Playtest version available

I have uploaded a playtest version of 18GB to the web.  If you would like to take a look, please mail me or leave a comment below.

Currently I only have an A4 sized version.  I hope to upload a letter version sometime but this will involve redrawing the map so it won't be available soon.

Bouncing to a win

I was happy enough with my tuning of the game to organise another playtest last weekend.  I was very pleased with the outcome: the players enjoyed it, one saying he preferred it to some published games that we've played before.  My reorganisation of the train mix and game end conditions seem to have cracked the problem of the end game, and the removal of the double-town tiles has simplified route building while keeping the challenge posed by the more important hexes.

We did encounter one interested feature towards the end of the game.  As in several 18xx games, if a company's share price is in one of the lowest areas on the stock market, shares in that company don't count against a player's certificate limit.  In the penultimate stock round of Sunday's game, the GWSR was valued this low and my two opponents had spare cash to buy up all the shares.  So far, so good (for me as a designer, if not me as a player).

By the next stock round, the share price had risen out of this zone and hence the players had to sell some shares.  They chose to sell the GSWR, which knocked its share price back down so much that they no longer counted against certificate limits.  As my opponents had sold shares in the GSWR, I was the only player able to buy them and I quickly bought all ten of them.  This was enough to win me the game.

This seemed a little unsatisfactory, because all the manouevring, stock trading and blocking until then counted for little in the final outcome.  In retrospect, we worked out that my opponents could have prevented the share price from falling so far back if they had sold some other shares instead, which would have kept me from the win. Still, it seems a large swing at the end of the game from a single decision. I'm musing about maybe changing the rules so that shares in the low-value zone only count half for the certificate limit, rather than not counting at all.  This would still give an incentive to buy them, while retaining a trade-off against other stock.

(I think the reason that this doesn't occur in other 18xx games arises from other differences in the design.  In 1825, for example, shares don't fall in price when they're sold; while in 1830 the stock market is two-dimensional and structured in such a way that if shares move out of the zone, subsequent sales are less likely to drop them back into it).

Tuning...

Although I've been pretty quiet on the 18GB front over the last few months, I have been doing some development.  The main task is to tune the train mix, both at the start of the game and at the game end.  I intend to run several tests before I ask people to play the game again, as it wouldn't seem fair to table the game without these tests.  Maybe if I had more regular gaming sessions I'd take a different tack but this approach seems right for my current circumstances.

In my most recent solo game, one of the questions I tested was what would happen if a player decides not to buy any Private Railways.  I wouldn't mind if this were a viable option but it would be a disaster if it were a game winning tactic because in that case no-one would want to buy any Privates at all.  Fortunately the game confirmed my paper calculations: the players who bought no Private Railways were at a significant disadvantage.

The new rules for ending the game seemed to work as well.  These will be hard to confirm without real players, as a lot will depend on the choices that people make, but the rules performed well in a solo game, enough for me to stick with these rules until they are tried in anger.

The other question that I'm investigating with these solo games is how quickly the trains come out, given different player choices.  If my expectations are met, a key factor will be how many companies players choose to start in the first Stock Round.  In most of my playtests, one player has had enough cash to start two companies, each of which has bought trains.  An alternative would be for each player to start one company, probably slowing the rate at which the trains come out.  It may even be a valid tactic for one player to start no companies and play the investor role; I will need to see how this affects the train progression (and indeed how well it works as a tactic).

In summary, progress is being made, but slowly...

The first world war?

According to Christian Wolmar's book Fire and Steam, the railways were hugely important in World War One, shifting men, munitions and materiel the length of Britain.  Of particular importance were the port of Southampton in the south and the long, slow Highland Railway from Perth to Thurso in Scotland.  The Highland was the main supply route for the great naval base at Scapa Flow in Orkney.  All the railways were largely under government control for the entire war, with improved utilisation of resources as a result.

I'm toying with the idea of adding an optional rule in 18GB to reflect the impact of the war.  The rule would apply for one operating round late in the game - perhaps triggered by the first time a 6X train is removed at the end of an OR, or when the first 6X is purchased.  Both Southampton and the Inverness off-board area would generate 5 income more than usual (equivalent to a bonus of 50 in other 18xx games).  I guess the normal bonus routes wouldn't apply for that OR, as a loose representation of the impact of the war on trade, but there would be a special bonus for London to Inverness.  The overall effect would be small but would reward slightly different routes to usual ORs.

I did consider a financial rule as well, to reflect the lack of investment in the railways during this period.  But I think companies should still be allowed to buy trains (otherwise those which have withheld income and/or run as Insolvent will be penalised), and I don't want to limit track building because companies should have the chance to connect to the areas with the new bonuses.   In 1880 China, the communist period stops stock prices from moving, but I don't want that for 18GB because capitalists still made money during the war.  In the end, simplicity is probably best.

One other thing I might do is to add an extra character to the characters variant.  Herbert Walker was chairman of the Railway Executive Committee that directed the contribution of the railways to the war effort.  Wolmar notes that some companies were more affected than others.  So perhaps the player with Herbert Walker could designate up to two companies that would each reduce their income by ten for the OR that represents the war.  (Companies with tokens in Southampton or Perth would be immune).  On the other hand, this might make this card into a Kingmaker role, so perhaps another power might be more appropriate.

