kula item
• 1 point on the Prestige Track if their gift was more valuable than the gift they were given
• 1 point on the Prestige Track if the kula item was just bought with fish and shells for this gift
• 1 point on the Prestige Track if giving the kula item to a player with a kahuna on the destination island

and the new recipient receives:

• 1 point on the Prestige Track for receiving a kula in response to their gift
• 1 point on the Prestige Track if it was a large kula item
• half the value of the kula item as victory points rounded down, or full value if their kahuna was present on the destination island

At the end of each turn old face down kula items are discarded back to the supply and new kula items rot and are turned face down (see Rot).

• Dividends are always truncated (this got lost somewhere).
• The moving company always merges away and pays the special dividend
• Clarified already-connected merger case
• Double builds are only available to the clear plurality share holder
• Clarified mergers and new shares
• Removed the artistic extra dividend markers from the map
• Added income markers to the manifest
• Simplified London development to must always be the most valuable city
• Reduced double development cost to $3
• Cleaned up language in definitions
• Extended setup section to be more explicit
• Clarified that inactive company treasuries are not paid to shareholders
• Simplified and clarified game ending language
• Clarified that build expenses are always paid from company treasuries
• Clarified port expenses
• Added Dieter Danziger and Lokomotive Werks as inspirational
• etc

A few things I like here:

• The forced directionality plus the limitation on double builds of mergers makes poaching a bir more constrained and I think interesting. It also makes foreign ports a little more interesting as well as posing the nominal director’s interests in opposition with the minor shareholders.
• The simplified London value ruling makes London far touchier in the early game, triggering an explosion of development if it is developed. Nice.
• Inactive treasuries not paying out makes the first share of a secondary company pleasantly risky and asymmetric

A quick outing of Muck & Brass at the last hour of the gamesday last night. After ~14 hours of gaming and it being the wee hours of the morning we did not play well and it really didn’t get a good or fair showing as a game. Which was all fine as that wasn’t the point. It was nice to watch the exercise while having other people make most of the game decisions. More importantly I got my first reasonably external look at the game.

Being in a rush I completely forgot to teach that new companies build a track as they open, which would have changed a lot. I also simplified the London rules down to London must be the most valuable location on the board which added some nice tension and was simpler. A few rules holes were found by the ever inquisitive Michael Van Biesbrouck (mlvanbie), which was appreciated. eg What happens to corporate treasuries for companies that don’t float? Oddly enough all my companies have always floated when I solo play so I never considered that.

Other quick notes:

• Merger rules should be clarified
• Game-end condition needs to be clarified
• Possibly force the direction of mergers and merger dividends (moving company must pay) as this seems the more interesting decision and makes track building more subtle
• Remove extra dividends from board art
• The value and power of turn order was only appreciated post-game
• Too-rapid mergers can lock out players without reasonable futures, and additionally put the leading players incetivised to keep them locked out by over-paying for secondary company shares; a curious form of financial bludgeoning

Another more basic observation, and this goes back to earlier plays of Lokomotive Werks, Dutch Intercity, Wooden Shoes & Iron Monsters and Wabash Cannonball and my 18XX history is that many people don’t grok income vehicle lifecycles. Of course this concept is central to good 18XX play and for the more recent games some of this is my fault as game teacher, but there seems to be a hole there in the gaming panoply. Players seem to natively assume that everything they can buy is good and that the only difference is that some things are better than others or need to be set/combinatorial collected in order to realise their best value. The idea that some investments vary from good to bad to horrible to great depending on a game-based lifecycle appears unusual and unfamiliar. (Aside: 1825 Unit 1, 1825 Unit 2 and 1825 Unit 3 are of course entirely driven by this concept of optimised portfolio management) This probably ties to the general paucity of phase-driven games. That might be an interesting area to explore with Modern Mogul or Trade Winds.

Time to get cracking on the rules again.

Dutch Intercity by Han Heidema is a likely early design progenitor of The Riding Series and was published by Winsome Games in 1999.

Minimalist, austere, spartan: dinosaurs in natural history museums have more fat than this little mechanical mousetrap. There is a watchmaker’s delight in the tightly whirring little flensing blades of the game. Dutch Intercity is a game of iterative predatory auctions of shares with highly unstable values interspersed with quick activities to generate those unstable values. And really, that’s pretty much the game as everything else is just a cog or whirring flywheel thrown in to provide predation, (interesting) auctions or shares with unstable values. If you thought Wabash Cannonball was about as stark as you can get for a share speculation game, Dutch Intercity goes several large steps further towards skeletal.

Dutch Intercity consists of 5 companies, each with 10 shares, and a board showing a simplified map of the Netherlands with a pre-drawn graph of ¹(http://boardgamegeek.com/image/154037). Players iteratively auction shares of companies², the directors³ blind bid to claim railway network routes on the pre-drawn graph and dividends are paid for each player’s shares⁴ until the network is full. As the graph is small only 4-6 full rounds will be played depending on route competition levels.

