We all live in the yellow money mint

I taught Wabash Cannonball to three new players this evening. It was an interesting game that ended on the 8th dividend, with me being high cash and high income for the last 4 dividends! In short the other players manipulated turn order to ensure that I never got a chance at a capitalisation action in order to sell a share to end the game. Additionally as I only owned shares of two companies (2 PRR and 2 C&O, both already in Chicago), I had no way to drive the game closed via track or Development cubes. It was most annoying. End-game scores were $187 (me), $166, $162 and $159. However that was not the interesting part.

At the end of the game the $159 player said that he thought one rule should be added to the game:

If all the players end the game with more than some amount, say $150, then they should all be declared winners. We’re all filthy rich and thus gloriously happy; we should all be winners!

Without commenting on the equation of wealth and happiness, this really isn’t such a bad idea. Really. What it actually provides is a strong incentive for the players to drive the game to a close rapidly so that there is the opportunity for a single unambiguous winner. Conversely it also gives the behind players a strong incentive to drive the game long to push the cash holdings to break the $150 ceiling and thus also win. It puts the collusive base of the temporary emergent alliances on a new footing as the end-game approaches, making what are otherwise fairly straight-forward e(V) calculations not so necessarily calculable any more. Now the game is potentially one-against-all as the winning player attempts to drive the game closed before the other players push their cash holdings over the threshold.

I find this clever: a simple, trivial, change which allows players to collude to their own self-interest to invert the scoring system of the end-game to their advantage.

The variant is unnecessary for Wabash Cannonball as this odd corner case is so unusual as to not require a special rule. If I’d owned shares of more than two companies (I’d have ended the game on track cubes much earlier). However as a base mechanism for other games it has me thinking. Provide an inversion cap on scoring that suddenly declares that all the players win and thus create a massive selfish competition in the end-game of one against everyone for the solo-win. Oh, what spice! Neat!