End game

Since my playtests in the summer, I've been thinking about how a game of 18GB should end.  It doesn't use paper money or chips so the traditional 18xx end of breaking the bank doesn't apply (at least, not easily).  Until now, the game ended three operating rounds after the purchase of the first 6X train - a mechanism borrowed from 1861 and 1817.  As I reported from the Manorcon playtests, this ended the game too quickly, and although the Manorcon games were speeded up by the inclusion of optional trains, my local group have also suggested that they would like more opportunity to get more than one permanent train into their companies.

At first, I thought I'd just make the game end when all trains had been purchased or removed.  18GB has a rule that if no companies buy a train during a round, then the topmost unsold train is removed from play, thus forcing the trains to gradually come out even if no-one buys them.  So eventually all the trains will disappear and the game would end.  On reflection, I realised that this change would mean that when a company buys a train of the final type, it would bring the end of the game one round closer, which would be a disincentive to buying the train in the first place because the train might have less time in which to earn income.

Ian D Wilson suggested that the game end when any company's share price reaches the top of the stock market.  This condition is used in several 18xx games as an alternative ending to breaking the bank and I have added it as an alternative to 18GB.  Should I try it as the only one?  Would a company that withholds income to buy a train catch up with the leader by jumping multiple spaces on the stock market?  It is possible but I don't feel confident enough to make this the only ending.

Instead, I've replaced the previous rule with one that ends the game the third time that a 6X train is removed.  In other words, at the end of the third round in which a 6X is available and no company buys it.  That way, if a company does buy a 6X train, the game is extended for another round.  I am presuming that eventually no company will have the cash or that the players will judge that there are insufficient rounds left in the game to make buying a train worthwhile.  I'll have to try this in practice and see whether it works.

Playtests at Manorcon

This last month has seen several playtests of 18GB, including the first plays with people outside my local gaming group.  As I expected, I learnt a lot.  For the last playtest, I didn't play myself but just watched the game unfold with no input from me beyond explaining the rules.  I have several changes to make as a result of this testing. The basic design seemed to hold up but various bits need quite a bit more work.

The biggest problem is the mix of trains in the end game.  After the local playtests, I made the 3X optional after the purchase of the first 4X, because players found that the 3X weren't worthwhile and hurt the companies that had to buy them.  The optional trains seemed to work but reduced the number of companies saving for the final 6X.  The game still ends 3 ORs after buying the first 6X; arguably this now makes the game too short.  This whole area requires more thought.

I tried changing the rule for converting companies to ten-share companies, so that conversion happened when any player bought a notional sixth share.  The idea was that if someone has a successful five-share company, another player can force them to convert it, potentially at an inconvenient share value.  I soon found that the game needs the original mechanism as well, in which the director can convert a company during the stock round.  Currently I am keeping both but it may be that the conversion by buying the sixth-share is too complex.

Several people had trouble laying track in Scotland.  This partly reflects the current design of that part of the map.  In one game, the double-town tiles were another contributing factor.  The idea of the double-town tiles was that these three hexes would be areas of particular contention for the right tiles.  In practice this isn't working well because the alternatives to the obvious tile lays don't work so well.  One 18xx designed suggested that I drop them, on the grounds that the double-city and triple-city tiles already give enough variety and strategy to the game.  He's probably right.

In the most recent playtest, no-one started the NER.  This surprised me and challenged some of my assumptions about the game.  As a side effect, it meant that it was impossible to token-out Newcastle (because one space had to be reserved for the NER).  I realised that I had designed the game with the assumption that the NER would always be one of the tokens blocking Newcastle.  As I was also concerned that the NER might be too strong a company, I'm now experimenting with starting it in Middlesbrough instead.

There are various other small tweaks as well but these are the most significant.  I was a little surprised to learn that the map and tile mix needed so many tweaks, as I had thought these were pretty stable.  I do think the revisions will significantly improve the game, so if tests bear this out, the experience will have been very useful.

18GB tile design notes

Many of the tiles in 18GB differ from those found in other 18xx games.  These notes explain the main differences.

The plain track tiles are standard.  Indeed, I use the bitmaps from John Tamplin’s 18xx.info site.

For the town and city tiles, the income values are 1/10th those of standard 18xx games. The money system in 18GB divides all values by 10, thus removing the need for notes or chips of values less than 10.  In fact, this decision makes it possible to use a track for recording player’s cash rather than needed notes or chips at all.  This is intended to speed play. 

Apart from the difference in values, the single- town and yellow single-city tiles match those in other games.  The green single-city tiles have only one station space instead of two and the brown single-city tiles have value 30 instead of 40.

As the tiles had to be redrawn anyway, I have taken the opportunity to make the graphic design more consistent.  So the yellow single-town tiles use circles to represent stations instead of the bars used in many 18xx games.  Also, the income value of each tile is shown in a diamond instead of a circle, so that it is a different shape from the station spaces.

