From Korea to Nebraska

The OCS Korea (BGG entry) game is ongoing, but this evening we took a break. Partly this was just me wanting to play something different, and partly due to the warm weather, which makes the garage a little stifling in the evening, as it takes the full blast of the afternoon/evening sun. My original thought was some Combat Commander (BGG entry) (Yes, yes, yes, I know that after the last game with Eric I said I'd never play it again, but it keeps calling to me, and I keep hoping that it will be a better gaming experience, and, on occasion, it is. It's just that it hates me.), but Eric counter-proposed some 18xx, and we settled on the recent Deep Thought release 18Neb (BGG entry), one that neither of us had played before.

18Neb is fairly straightforward for experienced 18xx players. There's an initial auction for the minors, then the regular Stock/Operating rounds. Points of interest include:

• One private is the Credit Mobilier, which pays you $5 for each track tile laid by any player (new or upgrade).
  
• In the Stock Round a Corporation President can have the Corporation sell stock to the pool or buy a certificate back from the pool or another player (with the player's agreement). In other games this happens at the end of each OR turn (e.g. 18EU). Any buy action counts as the player's buy action for that SR turn.
  
• Corporations float with only the President's share. From Phase 5 onwards new Corporations that sell 5 shares become fully capitalized, with their remaining shares being placed in the pool.
  
• Bidding in the 2nd and subsequent SRs is done by pass order in the previous SR. The 1st player to pass gets the 'First Pass' card, the second player gets the 'Second Pass' card, etc. At the end of the SR you swap your card for a turn order card (as used to determine initial seating order), with the 'First Pass' owner getting the 'Priority Deal card. The only issue is that as a player then buys a share after passing, you all have to pass your cards around, as the, for example, 2nd pass player now becomes 1st pass player. A trifle clumsy, perhaps, but overall a decent idea, although irrelevant in the 2-player game.
  
• Local Railway Corporations have only 5 certificates, representing double shares.They are permitted to own a single train, which must be one of those already rusted.
  

So, some interesting aspects to the game.

I started off with the Missouri Pacific in the SW corner, planning to run to Chicago South, and along the bottom of the map. Eric opened UP, using his private, as well as the Colorado & Southern, on opposite sides of the map. However, I chopped and changed plans a couple of times, before Eric managed to dump the Chicago NW on me, through fine play on his part and carelessness on my part. The worst part of having to buy a train for CNW, which didn't cost me that much, was that it rusted the sole train on another company I had. Didn't see that one coming!

Now _that_ could have been the end, but Eric's view of the rules was that as President I could sell the company shares in the OR in order to pay for the train. Now, the rules don't explicitly state that when selling shares to pay for a train that the President isn't permitted to have the company sell its own shares to pay for the train, putting money in the company treasury and thus saving the President's stupid a$$. As it turns out, this all had a silver lining as my companies now had better trains, and were running for gobs of money. The game lasted just long enough for me to catch up, and I squeaked it by only $149, pretty much a rounding error. Here's the final map and stock positions:





I had 6 shares in Missouri Pacific, Chicago Burlington, and Chicago NW, and Eric in Colorado Southern, Denver Rio Grande, and Nebkota, with us splitting UP. Only Missouri Pacific, Chicago Burlington and UP were sold out, which helped me, I think, to seal the game. Our share values were almost identical, only $4 difference, but I had the better cash balance to the tune of $153.

Whilst 18Neb is a very interesting 18xx game, and I'd like to try it again, I'm still not sure about 2-player 18xx. Until the latter part of the game you very much seem to own your own companies, with very little cross investment in the other player's companies. There seems to be little incentive to make a company sold out if you don't have the majority position, as you help your opponent more than yourself. Although I guess if the company income is high enough, then buying that extra share can outweigh the benefit of being sold out. However, that all being said, I would still rather play 18xx 2-player than not play 18xx at all.

Now back to OCS Korea....

1889 - Too Close to Call!

We got in another 18xx game this past week - 1889, set in Shikoku, Japan (see mine and Eric's notes from our earlier playing for more detail). The rule-set is essentially 1830, with a few minor tweaks, and as we found last time it worked very well as a 2-player game of 18xx. While the game wasn't about horse-racing, it might as well have been, as the finish was every bit as close as the Preakness hose racing event this past weekend.

