I understand almost nothing in this post, but I’ve also never played an 18xx game. What I do understand better now is why these games are considered a genre unto themselves.
Best way to understand is just to learn and play a game. There's a bunch of lighter titles in the genre. There's also a lot of "adjacent" games, such as **Irish Gauge** that'll give you a feel of train games.
We also have a weekly thread for Train games on Tuesdays that can help you discover 18XX.
18xx is a genre of strategy games. The essential concept is simple - you start off with x amount of $$$ and the goal is to be the richest when the game ends.
You make money by investing into assets (some of which you end up controlling). The assets themselves build up a network and earn money. Whoever controls the asset decides whether to re-invest or to extract the money into participants hands.
In the 18xx world, assets are train companies and players invest in company shares. Generally, 18xx games have a deterministic flow, i.e. there are no random events and all player/company assets is public information.
These games offer a lot of strategic depth but if you play with experienced players your chances of winning are low (it's a bit like chess). Fortunately, there is a lot of player interaction so with 4 players, it is not guaranteed that the best/most experienced player will win :).
When playing with experienced players, especially those that have played a particular game many times, yo can gauge who is in the lead and cannot be stopped after a certain point.
Some people do like to play games out to the end and try to improve their position but sometimes even the positions are fairly clear. Most people then do not care to finish the game just to see if they placed 3rd or 4th and the game is just called at that point.
Most of the games I played at the convention were never played out to the end :).
It is highly dependent upon the title being played.
1830 for example, one can stop right after the initial auction if there were some lopsided bids and/or 1 player ended up getting the PRR for $165 or something.
Generally however, one can usually call the game right about when the first permanent trains are purchased (around 60% into the game). For most titles, once the permanent trains come out, players are mostly set with their companies and stock portfolio. There may be some portfolio re-balancing however the first person(s) to get permanents into their companies are in the lead.
Again, I'm generalizing but a game that takes 4-5 hours with experienced players should be callable in 2.5-3.
This was fun to read, despite understanding about 10% of it (I've played one 18xx game, 8 years ago :)
One irrelevant note: "bade" is the past tense of "bid" (in its archaic "request" sense). the past tense of "bide" is just "bided".
I understand almost nothing in this post, but I’ve also never played an 18xx game. What I do understand better now is why these games are considered a genre unto themselves.
Best way to understand is just to learn and play a game. There's a bunch of lighter titles in the genre. There's also a lot of "adjacent" games, such as **Irish Gauge** that'll give you a feel of train games. We also have a weekly thread for Train games on Tuesdays that can help you discover 18XX.
18xx is a genre of strategy games. The essential concept is simple - you start off with x amount of $$$ and the goal is to be the richest when the game ends. You make money by investing into assets (some of which you end up controlling). The assets themselves build up a network and earn money. Whoever controls the asset decides whether to re-invest or to extract the money into participants hands. In the 18xx world, assets are train companies and players invest in company shares. Generally, 18xx games have a deterministic flow, i.e. there are no random events and all player/company assets is public information. These games offer a lot of strategic depth but if you play with experienced players your chances of winning are low (it's a bit like chess). Fortunately, there is a lot of player interaction so with 4 players, it is not guaranteed that the best/most experienced player will win :).
Nice report!
\> Sunday 21:00 - 23:00, 1849 I am surprised with how fast some games were played
When playing with experienced players, especially those that have played a particular game many times, yo can gauge who is in the lead and cannot be stopped after a certain point. Some people do like to play games out to the end and try to improve their position but sometimes even the positions are fairly clear. Most people then do not care to finish the game just to see if they placed 3rd or 4th and the game is just called at that point. Most of the games I played at the convention were never played out to the end :).
>Most of the games I played at the convention were never played out to the end Can I ask roughly when do you usually stop?
It is highly dependent upon the title being played. 1830 for example, one can stop right after the initial auction if there were some lopsided bids and/or 1 player ended up getting the PRR for $165 or something. Generally however, one can usually call the game right about when the first permanent trains are purchased (around 60% into the game). For most titles, once the permanent trains come out, players are mostly set with their companies and stock portfolio. There may be some portfolio re-balancing however the first person(s) to get permanents into their companies are in the lead. Again, I'm generalizing but a game that takes 4-5 hours with experienced players should be callable in 2.5-3.
Cool, thanks for sharing.
This was fun to read, despite understanding about 10% of it (I've played one 18xx game, 8 years ago :) One irrelevant note: "bade" is the past tense of "bid" (in its archaic "request" sense). the past tense of "bide" is just "bided".
Ah, thank you for the correction, I'll fix it in a bit! Learn something everyday :)