The double-town, double-city and triple-city have different track layouts from the usual OO and double-town tiles.  Rather than lay track to both (or all three) towns and cities at once, the yellow tile connects one town or city and the green tile connects the second.  This reflects the multiple companies that built their own track in an area covered by a small map.  It also gives a different track layout from game to game, and happens to yield an interesting take on 18xx track placement by insisting that the company must be able to trace a route to the new track on the new tile.

The layout of the double-town tiles is different from the standard tiles that have the same layout.  This is an attempt to make the change from the green tiles to the more complex brown tiles easier to follow.

Fine Tuning the Bonus Routes

I spent last night looking into the problem with bonus routes that I mentioned in my previous post.  I wrote spreadsheet to calculate the likely incomes from various routes in various phases of the game.  A particular aspect of 18GB is that the dividend distribution rules create ledges when a company's income reaches a new multiple of five or ten, which complicates the assessment of the effect of bonuses.  If a bonus of +3 takes an income from 17 to 20, it affects the income in a way that an increase from 15 to 18 does not.  This gives me more scope for fine tuning but makes the design process harder.

My main concern from the last game was that the London to Hull bonus was too high.  Combined with the intrinsic income, it made Hull worth 8 for a train from London, which is more than other cities in the area such as Leeds or Newcastle.  This was distorting the routes too much, so I have reduced the bonus from +4 to +3 and also reduced the income distribution for Hull itself from 2/3/4 to 2/3/3, so that in the final phase it is only value 6 to a train from London.  This might make it a worthwhile endpoint but also allows other options.

The main aim of the bonus routes is to encourage companies to build routes to places that otherwise might not be worthwhile.  One key example is London-Aberdeen, which can score over 50 with a single train with the bonus in place.  Two other important cases are London-Plymouth and London-Holyhead, both of which were important routes historically and which would be pointless in the game without the bonuses.

For consistency, I know have almost all off-board areas have the same income distribution as equivalent on-map cities -  2/3/3, 3/4/5, or 3/5/6.  This helps to make certain bonus routes useful in the early game but less so in the later game.  The Plymouth and Holyhead bonuses are still high; it will be interesting to see whether they are too high or whether they work.

There are now just two exceptions to the general consistency of incomes for off-board areas. London itself, at 3/5/7, is marginally more than the other conurbations in the final phase (despite being much bigger historically).  The West Highlands of Scotland, at 1/2/2 are less than any other off-map area, being little better than a town.

This all looks good on paper.  The next game should show how well theory transfers into practice!

A four-player game: coda

WIth regard to the main game report, at least all I am discussing at this point is just the train mix at this point.  I have no major changes to the rules arising from Sunday's game, which is a pleasant state to be in.

I may tweak the tile mix and the value of bonus routes.  The bonus routes tended to dominate this game more than they have done in the past.  This is probably because the bonuses are now easier to claim, using multiple trains instead of requiring a single train to make the connection.  One example of this was that London to Hull was a more profitable route than, say, London to Leeds or London to Manchester, which seems wrong.  I will check whether this was just a trick of how the track was built in this game but I suspect I will reduce the value of that bonus.  I may also reduce the value of the London to Milford Haven bonus.

The fact that these are small tweaks suggests that the overall design is currently fairly stable.  If I can achieve a good train mix, the game might be ready for some wider playtesting.  I suspect that playing it with a different group of players will reveal a different set of problems!

A four-player game

We played my first test game with four players at the weekend.  It had a very slow start, hardly any stock selling, and a winner from the off.  I think these three observations were related.

The winning player paid £12 for the L&M private, assigned it to the LYR and was soon running for £15 (£3 a share) with double jumps in stock price.  This is a strong combination and he leveraged his early gaines throughout the game.

If my records are correct, the 2+1 trains lasted until OR7!  I only question my records because they seem to show six 3+1 trains and we were supposed to be playing with five.  Even five is one more than I had previously specified for four players.  After our last game, my playtesters criticised the shortage of trains in the mid-game so I adjusted the mix slightly.  On the evidence of this game, I shall be adjusting it back.

The long time before the arrival of the 4+1 trains (which are what killed the 2+1's) had a several effects.  The leading player could consolidate his position without losing trains.  No companies could convert to ten-share companies. Hence the number of station markers available was limited, so it was difficult to block the routes of the leading player. 

The later stages of the game saw some more variety and I at least managed to close the gap somewhat.  As my GWR finished with a 6X and a 5+2, I could have done better if I'd had more faith and bought more shares in my own company.

From a design point of view, the question is why was the game so slow to develop.  Was it purely down to the train mix or did it follow from the choices of the players?  With one person clearly leading, the rest of us should have been trying to stop him, but we chose to buy paying shares rather than push the trains, and we didn't set about blocking the LYR route (which would have been harder than it sounds, given the nature of track-building in 18GB).

We are a fairly cautious group but I think my recent change to the train mix needs to be reversed.  Until the 4+1 trains don't come out, the strategic options are limited.  If the mid-game truly needs more trains, then it would probably be better to add an extra 4+1.

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.