18xoxo

Disclaimer: I am no 18xx expert by far. I have maybe 10 games under my belt and most of them spread out across different titles, as I love to explore new things. However, as there's usually little information on all the different 18xx games, I would like to provide some insight into how the games felt (to me) and what made them special.

This first session was not only my first play of 1888-N (and any “Lonny” 18xx games) but also the first of our local 18xx group. As I kept stumbling into the niche of 18xx, I ended up in a German WhatsApp group and on top of that happened to find a few players in the vicinity of myself. So clearly, we all wanted to play live and after a few weeks of planning, made it finally happen. By the way, the 18xx community is amazing and probably worth a post by itself, but that's for later.

Whats the game about

• Very close to 1830 by its core
• full cap game, 60% float
• Automatic export at end of OR-set until permanents
• Maps not very big, but still didn't feel very tight and not too much blocking happened
• Companies have destination tokens which pay an extra
• 2d stock market,
  • area where certs don't count against cert limit
  • no “you can buy more than 60% of one company area”

I have not played the OG 1830 so far, but only 1889. This felt similar in a lot of ways. Sure, the map is obviously totally different. I was expecting more focus on Beijing, but there's also a great area in the south-east and also the south-west was very desirable, especially in our end game. Just the north-west seemed bad.

After a very fast train rush at the start of the game, everything came to a stop at the 4-trains and it took a while for us to get into the permanents. Also, while we generally played very operational focussed, there were some shenanigans to dump one company tried at this point, which unfortunately (at least for the player owning the empty company) failed. 3 of 4 players had to force buy a Diesel in the end, which might have cost the second placed player the lead.

We didn't play all rounds but went to paper for the last 2 OR.

Overall, I liked the game. It seems to me a nice variation to playing 1889. I guess, 1889 might have a few more levers to pull with the stock market, which allows you to buy more than 60% of one company if the value is in a certain area. But this is just one strategy I saw once and never tried myself. Also, I am not so sure about automatic exports. I guess I will have to play more games with and without it, but if I had to make a call, I feel I prefer games without that mechanic. On the other hand, maybe it's just something to speed up games and doesn't really have to be judged.

The tile set didn't seem very restrictive (like 1882) to me. And the yellow city had all types of bents (looking at you, 18Ches).

Also, the privates seemed fine. Obviously, most of us had no clue how to evaluate and bid on them, but that's like in any other 18xx with privates. I just had no idea what really to make with the mountain private that's like a 40Yen dot, but the 40Yen go directly to the company and can't be paid out.

Components in general were nice. The map is two-sided, one being more beautiful and brown and one being more abstract. We played on the abstract one, but I can see both sides being totally usable. Everything else was well produced, though not quite on the wow level of 1889 for me.

Would I add it to my collection? No, I feel owning 1889, there's too little differentiation to justify the shelf space, but if I didn't have that, yeah, I could absolutely see me buying it, especially for a shorter (3-4 hours?) 1830 type game.

If you have no cool new 18xx players in your vicinity, go check out https://18xx.games/ and start playing online. For support of the designer, please head over to https://www.lonnygames.com/

#18xx #boardgames