Other Wise

Early Experience: Dutch Intercity

· Tags:

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.

  1. Historical railway routes ↩

  2. The monies from share auctions will fund the operations of the company and thus its future share value. Buy too cheaply and you’ll likely have a dead-duck company, pay too much and you’ve lost ground on the other players. ↩

  3. Company directors are the plurality share holders ↩

  4. Dividends are equal to the longest non-looping path that can be traced for the company’s network. ↩

  5. Turn order is variable and set at the beginning of the phase in order of descending cash. ↩

  6. Once all players have had the opportunity to auction a share, the auction continues in turn order rotation until one player has no cash. ↩

  7. This over-bidding has the side effect of also priming the company with competitive cash for route-claiming, as well offering a small potential (shades of the The Riding Series) for hiding cash in company treasuries for end-game scoring retrieval. ↩

Contents © 2023 J C Lawrence - Creative Commons License