I started the game out with the thought of trying to get decent privates, and going from there - I managed this by getting the two largest privates, as well as the first private (the "speed-bump" in the initial stock auction). The downside to this is it meant I was not able to start a public company initially - so when Eric started the Kotoden Railroad (KO), based in Takamatsu in the northeastern part of the island (near Kotohira, which we both learned last time is the city that grows the largest), I bought in as much as I could with my limited funds. The upside of this was that I was able to dump the KO when I started my first railroad, the Iyo Railroad starting in Matsuyama. I had a private that I could exchange for a share of this company, which I ended up never using as Eric bought into the company as I floated it - in the mid-game, I thought it was a mistake to not have utilized the power of this particular private, but on the whole I believe the turn-by-turn revenue from the company that I held until the 5-trains arrived more than made up for this. Fairly early, I used my only token to put a station in Nuhama to ensure access to Kotohira when it grew later in the game.

At this point, counting privates, I was only a share or so behind Eric in number of shares - so from this point onward, I was working under the impression that I was under the gun and needed to do some shenanigans to catch up. This resulted in my moving in and out of several of Eric's companies - including, at one point, two that I thought were ripe targets of a strip-and-dump (and Eric had the priority at that point as well). I turned out to be overly paranoid (I think), as Eric was pretty focused on bringing the railways back to working order - but it worked out well, as I was able to move my holdings to the companies that he had started that had a better capital situation. This resulted in my holding my three companies, all of which had 5-trains or better (permanents), and two of Eric's companies, both of which also had permanents, whereas the companies I had dumped had 4-trains - not quite permanents, as if either of us were able to get the diesels out the 4's would rust.

The major late-game decision for me was to decide whether to go ahead and purchase a 6-train I knew I could afford, right then, or withhold a couple of turns in the hopes of being able to get a diesel. Getting a diesel would have seriously dinged Eric, as he had two companies that would have been left without trains, but my calculation was that withholding would hurt me more than getting the diesel would help me, so I chose to go with the 6-train (I believe it was in the Iyo, which at the end was running a 6-train AND a 4-train, for very nice dividends).

We entered what we thought would be the final set of ORs (Operating Rounds) - I was getting quite a bit better dividends than Eric, as my companies had larger trains, and the companies he had that were running for good amounts I held strong minority stakes in (including a 50% stake in the Sanuki Railroad, which was Eric's strongest railway, if my memory is correct). By this point, we had both gotten to the certificate limit (which is quite generous in this game), and had shuffled our holdings to what we thought would be the most valuable - either in stock value, dividend payouts, or both.

I new I was making a strong showing at the end, but I also thought I was a bit behind at that point, so I didn't expect to be able to pull out the win . . . but after the final 3 operating rounds, when we calculated our final net worths, mine was greater than Eric's by $14. Both of our total worths were in the $7000 (ok, probably Yen, but I'm not sure how to make a Yen symbol here), so the difference was very small in the scale we were talking about. Just to be certain, Eric re-calculated the scores using Excel - he'd done it by had initially - but with the same result! $14 separating 1st and 2nd in a two player game, with s cores in the $7000 range, is definitely too close to call - it's essentially a tie, or a rounding error.

I suspect that the major factor in allowing me to catch up was my decisions as to which of Eric's railroads to hold, and also my decision to go with purchasing the 6-train early, rather than trying to save enough to be able to buy a diesel (although it would definitely be interesting to see what would have happened had I made that decision instead). I do think Eric could have done a few things to slow me down - I pointed out after our game that he had a couple of tokens that could have put a serious damper on the Iyo Railroads payouts - but on the whole, I think we both played very solid games, with the result being that end result was, really, too close to call.

I'm not yet certain I'll be able to play this week - we're in the midst of packing up our house prior to a move back to Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas . . . obviously, this may put a damper in the near term on our opportunities to play games, although we may investigate PBEM, Vassal and other things of that sort. If we manage to get a game in this week, I may be a bit late on getting my post up, as my computer will be packed and in transit most of next week . . .

No matter what, though, I just want to say that I've really enjoyed these evening games with Eric, and the opportunity to spout off about the games here.

So, as usual, happy gaming!