The hinge point is in the intersection of two patterns: turn order for the auction⁵ and auction duration⁶. Those two in combination, a pattern also used in Han’s The Riding Series. are responsible for most of the subtlety and tension in the game. Controlling and predicting how many rounds the auction will last and thus how many shares will be issued (and which shares) is key. One obvious result of this set of intersections is that it is frequently worthwhile to bid well over the estimated value of a share in order to run yourself out of cash and thus stop any further shares from being sold⁷. Being left with only a few gulden, unable to compete and also unable to end the auction campaign while the other players rip more shares out is a salutary lesson hopefully learned only once.

I’ve played only once and only with three players. The ideal player count is clearly more. I suspect that 4 or 5 is the sweet spot but the game officially extends up to 6. Playtime should run around 45-60 minutes for groups that don’t get caught up in predicting and explicitly manipulating turn order or 90-105 minutes for those that do.

An alternate ruleset is mentioned in the game rules as available by request from Winsome Games. I’ve requested a copy but have not yet received or played it. I’ll try remember to comment on it when I do get a copy.

Wooden Shoes & Iron Monsters by Han Heidema is a likely design progenitor of Wabash Cannonball and is the latest member of The Riding Series of games from Winsome Games. Hopefully there’s more to come in the Riding Series as it is a neat (if fiddly¹) system and there’s definitely room left to play in it. The Riding Series appears an unusually coherent family of games:

1. Share dilution – Shares are won at auction and pay an N’th of the company income where N is the number of shares issued for that company.

2. Share-based capitalisation – The operating treasury for a company comes from the auction price for its shares. In general there is no other significant source of treasury funds for the companies.

3. Activity-based income – The current turns income for a company is a compound of the actual cash income of the company, plus a measurement of the growth-activity of the company this turn. Thus active/growing companies pay much better than moribund companies as they have the extra (potentially HUGE) boost of activity-based income.

4. Deflating income – Company income is a function of the number of empty exits on the cities their track is connected to. As more track is connected to those cities they become worth less and company incomes fall precipitously. This causes a rather fiddly constant recalculation of company incomes, but there are procedural habits which may be used in play to greatly reduce this.

5. Grouping shares – Shares that pay out as a function of the interconnectedness of the current track patterns. Thus as multiple companies connect to a city that city contributes significant income toward the grouping shares. There usually seem to be multiple different grouping share companies that reward different and competing aspects of the track development. Grouping shares are acquired by trading in basic shares 2:1.

6. National shares – (Later in the series only?) Shares that pay X% of all the grouping shares’ dividends, reducing the grouping share dividends by that percentage in the process.

7. End-game share valuation – Shares trade in for money in the end-game.

Wooden Shoes & Iron Monsters sits comfortably in that middle ground of solid not-so-little and not-so-long games and most of the game matches that character: a comfortable game of middling length and fine pedigree that has built a nice home in middle age and knows well enough about the world to occasionally dazzle. Like middle age this isn’t a particularly vicious or aggressive game, but it has its moments and some of them are real doozies. Cunning and guile are rewarded more than blatant aggression, most of the time, and conservative and modestly delicate play is the name of the game, most of the time. Those caveating weasel words are deliberate: that guile and cunning comes with its own share of subtlety and excess and moderation. Again, like middle age, there are occasional splurges, vast sprawls of violent aggression and exploited advantage, and the game frequently turns on these crises, but they are the anticipated exuberant exceptions and not the mature foundations of the game.

Structurally Wooden Shoes & Iron Monsters consists of six Basic Companies which are grouped into two sets of three, two Grouping Companies each of which maps to a set of three Basic Companies, and the odd little parasitic top of the pyramid: the NS. Each Basic Company has a number of shares (count varies by company) which pay a diluted fractional dividend ala Wabash Cannonball. The dividend paid by a company is a small function of prior track builds plus a hefty bonus for any track built this turn². During the course of the game the base dividend from prior track builds grows rapidly and then as rapidly decreases at about the same time that the growth opportunities begin to peter out. However, shares of Basic Companies may be traded for shares of Grouping Companies, and those shares pay out as a function of the connection density of their constituent Basic Companies, that same connection density driving the Basic Company share dividends down. Shares in Basic Companies can also be traded in for shares of the NS, which pays a fraction of the dividends of both Grouping Company dividends and parasitically reduces their dividends by a matching amount.

That pattern of leveraged parasitism, of the Grouping Companies building atop the petering out of the Basic Companies and the NS preying on the Grouping Companies is a core theme and pivot of the game. Higher companies build and prey on the success and growth of their smaller and more active younger generations. Correctly timing the transition of investments from the teenagers to the next generation (and which next generation) is a a key inflexion point in the game.

