1839 external playtesting release
O’ tradition! (I released 1828 for playtesting over Christmas a few years back – might as well continue that pattern)
I’m now releasing the latest-ish draft of the 1839 rules and the game itself for (somewhat limited) open playtesting. Supported player-counts: 2-4. (Yep: 2)
What is (somewhat limited) open playtesting? Pretty simple really:
- 1839 is currently only present on b17.kanga.nu (feel free to make an account), so all games will be played there.
- I must be added/party to whatever
chat/Discord/email/Hangout/Slack/etc communications venue is used for
the game. If it is a realtime game and only voice chat is used,
please still add me and I’ll listen in as I can (recordings or
transcripts would be much appreciated – GoogleMeets are great for the
latter).
- Good venues include the HOGGS Slack or the 18xx Friends Discord channel, but use whatever works for you.
- Please copy me (retroactively and in summary is fine) on any subsequent or out-of-band conversation around the game.
Some caveats/guidelines:
- I’m pretty happy with the design. No rules have changed for many
games now. That doesn’t however mean that nothing will change.
- The rules are still in flight as a document, but are and have been locked as to design/mechanisms etc.
- However, this does not mean that there are no currently outstanding
items. Specifically:
- I suspect that there’s (precisely) one too many trains in the 4-player game (the problem is which rank as the one-too-many is spread across three ranks with each individually seeming JustRight). (No, I don’t yet know what if anything I’m going to do about this)
- The 2-player game has had relatively little exercise (not none, but not a lot, not the 100+ plays the 3- and 4-player game got). If there is a gap in 2-player, I expect it will be in exact train-counts.
- As any rules changes or clarifications happen, they’ll be announced on the 1838 entry on the Weather Forecast, much as I similarly did for 1828 a few years ago.
- This does not include release of the PnP files for 1839. That will
happen…probably next year.
- As there’s been no tabletop play of the new 1839 yet, I’m still working token design, colour palettes and other visual elements of the tabletop presentation.
- Which also means that while the artwork on B17 is functionally correct, cosmetic changes will be coming.