Photo of a three-player game

Here's a photo of the map at the end of the January test game.  This was a three-player game so the companies to the south and west of the map (on the left in the photo) weren't in play.

More test games

We played two more three-player games in the last month.  Taking the hint from the December game, the rules now prevent trains from counting income multiple times from the same city. This works well.  We also tried a couple of different versions of the Insolvency rules and have reached what seems to be a good working set.

The main surprise in the last game was that only three companies became ten-share companies.  One player struggled to get his companies to the required £10 share value, hindered in part by the others selling some of this shares to depress the price.  My colleagues suggested that more trains in the mid-game might help boost income, although they would also take more cash out of the companies in the first place.  I may have to play about with some more spreadsheets.

It also occurs to me that perhaps the £10 price ledge isn't really needed.  Companies could convert at lower values and just receive less capital as a result.  I original added the ledge to restrict trashing, but I think the other rules in place should be sufficient.

I have made a few changes to the map and tiles.  Single-station cities now increase in value at the start of the green phase, which makes those companies that start in such cities more competitive.  It also makes the West Coast Main Line reach a potential 50 income.  The East Coast Main Line can still score more, which thanks to a tweak in the Stock Exchange means that companies can double-jump one step higher.

My players are getting used to wooden cubes as share tokens.  This is just as well, because I haven't had time to design, print and cut certificates.

One thing that didn't work was a trial with a simultaneous auction for the Private Railways.  What worked in 18NEB didn't work for our second game in 18GB.  All the players refused to buy the cheapest Private Railway until it dropped in price.  This in turn perturbed the starting cash so that we were able to start five companies in the first turn, which promptly messed up the flow of trains into the game.  So I've returned the system to auctioning one Private Railway at a time.  Possibly an 1830-style auction might work as well.

The design is definitely progressing.  It still needs more testing and tweaking.  It's all fun.

A three-player game

Today we tried the 3-player game for the first time. It generally worked quite well. My testers enjoyed it and said they'd be happy to play it again.

Some recent changes worked well. The "Lawson-style" plain track tiles simplified the route building, and my changes to make the city tiles more uniform also worked. I'm even considering replacing the two-station city tiles with more conventional 18xx tiles, to simplify that aspect of the game still further, although that would change the style of the game somewhat.

As always, the test revealed some things that need tweaking. I was taken by surprise when one player started running a train that visited Glasgow three times on the same route. In an earlier version of the rules, a given city could only count once towards each train. That was a rule that I removed for the sake of simplicity, but I may have to reinstate it. (Alternatively, I could turn Glasgow into a 2-station city, which would bely its historical population; or perhaps players just need to put markers in Glasgow to stop this behaviour).

I had tweaked the Insolvency rules before this game and we agreed that they are now too generous. I either need to return to the 1860 rule whereby companies become insolvent at the end of their turn, or reduce the earnings that companies receive from leasing a train. (1860 actually does both of these, but that would probably be too harsh for my game).

We had to adjust the number of trains in the mix, but I pretty much expected that for the first game. (There is a different train mix depending on the number of players). And there are some minor tweaks to consider elsewhere as well.

Finally, the players said they would prefer traditional certificates rather than wooden cubes to represent shares. So 18GB is definitely becoming more and more of an 18xx game and less of a eurogame. I don't mind that; I now know how I would create a eurogame, learning from the experience of 18GB, and in the meantime I'm happy to create a new member of the 18xx family.

Now that was close!

Yesterday I tried another 4-player game, with me playing all positions. The final scores were: 505, 504, 503 and 501. That was close - what does it imply? I can see the following options:

1. I've developed a finely-balanced game
2. I unconsciously played all the positions similarly, with similar results
3. It was a fluke result
4. The game is designed so that the actions of the players make no appreciable difference

Obviously I'm hoping that one of the first three apply, rather than the fourth.

One of the "players" did have a good lead, both financially and operationally. Her NBR commanded the East Coast London-Aberdeen route, which is the highest scoring route in the game. She score was dragged back when another player sold 5 shares in her other main company (the Caledonian). Also, she could possibly have optimised her shares better in the end game. So perhaps I shouldn't be too worried by the final score.