On the gripping hand Wooden Shoes & Iron Monsters is an auction game where what is auctioned is a pairing of a share of a company and the opportunity to increase the dividend of that company, and it is in this auction and the immediately following track build where the subtlety of the system and the opportunity for mature cunning and guile reveals. Players in turn order³ offer a share of a company for auction. The highest bidder takes the share and then immediately builds a single track connection for the company using the money they won the share with. Left over money goes to the company treasury. If the player is also the director of the company⁴ they may use the treasury money to pay for the track link. Some key elements here are:

• companies may only build track when they sell their own shares

• selling shares dilutes the dividends of those shares

• building track adds a significant (potentially huge) bonus to the dividend paid for those shares

In the balance of those three patterns is where some of the opportunity for cunning and guile comes in. The rest of the cunning and guile comes in with the intersection of the above three patterns, track building, turn order, and the layered/predatory pattern previously discussed. There is ample opportunity for players to manipulate turn order, cash holdings, aggressive and friendly (both) track builds, share dilution and upper-company implications in notably clever ways:

• In the early game there’s a very strong incentive for players to dilute and monopolise shares in the companies they already hold. This gives them the largest payout as they get both the base dividend from the track builds in prior turns plus the bonus from this turn’s activity

• In the mid-game this inverts suddenly as company opportunities begin to vanish and preying on other company’s shares or building the Grouping Companies becomes more profitable

• There’s a strong advantage for directors who win shares early in the turn order to build links that cost considerably less than their bid, which results in excess bid funds going into the company treasury and being available for later builds by the director

  • Note: Company treasuries are doled out to their share-holders in end-game scoring, which allows cash to be fractionally “hidden” in companies by shareholders without affecting their turn order in the game. This also allows players to grab cheap shares in order to snag a fraction of such hidden cash

• A big track build with a related large dividend bonus early in the turn order is easily preyed on by other players grabbing shares in the same company cheaply and diluting the bonus for minimal expense

• Likewise a well-built company with a large base income will be predated-on by other players jumping in for a cheap share of the rich dividends

• Because directors can use the company treasury in addition to their bid money for their track builds, directors who win shares late (preferably last) in the turn order can potentially do massive builds using those funds and thus generate huge dividend bonuses for their shares without fear of other players nipping in later for a cheap share of the bonus

• In the mid- and late-game, non-director players early in the turn order are incented to win shares in companies which are significantly owned by directors late in the turn order and to then construct a modestly sized link for them (possibly stashing yet more money in the treasury), thus encouraging the late turn-order director to also buy a share in that company so as to construct a massive track segment which pays them even more handsomely

• Big track builds can cut off and doom other companies, leaving them nowhere to go. Timed well against the right players this can turn the game on its ear.

• etc.

I own a copy of Wooden Shoes & Iron Monsters, have West Riding and Länderbahnen and Länderbahnen Expansion Set arriving Real Soon Now (tm), and am being offered a copy of Riding Through England. I hope to report on the other games soon. So far I’ve played a solo game, two 3 player games and one 4 player game of Wooden Shoes & Iron Monsters. It will be played more. I suspect that 4 players is the sweet spot though 5 could also be good. 3 players works but is not ideal. Wooden Shoes & Iron Monsters plays in around 120-150 minutes once you have the basics down. With experience it could probably get down to 100 minutes but that might also be pushing it. It is a curious and not so little game, which isn’t to say it is very big or very strange, but that like a muscular and oddly intense older uncle back from the wars is a little different, a little ungainly and with room for surprising elements of flair and brutality. There’s a little softening around the middle, but all the muscles of youth are still there under the jowls and worldly eyes. It also, every so often, pops up to do the lambada or pound out Honky Tonk on the old piano or just takes over Asia in a land war and smugly holds it.

This review was also posted to BoardGameGeek.

qLokomotive Werks by Dieter Danziger is, to use Michael Webb’s term (CortexBomb), very much a meat grinder of a game. While there is subtlety a-plenty it doesn’t hold its punches with the opportunities for calculation or the surrounding machinery to grind the players. It is also oddly charming in a sort of plangently intense fashion: the beat of the trains just keeps on going, and going, and…

In short this is the train rust/rush mechanism of the 18xx abstracted fairly cleanly out into a standalone game. As an 18XX derivative it is cleaner, more accurate and more direct than Greentown is the 18XX track planning exercise. Thematically, Lokomotive Werks explains HOW and WHY trains rust and disappear in the 18XX. Players buy factories and capacity for those factories and then produce trains using them to meet demand and make money. Demand is a function of dice with a (roughly) one turn look-ahead. There are four parallel tracks of factory-types and as newer and more profitable factories enter the game the demand for the trains from older factories progressively dries up. The result is similar to the 18XX train rush and has similar levels of aggression, but is not as fast or as deliberately controlled (dice).