1889 - Railroads in Japan

I’m going to briefly cover the specific game of 1889 Eric and I played last Thursday, but I plan to spend most of my post today talking about how 1889 compares to other 18xx games I have played, and give you my thoughts on how it worked as a 2-player game.

First, duration – we started just about 8pm (possibly a bit after, but not too much), and pretty much dived right in after discussion what rules differences there were, and covering the private companies and their special abilities. We finished up right at 11, for a total duration of 3 hours - I suspect this will be a bit shorter, but not much, for future plays.

In the initial auction, I ended up picking up the company that provided a free mountain track builds (once owned by a public company), and another private who either didn’t have a special ability, or it was a special ability I don’t recall and/or didn’t use! I then opened up the Uwajima Railway, and Eric was able to open up the Iyo (mainly because he had the private that could be turned into a share – otherwise he would not have had enough money to start a public company). Initially, I was producing better dividends than Eric, but that brief advantage didn’t last long, as his company was near Kotohira – which ends up being the biggest city on the map, and doesn’t take long to ramp up – as well as a couple of the strong off-map areas. From this point on, I was behind the eight-ball the rest of the game – the one chance I might have had is if I had been able to get to having enough cash to buy a Diesel fast enough to actually hurt Eric’s railroads . . . but that was not to be, as I had to do a lot of shuffling to get trains that would survive the arrival of the Diesel (which made 4-trains obsolete) in my other railroads. As it turned out, Eric ended up picking up the Diesel just before I could – I believe it was in the same operating round, but he operated before the company that had the cash in it did – and all in all, I suspect it worked out to Eric’s advantage.

The final result was: Eric 12,377, Tim 11,259. Despite having two of the three top valued shares as my companies, this advantage was muted by Eric having 4 shares in each of them, and my NOT having participated in much of the run-up of his highest valued company (the Iyo) due to having dumped it earlier in the game in order to start up another railway, and never having had the free-cash and/or certificate slots to pick it up – in retrospect, I should have forgone some other shares in order to buy into it, as the appreciation on the high-end of the stock market is significantly stronger than the lower valued areas.

1889 is a descendent of 1830. Apparently, the original rules were just a list of differences from the 1830 rules – they’ve been re-written to be complete and stand-alone, but that gives you an idea of the development of the game. Major differences are the size of the map (much smaller than 1830), the duration of the game (much shorter – we finished our two player game in right at 3 hours), and some details of the privates, although in effect they are fairly similar to those in 1830. As in 1830, one city on the map needs to be the focus of development (Kotohira), as it develops into by far the most valuable city.

The other element of the game is how tight initial cash is – it’s been awhile since I’ve played 1830, but I think this is pretty similar, if not slightly more tight. In a two player game, it requires serious management of resources in the initial auction to insure having enough funds to start up a public company. In general, I like this element, although it certainly does make this a game that will take a play or two to get a good feel for.

The map is also interesting – there are two separate areas that are relatively easy to develop in, separated by mountainous terrain (which is expensive to build in). As already mentioned, I believe the rail and companies around Kotohira need to be hotly contested (in our game, they weren’t – Eric ended up with all of the companies in that area under his majority control), but I don’t feel TOO bad about it, because that wasn’t obvious from the initial set up. It might have been had I looked at the tiles more closely, but so it goes!

This game definitely was a good two-player 18xx – I suspect it would work well (although be tight) for three or four, but I don’t think I would want to go higher than that in player count, as I suspect that the money constraints and the smaller map wouldn’t handle a larger player count very well.

All-in-all, I enjoyed it, and am definitely open to trying it again – I suspect our next game will be different, as we both now have a better feel for both the geography and the private companies (and their abilities), and which public companies have the strongest prospects. I'm very excited by the 18xx games that Deep Thought has produced - the production quality is quite high, and the games they have published have been consistently interesting (including this one, IMHO).

Our next game (this Thursday) will be another game of Combat Commander: Europe - we've not yet picked a scenario, but I'm thinking of either a rematch of scenario 4 (with the sides swapped), or giving Scenario 2 a try (bocage country just after D-day). Not sure what Eric's thoughts are as to Scenario, but one thing I do know is that we'll both be posting our thoughts after that game next Monday - see you then!

Building Railways in Shikoku

This week's gaming session saw us pulling out 1889, a newer entry in the 18xx series set on the Shikoku island of Japan. This has been listed as a shorter 18xx game, and some have commented that it's very good for two players.