I am more concerned about the stock market rules. Halfway through the game, I dropped the rule that make the director's token of each company sell for half value. With that in place, I could see no incentive for people to dump companies. I'll have to re-examine the effect of this at the beginning of the game: if necessary I'll only allow companies to buy trains from each other from Phase Three (as in 1830).

I also need some rule to limit stock trashing. It would have been perfectly possible to trash all the stock prices mindlessly. Possibly I just need a two-dimensional stock market after all, although these do have some drawbacks. An alternative would be to forbid players from selling shares in companies that they bought earlier in the round, although directors would have to be careful to protect their own holdings first. Maybe I just need ledges as in Steam Over Holland, or to make only sales by the Director affect the Share Price.

A two-player game

This week, I tried the first ever two-player game of 18GB. It went pretty well, given the current state of the design. My opponent said that it felt like a real game, which made me very happy. We faced plenty of decisions and the game generally flowed well.

As I expected, the game revealed a lot of things that need tweaking. We even found a tile that lacked a valid upgrade! I also got a lot of ideas for how to improve the design of the various components.

My opponent found the range of tiles quite hard to cope with. It made me realise that although I have designed each set of tiles carefully, there is little commonality between sets. So 2-station cities have one upgrade path, 3-station cities another, and double-town tiles a third, with little consistency across the three. So today I'm working through some options for replacing some tiles with others that match those used elsewhere in the game. I haven't gone so far as to make them all exactly the same, but there are fewer "unique" tiles. I hope this will make the tile play easier to manage, without being any less challenging in terms of tactics.

I also have concerns about my current rule for multiple jumps in the share price. Usually, a company will convert from five shares to ten, use the extra capital to buy an express train and use the extra markers to claim a route. This gives it a higher income but a lower dividend per share. The income moves the share price several spaces - one for every 10 between the income and the current share price. The total result is that these shares are worth far more than shares in an unconverted company, so the choice of which to buy is pretty straightforward.

In most 18xx games that allow multiple jumps, the share price is moved two steps if the income is double the current price, rather than a fixed amount more. I might switch to using this rule, so that share prices are somewhat slower to increase.

More on Private Railways

In January, I reported my plans to combine aspects of both 1825 and 1830 in how I handled private railways. That's more or less how things stand, except it turned out that the 1830 approach gave too much cash back to the players too early in the game, disrupting the flow of capital. That works fine for 1830, which has relatively low incomes, but didn't work for 18GB. So now, 18GB players assign private railways to companies instead of buying them in.

I've also changed the selection of private railways. The GNR and GSWR, instead of being optional public companies, have become private railways - the GNR with a slightly unusual track-laying power. Historically smaller privates such at the Arbroath & Forfar and the Newcastle & Carlisle have been removed. I've also defined which privates should be used for different numbers of players. I feel happier about this new arrangement.

One thing I'm considering is using the privates to add some asymmetry to the public companies. In many 18xx games, some privates come with shares in particular public companies and I'm toying with that idea for 18GB. My current musings are that perhaps the LNWR could start as a ten-share company (but with half capital) and that the Liverpool & Manchester could come with the LNWR directorship. Some other privates could come with 10% shares of the NER & NBR, which would only come into play if and when those companies become ten-share companies. It's an interesting idea and one I hope to try out.

I blame 1830

The map and tiles for 18GB were, I thought, pretty much settled. The interesting problems lay in the cash flow and train mix. But recently I played a game of 1830 – not something I do often – and I was struck by the tight tile set and the impact that a few key hexes had on the routes available. So I thought a bit and decided to add three double-town hexes to the 18GB map.

The beauty of these hexes lies precisely in that there are only three of them and the supply of tiles is strictly limited. This means that players may be in competition for the particular tile they desire. So by adding these hexes, I have added an extra element of player interaction and competition.

By comparison, the single-town hexes, plain hexes and most city hexes are more numerous. Therefore they have more tiles available and the element of competition is not so great. The exception is the four major cities – Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow, which have similarly tight tile sets.

I’ve taken this opportunity to change the single-town tiles as well. Previously, the green tiles had four prongs (K, X, or peace-sign). Now they only have three (doglegs and Y), thus making tighter track development. This wouldn’t have worked before because the three hexes that are now double towns really need crossing track. It will be interesting to see whether how this change affects the game – it may make it too hard to build intersecting track, which would potentially reduce player interaction rather than enhancing it.