As might be expected this is a game of heavy elbows and a relentless player-driven pace. It is also a treadmill-game: players get on and proceed to run, scramble, fall, duck and pull themselves over the heaving bodies of the other players as they lunge for the end of the game. It is not subtle, not gentle, not genteel; elbows to throats and knees to the groin the whole way. Unlike other related titles, there’s a healthy and even heavy dose of randomness in the dice. The randomness can be largely mitigated but it is a bit larger than I’m comfortable with and it can simply be impossible to mitigate effectively if the dice or cash don’t come your way in time. The dice can and will throw the game. It won’t happen often, there is room for considerable skill, but it will happen. The dice also seem to make the game more tactical then I’d prefer, but I suspect that with more long term information early advantages may be be impossible to overcome. The current random factors force a level of defensive play which acts as its own leveling stick.

While not really a calculator game as the sums are not that hard, I could easily see paper and pencil being popular. There’s a lot of nickel and onesy/twosy calculations to do each turn in planning the exact dollar counts each player will have for the next turn and thus the resulting player order for the next turn. (Turn order is in order of increasing cash holdings) This is more than a bit fiddly. I’m tempted to roll capacity purchases and Locomotive Production together into a single seamless round: Player-1 buys capacity and does his first pass Production, Player-2 likewise etc, then iterate on Production until done. This would not change the actual game but would make the painful counting process just before Locomotive Production simpler and hopefully faster.

There is a catch-up mechanism turn order, and it is very good to be early in the turn order, but it isn’t a gift. Turn order only works for you if you make it work, and that requires care and more than a modicum of exacting planning and having the cash to execute on that advantage. Fall too far behind and you are simply toast. Fall a bit behind however and your weapons can be fearsome!

I’ve played 2.5 times now (one was a solo-play). I could see Lokomotive Werks getting down under an hour with frequent play but I’m not sure if any group near me has the tolerance to play it that frequently. I’d like to try. While not a brain burner, it is an intensely focussed exercise that would be hard to play casually. On a similar note: There is a lot of money shuffling, so use poker chips.

This article was posted to the BoardGameGeek Lokomotive Werks’ fora.

On Crayon Rails

I recently upgraded my rating for the crayon rails games from 3 to 5. I’d thought them quite poor games, almost the epitome of multiplayer solitaire, over-long, and soporific. Yet, I’ve raised my raiting and it may yet rise further. I’m still not fond of them as games; I almost dislike them but yet I find myself frequently calling to get them to the table…with my kids.

For the kids they are great games. I have two typically testosteronal boys that are close enough in age that the elder still takes a delight in squelching the younger, and the crayon rails games fit them perfectly. They are non-confrontational, skill-gap insensitive, have a nice micro positive-feedback loop as deliveries are made and as the track network they’ve built grows, and as an added bonus, there’s a constant exercise of minor arithmetic, geography, forward planning and cost/reward balancing skills. As such I’ve found them ideal Friday-night or lazy Sunday afternoon games: the click of poker chips, haltering queries as to where the unbelievable Wollongong is?, the drowsy buzzing of train movements being stepped out, occasional exclamations of joy as a big delivery is made and finally the gentle sigh and congratulations as a victor is announced. It great many positive ways they remind me of Sunday afternoon cricket in England: the quiet padding of the bowler, the hush of hushed yet smug anticipation after the release and as the batsman faces the approaching bullet, the sotto THWACK of the bat, the calls of the fielders and umpire drifting over the sward and the bees droning among the clover, and the ever-present smell of grass and indelible grass stains. Ahh glorious Sundays!

Thusly I’ve raised my rating for the Crayon Rails games to a healthy 5 and may in fact be rising them further. I currently own Australian Rails and already planning out which additional games in the series to acquire to help spread and speed the rewards. British rails? Euro-Rails? Nippon Rails? Perhaps after the visualisation/planning skills are a little more settled, Lunar Rails?

On Carrom¹

Meanwhile through means underhanded and skullduggerous I’ve recently acquired a low-grade Synco Carrom board at work. It has proven a staggering success, especially with the Indians and most especially with the Indian women that work near me. I’ve perched the board on the endcap between two cubicles in my aisle and an average day will see somewhere between a dozen and a score of games played. I’ve racked up a little under 30 games in but a few weeks and the play rate isn’t falling. For me Carrom is what that Crokinole promises and nearly delivers: approachable but with a lengthy learning curve, rewarding of skill, unconfrontational (Carrom is oddly less confrontational than Crokinole) and with delightfully subtle tactics and strategy that stretch far beyond Crokinole’s. In contrast Crokinole feels like a slightly gawky one-dimensional teenager of a party game that needs a few more years of development. Now it is a fun teenager to be sure, but the adult around the corner who knows a thing ot two is a lot more interesting and far more tempting.