18XX Games

This is not going to be more a review, but more of a general overview of this particular genre. First, some disclaimers: I don't find trains particularly interesting and I'm not a huge fan of economic games which rely on stock manipulation, yet 18XX has a draw for me that is unsurpassed by any other game out there, ever. One of the reasons why I like these game has been explained in a previous post that I made on this blog, the one about Visual Storylines or whatever the name de jour is for that particular part of boardgaming. I will try to explain the exact spots that seem to really hit my 'fun button' when I play 18XX and the reason that I got into these games in the first place. Some of the terms I will use in this post will not be understandable by someone that hasn't played the game, but even without knowing what they mean, I will attempt to explain the base concepts of the games so please don't think that you need to have played 18XX games in order to fully understand my reasonings.

My track record (GET IT?!) with train games has never been that great. I played Ticket to Ride and although I liked the game for what it was, it never really resonated with me like most of my favourite games have. When I picked up Tigris & Euphrates during My Eurogame Epiphany (since the first time I played it I was an ameritrashers and just couldn't understand why people liked it so much), it immediately hit me how ingenious, how charming, how absolutely wonderful the game was. On the other hand, I played Ticket to Ride a couple of times and although I could see the potential for strategical thinking, it was not the sort of game that made me jump out of my chair and exclaim its greatness to all that could hear. My second train game was Steam (or maybe Age of Steam): I pretty much detested this game completely. The entire game felt counter-intuitive, with the mechanism that hitting more towns and thus have a more inefficient route would get you more points. I also felt it had a large runaway leader problem that you could do nothing much about: if you were on the wrong side of the board at the start it was nearly impossible to catch up once behind (although you could rightly point out that this is an issue with 18XX games as well, especially the long ones, but I will speak about this particular point in more detail later). As well as that, the game felt somehow detached from the theme: it didn't feel like you were running a company somehow. In other words, the game soured me to further attempts to play train games and for a long while I was resistant about trying anything that involved trains.

My first contact with 18XX games was through the meetup I attend: there was also a sub-set of the group that every Tuesday, religiously, would play what appeared to me the same game again and again. I only became aware of the group since one of the people in it was interested in wargaming and since that was my primary interest at the time, I was always curious about why he would play the same boring train game again and again. I used to joke about him playing 18XX games as well and, remembering my attempts at playing Steam/AoS, I was reluctant to play it even when they offered to teach me. One day, wanting to try something new, I decided to give it a go and thus I played 1846 for the first game. I loved it! I don't know why, but I completely loved it. What fascinated most of all was the collaborative aspect of track building: instead of having your own track in 18XX there is a collaborative track that everyone can use (although some cities can be 'tokened out' in order to prevent other players from going through them). The end of the game was thus always a collaborative effort in which the individual decisions of all the players were put together in order to come to the end result. The decisions weren't even random: they all consisted of shared decisions making based on which companies you owned, their position on the board and the rational choice if to go for early cash or concentrate on more long-term enjoyment. It reminded me a lot of what I liked about wargames: the shared competition between two players in a wargame always shaped the board differently depending on their decisions and here it seemed to offer that particular part of wargames but more than 2 players involved. If anything was the definition of visual storylines, 18XX would be it.

Another aspect that interested me about the game was the interest in history that each 18XX game so obviously tried to explain. Yet again, this is one of the reasons why I play wargames: along with being interested in military history, it is interesting to think about the kind of decisions and mind-frame that the commanders at the time would have held, although even a fraction of this is present within a game. For 18XX games, the games allowed me to immerse myself in the world of the Robber Barons and both understand their mind-frame as well as the kind of possibilities that were present in those days. The game does a good job at showing the possible dangers of an unrestricted market and the goal of the game, to make as much money as possible, can be used to explain why someone would decide to run unsustainable companies. 18XXs in general are games in which you almost always want to get as much money as possible as quickly as possible and fund later purchases by starting EVEN more companies: it seems to slot into place and gives you a real sense of roleplaying one of the gilded age capitalists: you don't care about how well the company runs, the only thing that matters is your own personal treasury. The fact that you can own more than one company also helps to strengthen this feeling. Going back to the history bit, I also like the fact that all the companies in the game are based on real life train companies that actually existed. It feels better to be the owner of the New York Central with shares in the Baltimore & Ohio rather than owning Made-Up Company A and Made-Up Company B. The fact that the companies start in pre-located spaces also lends them with an air of uniqueness. Overall, although it doesn't always look like it, 18XX games drip with historical theme.

Another important aspect about 18XX games is that choices in these games matter and there's pretty much no randomness in the game at all (about the only random thing is the turn order). All choices in this game are like small little butterflies, creating hurricanes in the far distant future that might affect the game in surprising ways. These do not only affect what the board will eventually look like, but as well as the stock position of each individual company as well as how much cash/shares each individual player will have. I don't think I've seen a game yet in which singular choice within the game can have such far-reaching consequences.

