Stuart Dagger raises an interesting point - given that the West Coast main line runs between Liverpool and Manchester, calling at neither, how do I plan to represent that historical route in Britain Under Steam? If the map was more detailed, I could include an extra hex between the two cities, but that would require the map to be even larger than 1829/1825.
Actually, I find this strangely liberating. There are a couple of similar areas where I have been trying to tweak the map to allow the historical routes. As examples, I want the LSWR London-Exeter route to pass north of Southampton, and the Hull-Leeds route to pass between York and Doncaster. I might possibly want to represent the Rugby-Stafford route north of Birmingham too. If I can find a suitable mechanism, perhaps I can use it in all such cases.
One approach might be to use new tiles that allow one route to by-pass a city while others go through or into it. Such tiles might give an interesting twist to the game, especially for players familiar with other 18xx titles. There would remain the question of why a train would choose to by-pass a lucrative destination, rather than include the city in its route. One answer might be to by-pass another company's tokens. Another might be to gain some other bonus, such as for the shortest distance or for the longest route - both ideas I am playing with anyway. Or perhaps the tile just won't have a suitable upgrade.
Another approach would be even simpler. I could just assume that the Manchester hex represents the larger conurbation, much as the Birmingham hex includes the cities around Birmingham itself. On this scale, there would be no need to represent the by-pass explicitly. The WCML does stop at Wigan and Warrington for connections to Liverpool and Manchester, and these towns are within the scope of these hexes. This might well be the simplest approach.
A third approach would be to make one of these hexes a brown hex, with track on the board at the start. I'd prefer one of the other approaches, on the grounds they should give more options during play.
The important question, of course, is which gives the better game?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The classic 'bypass' is the Penn home station in 1830. For a more complex bypass, see the Chicago tile in 18GL.
ReplyDeleteAnother option is to use the 1860 rule that you can run through one blocked city. In 1860 you count the city, but maybe you want to modify it so that you skip the blocked city? Thus, you are emulating a bypass without having to muck about with lots of special tiles.
Ian D
A variant on the 1860 approach might be to allow a player to place a special bypass marker in any station hex, which would allow trains to skip that station (but only that station).
ReplyDeleteThis would be similar to Ticket To Ride: Europe, in which you can place tokens to jump over another player's track.