The current rewrite of an (un)surprisingly delicate section:

Mergers occur:

• when a company connects to another active company’s home station

or:

• when a secondary company floats and its home station is already connected by track

For mergers caused by connecting to another company’s home station, one of the two companies will acquire the other (active player chooses):

1. The acquired company pays a Special Dividend (see Dividends)

2. All route markers on the board from the acquired company are replaced with route markers from the acquiring company

3. Each player’s shares in the acquired company are replaced 1:1 with merger shares from the new parent company.

4. All shares and route markers from the acquired company are discarded from the game

5. The acquired company’s income is added to the acquiring company’s income, and the acquired company’s marker is removed from the income track

When a secondary company floats and its home station is already connected by track, all connected companies are acquired by the new secondary company:

1. Any route markers on the board for the acquired companies are replaced with route markers from the new secondary company

2. All shares and route markers from the acquired companies are discarded from the game

3. Each player’s shares in the acquired companies are replaced 1:1 with merger shares from the new secondary company

4. The resulting merged company pays a Special Dividend (see Dividends)

After the merger the active player must capitalise a share of a non-operating company in the normal manner with a minimum bid of £5. If all companies are already operating, then the player may auction any share in the bank pool or one of his own shares in the normal manner. If all companies have floated and there are no shares left in the bank pool, then the player must auction one of their own shares in the normal manner (see Capitalise).

If the auctioned share floats a company then proceed in the normal manner, including resolving any resulting mergers.

The bones are there, but it can still bear polish.

Ahh, the witness to my temerity:

Currently the L&SR is the only northern company likely to reach London. When the share sells it builds from York to Sheffield and on its furst turn, from Sheffield to Peterborough. That puts it one or two hops from London (tho it may be blocked) and two hops from a merger with the EUR. If it does reach London it is in easy snapping distance of the L&SCR. In short the northern company that reaches Peterborough likely has good options before it. Unfortunately the L&MR is cut out of this game. Unless the L&SR player simply screws up or fails to pay any attention to turn order control, the L&SR will always get to Peterborough first, leaving the L&MR with a rather more rote set of choices. Conversely the L&MR’s only early prospect is to merge into the L&SR either before or right after it merges into something down south. For shame – the decisions should be more interesting.

For the nonce I’ve moved the L&MR’s home station to Manchester from Liverpool. That still leaves the Peterborough question in the L&SR’s control via turn order, but it is no longer an automatic. I’ve also tentatively changes the initial company auction order to be be a little more interesting and a little more historic:

1. L&MR (started 1830)
2. L&SR (started 1830)
3. B&BR (started 1840)
4. EUR (started 1846)
5. LB&SCR (started 1846)

While not only in approximate date order (caveat: the actual parliamentary petition processes started much earlier than the above dates), that gives three opportunities after the first two shares sell to determine the initial please turn order and thus set Peterborough’s fate.

A more interesting decision set; these seem fine changes.

In other news I’m still tempted by two changes:

1. Allowing a player to simply sell one of their shares back to the bank for an instant dividend on that one share.
   The concern about this particularly lies in the first three rounds. PlayerA buys a share of CompanyX and then buys another at auction when another player capitalises CompanyX. PlayerA then immediately capitalises the share and sells it to the bank for a one-share dividend. If that’s the last dividend, then PlayerA is now both cash-richer to the noise of one share’s dividend, but also owns a company with a far better capitalisation future as it will now potentially capitalise for 3+1 shares instead of the normal 3. This is clearly a potential problem, but, I’m tempted. Something sings to me here, just not enough yet to make the change.
2. Increase the rule-of-three (company may build no more than 3 exits from a city) to a rule-of-four.
   This one doesn’t have such strenuous drawbacks as the share sell-back but alarum bells are ringing none the less. I wish I knew why. It seems like the rule-of-four would allow for more clever track play.