Another important aspect about 18XX is the re-playability. This is present both within individual games and for the genre as a whole. In terms of individual games, for ones that don't have predominantly stronger companies, it is possible to attempt myriad combinations of major companies and privates: there's a great deal of experimentation possible if nobody is overly familiar in the game (once a game starts to become more familiar there is a level of groupthink involved in terms of strategy that can detract from the game). As well as that, there are hundreds of different versions of 18XX and the differences between each are sharp enough to lead to remarkably different playing experiences with each different game. Some center around having smaller minor companies and merging them together into a bigger company (1861, 1824 and 18EU), some of them are mostly concerned around stock manipulation (1830 comes to mind), others are more interested in making the player run only a few companies, but run them well (1846 especially but all partial capitalisation games in general). As well as that, 18XX games allow you to travel the world: there are 18XX games for a wide variety of countries and regions, each attempting to showcase some of the conditions that would have affected the development or railway companies within that particular region. If you know the general rules of 18XX it is usually easy to pick up another one, since the rule changes tend to be minute (although this does lead to the problem that once you have tried a large variety of them like I have, it is difficult to remember which specific rule is present within a particular game). This large variety of games means that people can have surprisingly different tastes when it comes to 18XX games: I prefer full capitalisation games in which many companies can be viable and with cities that are not overwhelmingly better than others (which is why I like, while one of the players I game with prefers partial capitalisation games in which some companies are overwhelmingly better than others: it's a microcosm of tastes within a niche genre of boardgaming.

Another aspect of 18XX games is that they are highly adversarial: the games are well known for having more experienced players ruthlessly drive less experienced players bankrupt. There is a wide variety of ways in which you can screw over the development of other players but thankfully, most of these are avoidable: it is certainly true that a mistake that you do in one game will not be repeated in the next (unless you just can't learn from your mistakes). The level of nastiness in this game is so high that you really have to play the game with people that are not going to take it too seriously (which thankfully I was able to). This level of direct confrontation is yet again reminiscent of wargames for me, although there are collaborative elements as well, as sometimes working together can be more beneficial for both parties involved rather than continually screwing each other further.

Of course, all games come with their faults: for a start, 18XX games can suffer from a very pronounced 'rich get richer' situation, which is entirely intentional. The only way to make money is to buy shares in yours or other people's companies and  the only way to buy the is to have money: this is one of the reasons why getting as much money as possible as early as possible is so important in many of these games. This however does mean that some games can have a runaway leader or create situations in which some players still have to play the game even though they don't have the remotest chance to win. Kingmaking can also occur, although some 18XX games suffer from this much more than others. Other issues with the games is that often, due to the niche market present for these games, many of the games are not professionaly printed: although this isn't an issue for me, many can be put off by the ugly, colour-clashing visuals of the game. As well as that, it is very hard to get into your hands any copy of any game (although some, like 1830, are easier than others). It took me about a year to get lucky enough to find a copy of 1870 on e-bay, so finding a good quality version of the game can be hard.

The game itself can be too dry for some people and the fact that it's often easier to use a spreadsheet to calculate the end scores can also scare people away. The final rounds of a game of 18XX also tend to be repetitive as people run their routes (which by this stage are unlikely to change) again and again until the bank breaks (which signals the end of the game in many 18XX games). It is clear that some people will be driven away from 18XX games for these reasons alone, along with the length of many of these games as well as the brain-burn that occurs when playing any of them. Going bankrupt can also be highly demoralizing as you lose everything that you worked for, although thankfully most 18XX games immediately end if even one person has gone bankrupt.

Overall, if you have the chance, I would strongly suggest that you give 18XX games a chance: some of the most unlikeliest people have now become permanent members of our little 18XX group and we are always looking for anyone else interested in playing. Unfortunately, the only game of 18XX that you are likely to find is 1830 and due to the fact that 1830 was one of the first few 18XX games that were released, I find it has a few issues that make it difficult to play, especially for a group in which everyone is a newbie. Better starting games include 18AL/18GA, 18MEX, 1889 or 1846, since they all have more restricted trackbuilding or mechanism which help newbies through their first game (18AL especially so). Unfortunately, it can take years to order/find a copy of those games, even second hand.

I can't really give a score for the genre as a whole, since all of the games within it are so diverse (and some I actively dislike). To wrap up though, I think starting to play 18XX did manage to radically change my perception of train games and euros as a whole: it reminded me that along with euro-like characteristics, I also crave the direct confrontation and communal maps which are present within wargames and as such, 18XX are the perfect combination of characteristics. I hope that at least some of my enthusiasm for these games has transferred over to you, since I would like nothing more than see this tiny niche-within-a-niche interest grow, as unlikely as it might be. It would be a shame to see this genre of games die out and I hope that the future will, along with an expansion within boardgames as a whole, also see an expansion within 18XX as well, although professional publishing seems unlikely due to how badly the reprintings of 1830 et al went for Mayfair. Still, one can hope.