(For a full review of the game, head to the bottom half of this article. No pictures this week, sorry. Forgot to bring the camera downstairs. If you need an introduction to the 18xx game family, I recommend Stuart Dagger's description. It's outdated, but still relevant.)

The rules to 1889 are nearly exactly the rules to 1830. There are very few, if any differences. That made it easy for Tim and I to dig right in. (When I refer to stocks opening below, I'll also mention their starting hex as you can deduce from the map.)

The first thing I pointed out, and Tim had surmised the same, was that opening money is very tight with 2 players. There is a total of 840¥ available at the start, and the initial private companies have a minimum cost of 200¥. That leaves a max of 640¥ left for us to each try to start a company. Minimum starting share price is 65¥, and 10 shares have to be bought for two companies to float. At first blush it looks like you'll come up short, but fortunately one of the privates can be exchanged for a share of the Iyo Railroad.

The initial stock round left me as President of the Iyo (E2) and owning the cheapest two privates and Tim with the other two privates and Uwajima (B7) as his initial company. I had IPO'd at 75¥ and Tim at 65¥ (as I had to buy one fewer shares) so the Iyo went first in the initial stock round.

I started building across the top of the map to the right while Tim was building out the bottom left. After a couple SR/OR cycles, with each of us owning 6 of our own company and 4 of the other, Tim decided to sell out of the Iyo and open the Tosaden (F9). This company has a lot of synergy with the Uwajima. It was starting to shape up like a “you have your half, I have mine” game, and for the most part this was true.

Tim's decision to sell out of the Iyo and open the Tosaden had a couple repercussions that really dictated the course of the game. First, the Iyo (which by this point had four trains, three 2s and a 3) was putting a fair amount of money into its treasury through the dividends it was collecting via the shares in the open market. A long-term side effect of this was that I was able to avoid withholding dividends except for one situation late in the game. I was always able to get money transferred around where I needed it. The other effect Tim's decision had was to ensure he'd end up running four companies to my three.

So, things slowly progressed with Tim focusing on the left and bottom sides of the map while I focused on the top and right sides. I opened the Kotoden (K4) as my 2nd company, and Tim opened the Awa (K8) as his third – this was the first time he ventured onto the right side of the board. I was noticing around this time that I was consistently going into stock rounds with more cash than Tim. We weren't logging the state at the end of every turn, but it seemed like most times I either had equal or more shares, and nearly always more cash. Now, stock prices can make up for this, but I was pretty sure I was leading after the first third of the game or so.

The last two companies to open were the Kuroshio (C10) and the Sanuki (I2). The Kuroshio only gets its initial token – no more. This makes it a very difficult company to build out to any size – you nearly have to have help from another railroad you own. This meant there was no way I was going to open it. Tim, on the other hand, owned two other railroads operating in that corner. I'd leave it to him. I eventually opened the Sanuki. This was about the time the 4s and 5s were out, and there was a bit of a train rush triggered by the appearance of these two new companies. Nothing unmanageable, though.

I had ended up in a situation where the Kotoden was generating cash, and the Iyo was appreciating a lot. My goal with the Sanuki was to have it run a single train for a decent amount (Kotohira, the city in I4, is the city that provides the highest income on the board.) I started the Sanuki just as the 5s were coming out, allowing Kotohira to be upgraded to a brown tile – this is the only real way to hook the Sanuki into that city as the earlier Kotohira tiles don't have enough access.

By this time, we were down to only two tokens remaining to be placed – the Awa and the Sanuki. We made a deal to not token each other out of passing through Kotohira. I suspect after a few more plays of 1889, this deal might not be made :)

There are 15 cities on the 1889 map. By the time brown tiles are out, there's space for around 30-33 tokens. However, the 7 companies only have 15 tokens total between them. This leaves a lot of open cities. As it turned out, not a single meaningful city was fully tokened out. This allowed for a lot of open train running.

The toughest decision making came after the first 6 train appeared. This rusted the 3s and made the Diesels available for purchase. Those Diesels are great, but they're pricey. (1100¥, but you can trade in a train for a 300¥ discount. The first Diesel purchase also rusts the 4s.) Both Tim and I were doing some serious train shuffling in order to ensure we didn't end up with a company with no train, little cash, and having to buy a Diesel. This was exacerbated by his withholding earnings on the Awa at one point. This forced my hand as he now had enough cash on hand to buy a Diesel and put me into a world of hurt.

