Labour Weekend Gaming

Friday Night - Around the World
Anne challenged me to a game of Expedition which I won 25-16. She then demanded a rematch which was a closer event. This time I finished all my cards scoring 22, but I had started the game so Anne got the final turn, finishing her last card and an extra card to beat me 23-22. In our final game I got my lowest score of the evening -- winning 19-15.

Saturday - Indian Summer
Jarratt and Lance organised a game of 1853 at Lance's house. It was the first time for all of us, so none of us were familiar with the map, companies and the opening bidding procedure. 1853 is an older design than 1830 and owes its design more to railway pioneering 1829 than the Robber Baron 1830. The stock market works in a simple way and is not susceptible to manipulation. In other 18XX games there are private companies which need to be bought before the players can buy shares in the main companies. These private companies are usually on sold to the majors mid-game for a profit. This serves a dual purpose, reducing the players' initial capital by varying amounts and providing a reward for company directors. In 1853 there are no private companies, instead the players' initial capital is reduced by a simultaneous bid which determines the initial seating order and first player. The bid amount is held in escrow until the towns you nominate in second part of the process are linked up. The amount you bid limits which towns you undertake to link up. These towns limit which shares you can initially buy. As in the other 18XX games, the amount you have left over determines which of the major companies you can capitalize in the first turn. Once the towns you nominated are linked to each other by railway then you get your escrowed money back.

At beginning at least three of us had the same idea about with towns to nominate and which initial shares to buy. We also all bid pretty low (Anne bid £85, I bid £82 and Lance and Jarratt bid £80). None us took into account that bidding less than £90 means you can't nominate a £50 city. Anne took a share of the North Western Railway and it was clear that she had the same idea that Jarratt and I had, so we had to rethink our ideas. I took Bombay, Baroda and Central India (BBCI) share and Jarratt took an East Coast Railway (ECR) share. Lance hadn't formulated a plan when bidding and after a bit of thinking bought a Bengal Nagpur Railway share.

Another point of difference with 1853 is that there are two types of track (and engines): broad gauge and narrow gauge. This adds an extra level of decision making. Jarratt built his ECR as a narrow gauge railway, which is cheaper to build but the trains have a shorter "reach". Anne's initial planning and highest bid paid off as she got an early lead in making income. I found myself stymied initially by the tile options. There are no yellow city tiles with a straight piece of track (cities are all on curves) and later on by the territorial limitations. Each company has a territory and it can't upgrade track outside its area, hence I couldn't link up to the BNR network and join Delhi to Calcutta.

Like the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad which failed to build to Santa Fe, the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway never built to Bombay, preferring to stay near Delhi. There was a bit of selling off of stock (especially in Anne's NWR) as players started second rail companies (but unlike 1830 and 1856 selling stock doesn't necessarily lead to a share price drop). Near the end of the game I switched three shares to a better performing stock but otherwise people kept the shares they bought.

Lance's shareholdings in the best performing companies and Jarratt's southern narrow gauge loop propelled them past Anne. In the end we called the game early and faked two operating rounds to give the final result.

Lance    £8424
Jarratt  £7744
Anne     £7004
Ian      £6785

1853 is a game which had a large number of suggested rule changes over the years to fix its original faults. Lance owns the latest version which has quite a number of changes to the original rules, map etc.

Saturday night - Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes
After a quick stop in J'ville to pick up some KFC and in Thorndon to drop of Anne, I was off to Nigel's place to play Mare Nostrum.

I was keen to try Greece, so while John was getting his fish and chips, Travis chose Rome, Andrew took Babylon and Nigel grabbed Egypt, leaving John with Carthage. I made more mistakes than last week. Initially by letting Rome convert one of my provinces. Later when I was military leader I intended to move last so I could leave my North African safely empty while I raided some Carthaginian caravans. But I forgot to give Egypt his turn and he took back the province.

Egypt got the first hero, then Rome and Carthage got a couple of heroes/wonders each threatening to win, prompting Babylon and Greece into a military strategy which merely prolonged the game. Greece in particular was too busy attacking to build up its own resources. Babylon played a more balanced strategy of attacking sometimes and developing other times.

Egypt finally got a third and fourth hero/wonder to win.

We made one mistake with the rules. When someone conquers a province they can only sack one caravan, city, temple or market.

