I am very tired this week, so I am behind on posting about games. For now, I'll note that we have received 1849 from All Aboard Games, one of two #18xx titles we are adding to our collection this month.

The other will be Shikoku 1889 from Grand Trunk Games, which I Kickstarted quite a long time ago. Both are meant to add shorter-playtime 18xx options to our list.

Now, when will we get to actually play either of them? No idea...

Anyone want to suggest a beginner #18xx game that is easily available for retail purchase? Not looking for KS or secondary markets right now.

I’d love to try the genre, but no idea where to start. All the lists seem to suggest games that are out of print or otherwise hard to acquire.
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#boardgames #trains

#ContentWarning ⚠️ #NSFW 🔞
#Nude #Girls #Barely18 #18xx

#ContentWarning ⚠️ #NSFW 🔞
#Nude #Barely18 #18xx

#ContentWarning ⚠️ #NSFW 🔞
#Nude #Girls #Barely18 #18xx

#ContentWarning ⚠️ #NSFW 🔞
#Nude #Girls #Barely18 #18xx

#ContentWarning ⚠️ #NSFW 🔞
#Nude #Girls #Barely18 #18xx

#introduction , I guess?
I’m @labria, I build weird #keyboards (see reply to this for a pic), I play a _lot_ of #boardgames (from simple and mid stuff with kids, to things like the #18xx and #COIN series) I recently passed 100 owned games.
I work in Wix for as long as I can remember myself, doing something that would probably be described as #PlatformEngineering in the modern Lingo
I’ve lived in a lot of places, last 3+ years in Dublin

18xx got into my head. I’ve just parsed that as “reserved parking for phased out 6/8 trains” #18xx #boardgames

#18xx

Had a great teach of 1849 last night. It's a group that has played a lot of 1846 and some 1822. Very happy with this as as intro to non-operational game styles. The big new ideas were:
- waterfall auctions
- "you don't need to float a company"
- forced float order
- private incomes matter
- no train export / game stalls
- share price drops PER SHARE SOLD
- hex trains

It's clicked and they're quickly discovering the emergent financial play characteristics.

#18xx

Had a great teach of 1849 last night. It's a group that has played a lot of 1846 and some 1822. Very happy with this as as intro to non-operational game styles. The big new ideas were:
- waterfall auctions
- "you don't need to float a company"
- forced float order
- private incomes matter
- no train export / game stalls
- share price drops PER SHARE SOLD
- hex trains

It's clicked and they're quickly discovering the emergent financial play characteristics.

As a #bladesinthedark fan I of course dig the Ghost Lines @johnharper made, we did a 3-4 sessions in blades traveling those tracks even. Made it back to Duskvol in an airship crashing in the old district but that’s another story. After recently having discovered the board game genre #18xx wouldn’t it be awesome with a Ghost Line 18xx title?

I played 1846: The Race for the Midwest for the first time yesterday. This was the first time I'd played an #18XX with more than 2 players.

I took the Mail Contract ($10 for every location one of your trains visits), Boomtown ($20 bonus for Cincinnati routes), and Little Miami. (free tile lays/upgrades to create a connection between Cincinnati and Daytona) Started up the B&O, laid my token in Cincinnati, and ran for decent money. #BoardGame #BoardGames #Tabletop #TabletopGames

One of the delights of (now) having a milligram-precise scale is not having to manually count out fraction-of-a-gram-each wood tokens in making games like 1828.

1828 has 183 tokens, which is a bit over 100 grams of ½" beech tokens...and that's a lot easier to weigh out and bag (~104 grams, for variance -- yeah, I did half a dozen samples) than counting by hand.

It is just so nice to use good tools.

#18xx @18xx #boardgamedesign

@drewww @sirideain @galatolol @18xx If the system were mostly interaction/conflict-free (cf Roads & Boats), then yeah, I could see this working as then the arbitration efficiencies are rarely so significant (and can be predictively cost-managed when they are). But if interaction is common...then this becomes an entire sub-system to predaciously exploit -- and there goes any speed gains.

#18xx

@drewww @sirideain @galatolol @18xx Nod simultaneous is the same as any ordering if there's no information leakage across bidders.

The key question is what happens for conflicts? Does the arbitrated loser simply fail to do ${whatever} or is there a fallback chain? If they flatly fail, simultaneous execution would arguably reward aggressive prediction and blockage as failing to do anything is frequently far more expensive than getting 2nd or 3rd choice of preferred successful actions.

#18xx

@drewww @sirideain @galatolol @18xx How would simultaneous bidding be meaningfully different from blind bidding? Or even iterative blind bidding (to handle the repeating Open Cry case)? Likewise, simultaneous buy/sells can be done iteratively with a cycle of order-writing and execution phases.

ObNote: My next #18xx project currently uses a multi-item blind bidsheet (bid for each item) to set the bid values in a Dutch auction for the start packet.

@sirideain @galatolol @18xx A thing I like about tabletop games is the constraint of fitting into a simple physical representation and state/interaction model/management world. It means games have to be kinda small, kinda dense, kinda intricate (and yet not), and kinda simple...and yet still haunting the outside edges of our abilities.

It also often needs the abstraction models to be particularly clever and insightful...and I especially like that too.

#18xx

@18xx BtB: those were the 3rd and 4th playtest games of 1839 in the last week, but like most things, discussion and design progress aren't uniform but are punctuated by pauses, leaps and slides..with today being an unusually dynamic and bubbly period.

#18xx

@18xx In case not clear, there's a core focus in all the discussed changes on the time value of money, more aggressively entangled positions and rules-simplification. Development!

Working through that lot and their implications is already revelatory.

I suspect the next iteration of 1839 is going to be terrible, but the one after that, with all the learnings, will be ever so much better.

#18xx