1825, combined edition
Mar. 17th, 2008 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmazeApparently I've had the two modules of 1825 for a while but we've never actually gotten to playing with the two of them together. We finally got to that yesterday, and it turned into a reasonable 18xx game (but remember, the kinder, gentler version with no company dumping).
My main criticism especially of unit 1 is that the game start is quite scripted; once you get through the scripted part, the game ends. The other 18xx games also have kind of scripted starts (1835 sticks in my head as having a fixed order of company starts) so this isn't so unusual. And in fact in the combined game there's a couple of companies you're forced to start first, but once we started the London and Northwestern and the Great Western and ran enough turns that people actually had enough capital, things opened up quite a bit. We were forced to stop just after a round where four companies were all floated together, with probably about two full rounds left in the game.
Strategy-wise,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fideidefensor ran with the L&NW, and fredrickegerman ran with the GWR. I wound up on the outside of these but dabbling in other properties that looked profitable, and eventually started a northern railroad to build off of desireearmfeldt's network. Somewhat to my surprise, this got me just barely in the lead when the game ended; I think part of that is that, since the L&NW and the GWR are the first two railroads, everybody owns a little bit and it's hard to get a large consolidated position. I also seemed to do okay on not being too invested in railroads focusing on internal improvements at the expense of shareholder value.
Rules bits: maybe it'd be helpful to make up a summary sheet explaining how this game is different from 1830. You can upgrade small cities to large, and fairly promptly, but not downgrade them off the map. You can place two non-adjacent tiles during the build phase, and placing the initial green double-city tile counts as a build for this, but placing a green tile on top of a yellow board space with track is an upgrade. Labeling the chits with the names of the companies (especially the "green", "dark green", "mid green", and "green-but-really-pink" ones) was enormously helpful.
My main criticism especially of unit 1 is that the game start is quite scripted; once you get through the scripted part, the game ends. The other 18xx games also have kind of scripted starts (1835 sticks in my head as having a fixed order of company starts) so this isn't so unusual. And in fact in the combined game there's a couple of companies you're forced to start first, but once we started the London and Northwestern and the Great Western and ran enough turns that people actually had enough capital, things opened up quite a bit. We were forced to stop just after a round where four companies were all floated together, with probably about two full rounds left in the game.
Strategy-wise,
fideidefensor ran with the L&NW, and fredrickegerman ran with the GWR. I wound up on the outside of these but dabbling in other properties that looked profitable, and eventually started a northern railroad to build off of desireearmfeldt's network. Somewhat to my surprise, this got me just barely in the lead when the game ended; I think part of that is that, since the L&NW and the GWR are the first two railroads, everybody owns a little bit and it's hard to get a large consolidated position. I also seemed to do okay on not being too invested in railroads focusing on internal improvements at the expense of shareholder value.Rules bits: maybe it'd be helpful to make up a summary sheet explaining how this game is different from 1830. You can upgrade small cities to large, and fairly promptly, but not downgrade them off the map. You can place two non-adjacent tiles during the build phase, and placing the initial green double-city tile counts as a build for this, but placing a green tile on top of a yellow board space with track is an upgrade. Labeling the chits with the names of the companies (especially the "green", "dark green", "mid green", and "green-but-really-pink" ones) was enormously helpful.
