Station markers

Following on from the preceding post about Companies that start in single-station cities, another way such companies could conceivably be losing out is in the number of tokens they can deploy at the end of the game.  With one token required in their home city, they only have three to place in higher-value cities.  Does this disadvantage them in comparison with Companies that have higher-value cities as their homes?

Six of the twelve Companies in the full game start in single-station cities.  That’s half of them.  So even if there is a disadvantage, it is quite widely spread.  In the two-player game, the mix is rather different.  Only two Companies start in single-station cities, but this leaves the four others available for purchase between the two players, so neither player is necessarily disadvantaged.

Of the other six Companies in the full game, the LYR and MSLR start in the centre of the board in high-value cities. But these Companies only have three tokens in total instead of the usual four, so they don’t have a significant advantage over the single-station cities.

The LNWR and CR start in triple-station cities and have the usual number of tokens, so they might have an advantage.  They are slightly limited in that their route through their home city will never upgrade, so they have to commit early on between routes that generate immediate income and those that have longer-term potential.  Also, the CR, starting in Glasgow, is slightly removed from the action in the centre of the board.  The LNWR may be a bit stronger but I’m happy with this, given its historical significance.

This leaves the GWR and the NBR, which start in double-station cities and so have reasonably high income at the end of the game combined with flexible routes.  The GWR’s home is in Bristol, which is strategically important for the South-West of the board but not too central.  I think this is balanced (and the GWR was one of the larger companies historically, like the LNWR).  The NBR’s home is Edinburgh, which is a key station on the East Coast route to Scotland.  If any company is over-advantaged in tokens, it is the NBR, but it is also yields some of the lowest possible incomes in the early stages of the game.  So I think this is not too unbalanced.

One small change I may make is to give the MR an extra token when it converts to ten shares.  This would give in one more in total than any other company.  I’ve found that the MR tends to underachieve in 18GB compared to its historical reach and this extra token might be a small encouragement for players to expand its network.    The change would also add a little more asymmetry to the game, which I think is a good thing.  There is a risk that combining this change with the free upgrade suggested in the previous post would make the MR too strong; we shall have to keep an eye on it during test games.