I’ve been solo-playing Muck & Brass, 4 games so far. This has revealed several problems and addresses:

1. Leaving acquired-company track in place after a merger is confusing. It is very hard to tell which merged company has track where, especially after the 4th or 5th merger.
   • Address: After an acquisition replace all acuired track with the acquiring company’s track. I’d avoided this solution previously as overly fiddly and requiring of large numbers of track bits for each company (30-40), but I’ve reversed that view. The confusion is much worse.
2. Too much money in the game. Final scores after the first game were $500+ for all players. Given that the players start with $45 this growth rate is excessive.
   • Address: Increase track building prices to $10 for a single and $30 for a double build. Also change all dividends to round down (truncate). Subsequent games have borne this out as a sufficient and accurate change.
3. Companies were too rich. Several companies ended the game with several hundred dollars in their treasuries. Additionally all foreign ports were built. All of them.
   • Address: Double all foreign port prices. Subsequent play tests suggest this was excessive when combined with the increased building costs. I’ve now reduced the price increase to about 40% which seems about right but I’ve not played with it yet.
4. Development was too weak and never chosen after the early mid-game. This was caused by two factors: one mergers are SO much more profitable that development is ignored, and two, once past the mid-game companies are sol diluted that development raises income too slowly to affect noticeably dividends.
   • Address: Increase the power of development so that two locations that are connected by the same company are developed per turn. Untested.
5. Dividends for merged companies (remainders going to treasury were too fiddly.
   • Address: All dividends now round down with remainders discarded. This has play tested well.
6. Overly hard to keep track of what shares are available vs issued.
   • Address: Put bank pool boxes back on the map. This has worked well in play testing.
7. Cash advantage too strong in turn order.
   • Address: Turn order is now from poorest player to cash-richest player. This has worked notably well in play tests and affords and interesting alternating pump strategy of oscillating between high and low cash to profit from each end of the turn order.
8. Hard to remember which company had which colour trakc (when using pens).
   • Address: Add little colour-in boxes to the bank pool boxes to show track colour per company. Possibly a better idea in concept than usage. I’ve not used the boxes.
9. End-game too diffuse and difficult to predict. In part this was from an excess of poorly defined and chosen game ending conditions.
   • Address: New game ending conditions: only one active railway or 7 dividends. That simple. It works.
10. End-game scoring was a pain. Foreign ports were especially annoying.
    • Address: No more end-game scoring. Cash is it. Yep, nice, clean, simple, works.
11. Game ended on 5th dividend. Too fast – not enough control over game-ending. Uninteresting.
    • Address: See above tweaks to game ending conditions. This seems to be enough. I’d like the game to almost invariable end on the 6th ro 7th dividend with the primary question being, Which?. Last night’s game suggest we’re there now.
12. West midlands boring, unviable, too diffuse. Well, its true!
    • Address: Removed Straford-upon-Avon and Northampton. Hey, it works!

The remaining concern is that mergers may simply be too profitable and attractive. I’m not convinced but I’m concerned. In the last game the NER ran over the game, ending the game with 28 shares issued and a final income of $183. Merger mania. Foreign ports are nice, but very expensive. Mergers give safer special dividends that imply less variance in future revenue potential of the shares than foreign ports. I’m very uncertain how or if to address this.

I’ve been struggling with the text for the Expand action. An abortive version of the current not-so-good stab follows:

The Expand action connects cities and foreign ports to railway companies.

General restrictions on Expansion:

• A player may only choose the expand action for a company if they own a share of that company

• Expand may not be selected for a company with insufficient funds

• Only one company may build a given route (dashed line) between cities

• Companies indicate the city connections and foreign port connections they’ve built with route markers

• The first route a company or merged component-company builds must connect to its home station. Subsequent routes may connect to the home station or to any city already connected by the (component-)company’s railway track

tables of initial and secondary home stations here

• Route building costs are paid from the building company’s treasury to the bank

• Routes may be built to the home station of a not-yet-operating company

• A company may not build more than three connections from any city, and may not build all the connections from a city with more than two connections. These limits are only checked at the time of building track

• The limits on railway track building change after the third General Dividend. Before the third General Dividend:

• Only a single track link may be built each turn. The cost is $5

• When track is built the building company’s income increases by the sum of the current values of the cities at the ends of the new track

• Track may not be built to another active company’s home station

After the third General Dividend the following are also allowed:

• A player owning a plurality of shares in a company may build two track links for a cost of $15:

  • The first track build must connect the company network to a city which is not part of the entire company network and the second track build must connect that city to another city which is also not part of the entire company network. In the case of merged companies the networks of all component-companies are considered for both builds
  • All track built with a double build must be for the same (component-) company
  • Connecting to another company’s home station or to London immediately ends the Expand action (and may cause a merger, see Mergers)
  • The company income is increased for each link as if each it were built separately

• Foreign port connections may be built if the company is already connected to their city:

  • Foreign port connections cost the price listed against them
  • Foreign ports do not increase the income of the bulding company but do increase end-game share value (see [sub:Game-End] Game End)
  • A route marker is placed on the port to indicate which company built it.
  • Foreign ports may not be built as part of a double track build.
  • Immediately after a foreign port is built the building company pays a Special Dividend (see Dividends)

• When building track for a merged company, all track built must be for the same (component-) company

• Track may be built to other company’s home stations. Connecting to another active company’s home station causes a merger (see Mergers)

Not the most brilliant piece of wordcraft I’ve done, but better than the exception heavy piece of paragraphed flat prose I’d before. I still need to make the language among links, connections, and track consistent among other changes.

The Slow Start is probably the easiest of the two problems to address, at least initially.

Proposal:

1. Players start the game with 2 explorers. More cannot be bought. The Explorer track is removed/defunct. Prestige can still be used to buy a third explorer for the current turn only.

2. Players start the game by claiming two free routes. This would be done settler’s style with the first-to-last and then last-to-first. Once the free claiming was done exploring a single new route (and bidding on it) would happen in the normal fashion

This would tend to have the effect of making the big islands with many exits a bit more valuable than they already are in the early game and it may (slightly) accentuate the value of the centre of the map, but I suspect these factors are counter balanced by the values of tieing in with those centre placements from the fringe. It is a tough call but it feels about right.

Solving Opaque/Confusing is harder. Ben Keightly pointed specifically to the currency translations surrounding kula as being a little over-wrought. I suspect he has a point. His proposal was to lose the kula fish/shell typing entirely but that seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Something a little more delicate and incentive grid torqueing is needed – something that maintains the value justification for shells as well.

Proposal:

1. Same kula tokens, same VP values and costs (I’m uncertain on the costs – I’ve not run the production volume models yet)

2. No more mixed fish/shell kula items. Every single token is now a kula item

3. When a kula item is given the recipient may also give the giver a gift of opposite fish/shell type that’s also of lesser value

4. Both directions receive the normal VPs/prestige for their gifts with the addition that the initial giver receives an extra prestige if they receive a return gift

5. All other kula rules like rot and upgrades remain unchanged except for those aspects sundered by splitting the kula token/item concept

I’m nervous about this last proposal. It feels about right but I’m quite uncertain the numbers actually work out. I’m particularly concerned about excess Prestige inflation from the new give-back prestige. Tough call. I’ve a hunch that the costs and rewards both will need adjusting. I’ll try and run some models on Sunday.

BTW: The new kula model is rather thematic. Kula primarily consisted of shell armbands (mwali) and necklaces (veigun or soulava). The armbands moved one way around the kula ring and the necklaces the other. Upon receipt of a pair of armbands one was supposed to give a set of necklaces and visa versa. Theme baby!

Benjamin Keightly and Morgan Dontanville were both kind enough to blind playtest ‘Ohana Proa recently. Both played 5 player games. Both had similar and related complaints and praise. Paraphrasing and summarising heavily:

1. The early game is too procedural
2. The game doesn’t get started fast enough
3. The first third of the game seems like setup for the real game
4. It takes too long
5. Kahunas are wonderful (A neat quote here that I hope the poster doen’t mind me revealing: Nowhere is your famous line about torquing the incentive grid more palpable than with the way kahunas operate. Every one of us thought they were fantastic.)
6. Income rates were far lower than usual for here (eg about 2-3 whole turns lower)
7. The turn order auction is too chaotic
8. The network is too large
9. There are too many currencies and currency bookkeeping tasks

The first four complaints clearly form a set which can likely be summated as Slow Start. The lower income is probably explicable by inexperience. The last three also seem a set which I’ll generously lable Opaque/Confusing.

After getting over the traditional they’re criticising my baby reaction I think they have a point or three and likely very good ones. They’ve made a variety of proposals for addressing the Slow Start none of which appeal directly as they lose other qualities I still (wrongly?) feel significant. Ben also has a bunch of quite credible suggestions for the Opaque/Confusing which make sense but also head off in the woods from the problems I’d like the game to address. It will take a bit to digest that impedance.

The idea of different merger and floatation rules is growing on me.
Proposal: 1. All companies are limited to 3 bank pool shares each (!)

