Once apon a time in Canada Anne and Ian and Jarratt and Lance and John (and Jarratt's laptop) sat down to build some railroads. Anne kicked off with a bid of $80 for the GLSC, I bid $45 for the Wellington, Jarratt bid $55 for the Canada Company, John bought the Flos for $20 which triggered the sale of the next three companies to the aforementioned. Lance - who really wanted to bid for the GLSC and preferred the Tunnel to the Bridge but didn't want to bid $105 - bought the Bridge. Nobody wanted to spend $100 on the Tunnel and everyone passed for three rounds; earning Lance $60, Anne $45, Jarratt and I $30 each and John $15. Finally I broke the impass and bought the Tunnel and so Jarratt started the GW, John the CPR, Lance the Welland, Anne the LPS and I (who wanted the LPS to go with the Tunnel) settled for the CA.
At the western end of the map the LPS, CA and GW connected together leaving the Welland and CPR each isolated in their own corners. Unsupprisingly the LPS bought the GLSC from Anne and layed the port token on its home city, the Welland bought the Bridge and the GW bought the Canada. The CA went into debt for $200 and bought both my private companies giving me the cash to start the GT. I intended to fold the CA into the CPR and keep the GT (perhaps more as an experiment than sound ecconomics!) but Jarratt had other plans and bought enough CA stock to steal the company off me. Just moments too late Lance realised that he had had the opportunity to steal the GW from Jarratt (who only owned 2 shares in his own railroad!).
Jarratt built the last OO tile and trapped the Welland into the SE corner, leaving Lance with nothing much to do until the 5 trains came out and the Welland without enough cash to buy a 5 train (Lance not wanting to incur so much debt). The CA was now flush with cash again and Jarratt bought it a 4 train. Wanting the 4 train for the GT and simutaneously transfering enough cash to the CA to buy it a perminant train I bought enough CA shares in the next stock round to take it back from Jarratt. (The CA had never withheld and was now 2nd equal on the share market and was worth keeping!)
Jarratt's GW bought the first 5 train, killing the private companies and allowing Lance's Welland to escape and start heading for Hamilton then Torronto. John started the WGB but his timing was suspect as we had reached the age of the 5 and 6 trains and the days of reckoning were comming. The LPS withheld and the GT (weakened by saving the CA) did the same.
Finally the Welland reached Torronto and Lance used its escrow money to buy a 6 train and loans had to be repaid and the 3 trains rusted. The CPR was in trouble and John got lots of advice to fold it into the CGR -- some probably motivated by a wish to see what would happen if the CGR started! He somewhat reluctantly decided to fold and exchanged his six CPR shares for three shares of the CGR. My two CPR became one CGR and Jarratt and Lance with one each lost out. (We made a minor mistake here; Jarratt and Lance's single CPR shares should have been tossed into the Bank Pool and then the CPR shares in the Bank Pool should have been converted into CGR shares at 2 for 1. We also had an argument over the wording of the CGR par price rule as to whether it means that the CGR par price rounds up or is set to the next value greater than the average of its predecessors.) John discarded the 4 train inherited from the CPR but unfortunately the CGR was confinded to the CPR/GT network for awhile (and hindered from connecting to the western network by non-share owning players) and hence took a long time to pay for its borrowed diesel.
Anne's LPS traded its 4 train for a diesel rusting the other 4s and leaving the GT without a train. Reaching into my pockets for a bit of extra cash I bought it the other 6 train.
The game was reaching its final stages and at the first big pay out everyone except Anne (who was last in the SR) started the four remaining companies parred at $100 (and starting with $1000 capital once six shares had been bought) adding $100 from our own pockets bought 4 diesels for them. Anne spread her money around the new companies (which together with the dividends from the LPS was a winning combination). I foolishly sold my LPS shares when Anne would have helped me float my new company! The following ST with even more cash to burn we bought up more shares in the new companies (plus the odd CGR share). There was a general dumping of GT :-( in an attempt to optimize share ownership into companies with diesels (though I foolishly bought a share of WGB which only had a 5 train!) We all hit the 18 certificate limit.
The final diesel runs were in the region of $900 despite the best attempts by the CGR and others to lay blocking tokens and helped by the even more creative ways people found to bypass them. We got within $40 of breaking the bank so had to play another SR and 3 ORs (which we abbreviated). The Welland, CA and GW all reached $450 per share.
When Jarratt was adding up the final scores, his own score was looking sick until he discovered a fault in his spreadsheet's summing of player's stock holdings. Anne won to her delight. Scores were:
Anne $12,641
Jarratt $12,222
Lance $11,116
John $10,727
Ian $10,105
Jarratt could probably provide information on the final breakdown of cash verses stock value, which should show Anne's advantage in divident income (cash) verses Jarratt's huge stock value.
We started around 10:30am and finished about 5pm.
No comments:
Post a Comment