Progress with the revised finances

After quite a lot of revisions and a couple of solo games, last weekend we played a first proper game with conventional finances and the revised map and city tiles.  As the tiles will need to be revised anyway, I also experimented with replacing the Lawson-style plain track tiles with the 1830/1825-style curvilinear tiles.  And for good measure, I also experimented with having the 4+1 trains discarded when the first 5X train was purchased, instead of the 6X.  Overall, the test game went well.

The new map and tiles seem to work well.  The reduced income from cities keeps the overall level of money in the game in line with the old system.  The changes do seem to mean that companies convert at slightly lower share values but the game seems to cope with this.

There is still some snagging needed on the initial values.  The special ability of the Liverpool and Manchester private railway isn’t worth the loss of income from closing the private, so I will need to adjust something here.  I also want to consider whether I’ve got the best starting value for the OOO cities.  As these affect the components, I will need to resolve these issues before I make the next version of the game available for wider playtesting.

The curvilinear track worked, in combination with some map changes around Peterborough and Grimsby.  I had used this style of track way back when I first started the design of 18GB but at one point the testers found the combination of this track and the other unique tiles in 18GB too complicated.  Since then, I have simplified some aspects of the other track (e.g. removing double-town tiles) and people have got more used to it, so they coped OK this time.  The advantage of the change is that it gives better definition to the different routes (and thus slightly more variety between games) and makes accidental connections between different routes slightly less likely.

The change in train obsolescence wasn’t so good.  Although I enjoyed seeing four Insolvent companies, rather like games of 1860, the lost opportunity to withhold income and buy more express trains didn’t really work.  18GB is just a different game from 1860, despite significant overlap in some aspects of the rules.

In summary, I still have some work to do before the next release, but it is looking good. My local group adjusted to the conventional finances without too much complaining, so hopefully the changes will remove a significant barrier from others adopting the game.