I would be interested to see how the game would play with the "Advanced Setup" where players get to choose what they start with. They get 36 "build points" to spend on initial stuff. Three points for each: influence marker, city, caravan or military unit and 6 points for each temple or market. Buying a country's own hero is optional and costs 9 points. It is unclear from the rules whether players choose their setup in some turn order or if it is simultaneous.

Reading the expansion rules and the various variants it seems that Mare Nostrum is a flexible game that handles modifications well. Most of the modifications involve strengthening Greece. For instance the expansion gives Greece a temple, a trireme and an extra caravan (but also gives other countries extra stuff). A few strengthen Carthage and weaken Rome (my suggestion for that is to swap their heroes). The expansion gives reduces Julius Caesar to cheap legions only. Some people play without Helen.

Lance's Birthday Games - Saturday 26 September 2009

Lance carried on his tradition of birthday games with more food than ever before. No-one got around to eating his ice cream cake! Jessi also had her own party while the cats hid.

There was a trend in the games played for 6 player games. First up was Steam. We played the basic rule set to Steam with the Southern England board from Age of Steam with 3 initial cubes per city. Leonie complained that she didn't know what she was doing, while I should have known what I was doing, but ran severely short of cubes. There was a general consensus that the game was one turn too long (we had severe rust belt issues).

Leonie 41
Travis 37
Peter  34
Craig  32
Lance  32
Ian    23

Next up was Expedition, which was new to Terri and Paulette. Leonie helped me to the win.

Ian      15
Lance    11
Paulette  5
Craig     5
Leonie    3
Terri     2

After the pizza we played Wildlife where Terri showed us how it should be done with super intelligent Mountain Crocs.

Terri  - Croc    88
Ian    - Eagle   78
Travis - Bear    57
Lance  - Human   56
Carl   - Snake   50
Nigel  - Mammoth 45

After sensible people went to bed, we finished the evening with Age of Empires III. Carl built lots of buildings and discovered plenty of new lands, Lance played a balanced game, Nigel ended up obscenely rich, I was very poor, colonized as much as possible and went to war (Lance deterred me with soldiers, Carl deterred me with his super-missionary and so I attacked Nigel).

Carl  103
Lance  99
Ian    80
Nigel  69

The tradition of the birthday person not winning a game on their birthday continues.

The second game of 1856

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.

Train games at Lance's place (1856 & Railroad Tycoon)

1856

Jarratt found a problem in the spreadsheet while working out of the final
standings at this weekends game of 1856, he checked the spreadsheet of
the first game to see if the error existed, and it did.

The original scores were as follows :-
Jarratt - $5007 cash + $5400 shares = $10407
Lance - $5981 cash + $4100 shares = $10081
John - $5419 cash + $3675 shares = $9094
Anne - $4949 cash + $2150 shares = $7099
Ian - $4343 cash + $1425 shares = $5768

New updated proper scores :-
Lance - $5981 cash + $5450 shares = $11431
Jarratt - $5007 cash + $5950 shares = $10957
Anne - $4949 cash + $4750 shares = $9699
John - $5419 cash + $3875 shares = $9294
Ian - $4343 cash + $4875 shares = $9218

[ some mysterious other scores
Jarratt 2640 + 2367 = 10407
Lance 3194 + 2708 = 10002
John 3840 + 1579 = 9094
Anne 3218 + 1415 = 6783
Ian 2686 + 1262 = 5373
]

Railroad Tycoon

Anne 44
Ian 43
Andrew 40
John 39
Rob 37
Lance 33
Peter 33

War of the Ring

Lance invited me over for a game of War of the Ring on Friday 6 January. This was my second game and this time I played the Fellowship and Lance played the Shadow side. This time as far as we know we didn't forget rules or make any major blunders.

I moved the ring quite frequently except when Lance committed lots of dice to the hunt box. I skipped my strongholds but made a mistake in not declaring when passing through Moria and hence got hurt by the Balrog.


Lance concentrated on Minas Tirith and took the stonghold.  In the defense I used most of Gondor's forces and he had little trouble taking the rest. Then he tried to take Helms Deep which held out for awhile due to Ent attacks on Isengard with help from Gandalf the White. As the fellowship reached Mordor Lance concentrated on taking Lorien. Lance was close to a military victory so the ring bearers recklessly charged towards Mt Doom to be finally corrupted on the second attempt to fling the ring into the fire.

So Lance won again, but this time it was a very close run thing.

There is plenty of theme and replayability in this pretty war game.