18GA or Why I Love 18XX
Yesterday was my third time playing an 18XX game. This time we played with my handmade set of 18GA (Georgia). The game started after a good half hour of rules explainations and an 18 minutes delay when I realized I left my yellow track tiles at home (had to drive home to get it). Norman, Jack Teoh and I were on hand at Wolf's Game Shop to playtest this new 'monster'.
Norman is a seasoned Antike player, while Jack had played Railroad Tycoon so it wasn't long before they figured out the game.
Norman started first by aggressively bidding on all 3 available private companies. Jack bidded on two of them while I only managed to bid on one of them (free track tile lay company). In the end, Norman won two out of 3 bids and Jack won one. I was left with nothing. A bad start as I was unable to generate any revenues on the first operating round. So I went into plan B.
I ended up with the priorty card during the stock buying round. So, I bought up shares in Western and Atlantic (2 stations and starts in Atlanta which is near 4 cities and 2 towns) and set the par value at 90. Norman started the Central of Georgia company with Par Value at 55 (he was broke after the frenzied buying). While Jack went with the Atlantic Coast Line company with Par Value of 70. All of us managed to float our companies on the first stock round (which left Norman broke).
The next couple of rounds involved a race between me and Norman to control the Northwest part of the map. Somehow, I managed to get the upper hand as I have a higher Par Value (laying tracks first) and plus, W&A has a pretty good starting location when compared to CoG. Jack started in the Southeast, so he had no issues with the race up north.
By the 2 hour mark, Norman was getting bored. So, as always, Norman did the 'Conan', which includes trashing my stocks; causing the stocks to plummet and doing the 'hot sun' manuever on Jack (he bailed out of his CoG, giving control of it to Jack and bought up Georgia Railroads instead). Yeah, way to go, Conan. ![Stick out tongue [:P]](/community/emoticons/emotion-4.gif)
By the 3 hour mark, Norman was way ahead and his bank account was even bigger than the bank (go figure). He even tried to loan money to Jack for a 200% interest. Conan won 5 turns later.
Lesson to be learnt : Never play nice. Especially with Conan. And when you see hot sun, put on a hat and run for shelter.
All in all, 18GA is a really good beginners map. It has a 3 dimensional stock market chart (but no red zone), a circular map with corporations starting at the edges and fewer trains. If you have not played or even heard of the 18XX series, maybe now is the time to do so.