18xx night: 2009-03-27

Got together with Daniel, Jacob and Todd las night to play 18xx. We played 1846, 18Mex and 1832 – and with small exception I played terribly, embarrassingly badly; rank amateurs could easily have done better. I don’t know where my head was last night, but it wasn’t in that room. The one gleaming light was that I was able to consistently manage the private auctions to my own best advantage. Actually making good use of what I got from there…not so much. Bah. Thankfully I also forgot to take any pictures. A small blessing.

My head finally hit the pillow at around 08:00 this morning, so I’m a bit groggy as I type this. However my brief sleep and the time afterward has been filled with the most delightful many flavoured forms of Oh I should have done XXX! realisations. The 18xx are so wonderfully expressive in their almost symbiotic layers of counter-reactions in that regard.

1846

I’d been wanting to play 1846 for a long time and it has been near the top of my ever-almost Deep Thought Games order as a shorter and clever 18xx by Tom Lehmann. I’m less interested now, verging on active revulsion. I’m generally not a fan of partial capitalisation games as they push players to continuously invest in their own companies in order to validate their prior investment and make it viable. As such cross-investment is more of a spare-cash activity than a selective investment, presidency transfers are far less common, and the emphasis is moved heavily to run good companies rather than free money, combinations, or timing¹. In short the question is How do I ride this vehicle to success? rather than, How do I exploit the other players in order to win? However, more simply, the game seemed intensely tactical, almost entirely non-confrontational and an effective rendering of a standard euro-style economic-snowball into 18xx form. Shudder. I have not had a more unpleasant 18xx experience. I’m willing to play again, I’d like to play again² just to make sure I saw the game reasonably clearly, but I’m tempted to rate this one at 3.5/10 or under.

18Mex

We played up through Phase 3.5 and into the start of Phase 4. I had a clear lead with the NdM presidency, the 20 trigger private, 40% of the Chihuawa and 20% of the, err, gray/black thing down in the south (the two clearly best companies in our game, with the Chihuawua set to merge into the NdM), Jacob wasn’t far behind but was a noticeable step behind me, Todd managed admirably for not knowing the board and I don’t think Daniel had much idea of how terrible a position he was really in once the train rush really broke. Sadly Jacob had to go home (wife, kid) so we called it just as we entered Phase 4. Finally, at least once, I had some of my act together and wasn’t entirely stupid. Even better we got to see some neat track-build patterns with the minors that raked in the money (A and B were both running for ~$100 before they folded) while also driving the game development in entertaining fashions. Tres chic.

18Mex is growing on me. I like the phase 3.5 evolution³ plus the almost as large mutation in phase 5 one or two ORs later when the NdM forms. By reflection (same designer, similar system) 18TN (which I also have) is climbing rapidly on my want-to-play list. Just delightful.

1832

Perhaps I’m just not a stylisitic fan of Bill Dixon games. Perhaps the less said here is also the better as this was where my brain clearly exeunt stage left, leaving me to ungracefully and unconsciously suicide⁴. I admire the huge number of levers the game provides the players, the game has good arc, good development curves and an interesting track-system. That said, the game felt bloated. I suspect that’s an unfair characterisation as the interesting facets of the many many levers provided couldn’t fully express in a shorter game⁵, but having 2-trains run 6-8 times and 8 ranks of trains ( same as 1870: 2/3/4/5/6/8/10/12) is perhaps a bit too much for my taste.