I managed, thankfully, to shuffle all my company cash into the Kotoden by buying its two trains. This left it with about 900¥ or so, and no train going into a stock round. The Iyo had a 4 and a 6, and the Sanuki had a 5. I managed to get the running order such that the Iyo was first (as it had been most of the game) and the Kotoden second. This allowed me to run the Iyo with both trains, have the Kotoden buy the 4 off the Iyo and trade it in for a Diesel. By this point, however, Tim had also maneuvered his trains such that the only one left without a train was the Awa, and it had enough cash to buy a train outright. So, we both dodged a big bullet, but it took a lot of planning to pull it off. It also happened that each company had exactly one train.

One more set of ORs with the Diesels running twice put us to the brink of breaking the bank. A quick stock round to position ourselves and it was into the final set of ORs done on paper.

The companies ended up in the following situation (President, Final Share Price, Final Dividend)

Iyo, Eric, 315, 32
Tosaden, Tim, 255, 28
Uwajima, Tim, 255, 33
Kotoden, Eric, 225, 63 (can you tell this was a Diesel?)
Awa, Tim, 140, 63
Kuroshio, Tim, 125, 28
Sanuki, Eric, 125, 28

Final scores ended up Eric 12,377 and Tim 11,259. I believe this was the first time I'd beaten Tim in a 2-player 18xx game. We finished up in right about 3 hours. This probably would go faster next time, as we were both pretty unfamiliar with the map and the implications derived from it. I'll call it a 2.5 hour 2-player game.

Review

1889 is a recent (2005) 18xx game published by Deep Thought Games. It was previously available as a DIY kit from Wild Heaven in Japan. It was designed by Yasutaka Ikeda.

This is a smaller 18xx game set on the Shikoku island of Japan (the smallest of the four main islands). It's estimated at 3-4 hours, and supports 2-6 players. The rules are nearly identical to 1830. Very few (if any) chromy bits or oddities to differentiate itself from other 18xx games.

The map is dominated by a large mountain range in the center. This can make building expensive, but a private company is available that allows free builds on mountain spaces to the company that owns it. After a couple playings of this (one solo mocking four players, and one two-player game) a small number of items pop out for this title in particular:

1. There is heavy competition for tiles. By design, the tile selection is very tight. You will occasionally run out of gentle bends or yellow city tiles. There are extra tiles included for a “beginner game” that lessens this somewhat, should you be feeling friendly that day.
2. The token density is very light. You have to work to token out sections of the board. There are around 30 possible token locations by end of game, but only 15 tokens to place and 15 cities on the board. This makes free running for Diesels a probability.
3. The share limits are high. It likely won't be until very late in the game when you actually have to make decisions about swapping ownership in one company for another. (There are 7 companies in the game – 63 total certificates.) The total ownership limit per number of players is 2-50, 3-57, 4-56, 5-60, 6-66.
   
4. The game seems very balanced. I don't see any massively under or over priced privates, but you do have to watch the number of tokens each company gets when making your decision which company to open. My opinion on this might change after repeated play, but nothing seemed glaring.
5. This would be a difficult game for 5-6 players. Somebody is likely going to end up running the Kuroshio (which only has a single token in a fixed location) without running another company. They are likely to lose. Opening the Kuroshio without also controlling either the Uwajima or the Tosaden is a dubious strategy.

Overall, this game is worthy of a place in any 18xx player's collection. It plays very well for two, and should scale well to four players. I would hesitate to recommend it for more than four players. Many tough decisions are provided in a game lasting under 4 hours without being overly brutal. It should also prove to be a good introductory 18xx game as there aren't any odd rules that don't apply to other games. I also expect it will have good replayability as there aren't many scripted build situations as in other smaller games such as 18FL.

As usual, the Deep Thought Games production quality is top notch. All the visual cues we've come to expect from John Tamplin's work are here. His games take a while to reach you as they're built by hand to order, but they're always worth the wait.

Administrivia

I believe next week's game will be Combat Commander again, but Tim hadn't picked a scenario last I'd heard. I'm still debating about my next selection, but I'm expecting it will be one of Richard Borg's Command and Colors games.