1. Merger shares continue to operate as before

2. After the 3rd General Dividend shares in the secondary companies may be sold in the normal manner with a minimum bid of $5

3. After 2 shares have sold a secondary company is active and operating with an initial income of $0

4. Companies merge by building into another other company’s home station, with a special dividend etc just like before

5. Secondary companies which start already connected by track cause insta-merges as before

6. The rule-of-3 still stands but secondary companies only have to honour it for their colour track – thus the NER may continue building links from Sheffield even though its component companies already have 3 links built

I kinda sorta maybe like the feel of this. Maybe. As I wrote, it is growing on me. It may be fungus.

I’ve also been a little annoyed by how to handle the plethora of bank pool and merger shares given the current merger rules. No answer seems good: cards, slips of paper, glass bits, cubes, chits, whatever. Time to retreat back to good old charts and tables and wet erase pens to mark off shares to players from the tracks:

Which required an update to the map to remove the pool squares. I also clean up the foreign ports to something that at looks like the values make sense.

I got talking with Aliza Panitz (BGG: Morganza) last night about the merger model in Muck & Brass and in the process realised that the first or second merger is liable to be too powerful. There are a few primary early merger paths:

1. Both northerns via the loop around Sheffield
2. One of the southern companies with the L&SR via Peterborough
3. One of the two northern companies with the EUR via Peterborough
4. Two of the southern companies via Peterborough or any of the other London orbits

The problem is with the mergers with the northern companies and with anything that involves the B&GR from the southerns. If anything in the north merges, and they start the NER, then it will auto-merge, thus generating a second special dividend for those players before the General Dividend. If anything involving the B&GR merges and they start the GWR (which the B&GR has also certainly built to), then the same problem repeats to the south. That’s 3 and a bit of the four early merge cases where a small subset of players get two special dividends in quick succession without any ability for the other players to do anything about it in advance.

That may not be good. Another related problem is the turn ordering which puts the cash richest players first. As soon as the mergers hit they are liable to remain the cash richest as they steamroller as above. To give a quick sense of the problem in concrete terms from this morning’s solo play:

The first expansion after the 3rd General Dividend merged the LB&SRC with the L&SR via Peterborough. The special dividend went to the LB&SRC. The NER was then started, merging the L&SR& (which now contained the LB&SCR) and the L&MR into the NER. A second special dividend was paid to the original LB&SCR share holders. The next expansion merged the B&GR into the EUR and started the GWR which insta-merged into the B&GR for another two special dividends paid to the B&GR share holders. The GWR then merged into the NER via Peterborough and paid a third special dividend to the original B&GR shareholders and a second to the EUR shareholders. They started the CR which was won by a player with so much cash they could simply throw it away on the CR and still win. The next player, who was already low on cash, had no chance at any of the merger shares, built a foreign port as did the last expansion. The game then ended on the fourth General Dividend as there were only two operating companies: GWR & CR.

An obvious partial solution is to require that a merging player pick a secondary company which:

• is not connected by track

or if that’s not possible:

• is not connected to the company which just merged

Such a rule is unpleasantly clunky, if historic and reasonable from a financials market perspective. It pretty much guarantees that the SWR is going to be the first secondary company out with the GWR and LNWR in the next round. The CR is a knife aimed straight at the L&SR and has all the subtlety of the Wabash in Wabash Cannonball. Likewise the The LNWR is a somewhat similar knife aimed at the L&MR and by extension at the B&GR. The SWR conversely lurks between the B&GR and the L&MR and can’t insta-merge in one build like the CR and LNWR can, but it potentially controls many foreign ports and is thus interesting for that reason alone. The NER is just a pig – whenever it starts it will isnta-merge into whatever the current shape of the L&MR/L&SR pair is. The GWR is a similar inst-merge into whatever the B&GR is then.

At least there’s now some subtlety to the mergers with the ugly delay rule.

Sigh.

Another potential model struck this morning:

1. Scrap all the current merger rules
2. Starting after the third General Dividend players may start capitalising the secondary companies. As soon as a share sells (two? three?) they may start operating.
3. Should a secondary company build into another operating companies home station (using its own track) the other company is absorbed, shares trade up etc and there’s a special dividend for the secondary company

ObNote: This model may unduely protect the LB&SCR and EUR and unduly weaken the NER. It may also require adjusting the rule-of-three track building rules.

The port pricing is still a problem but the base game seems to be cleaning up well. I’ve also made the art a little more functional, noting the starting stations and the like, fixing a few small track problems (eg Blackpool) and such forth. Nothing major.