msaari 📚This has been a good week of games. We started with afternoon games on Monday. One player dropped out, so the original plan of a four-player game of Imperial turned into a three-player game of Indonesia. I had not played Indonesia with three before, so I was curious to find out how it works.
Turns out it's good. The three-player game is different, and my favourite is either four or five – don't know yet – but I would definitely not say no to a three-player game. The game runs longer, which changes the dynamics of it. It's also very interesting to see how differently things can develop. This time, no spice companies were started on the first round, leading to quick initial city growth. The Halmahera shipping company was never started, which changed the shipping layout.
I was happily ahead in the early game. A friend complained they had lost the game, badly, and guess who won? They didn't realize they were running away with the game until I told them.
I've been wondering how useful the 100× turn order bid multiplier is. Now, I would've needed that. I was badly hurt by the turn order on what turned out to be the last turn. I bid 10,000 for the turn order on the last turn – and I only had the 25× multiplier! – and the second player bid 10,025 and ran away with the Siap Saji market. With the 100× multiplier I could've bid 40,000 and that would've secured me a much better position.
I think it's a brilliant idea that the money spent on bidding for turn order counts for your final score.
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Tuesday was the casual group, and we continued with Bomb Busters. It's a lovely co-op game, and the challenge is delightful now that we have the correct rules and it's not too easy. We still managed to pass all seven missions. Next week, we'll get into new territory and hopefully somewhat harder missions.
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Wednesday was the main game group day, and we played 18Korea with five players, including one total 18xx newbie. We gave him a very quick rules explanation (ten minutes or so), and off we went. What's better than throwing new players right at the deep end? I was sure he could swim, and swim he did.
Everybody knows it's possible to buy trains from all companies, and not just your own. But have you ever seen that happen? I've played 18xx games a lot and have never seen that, but in this game it did! I managed to sell one of my 5E trains to a company looking for a permanent train. The buyer was the new guy so I suppose the ethical side of it is slightly dubious, but I'm ready to defend my actions – I thought it was a real win-win scenario, I was already winning by a lot, and we were cross-invested. Mostly I was just happy to see a train purchase across players.
We had Rason among the initial Northern Korea companies. We have a meta where Rason is considered the best early company. The player who started it would've been a bit poor without help and we could've just not invest in it, but I've been in a situation where Rason makes a ton of money – 300–400 on OR 1.2 – and I don't have any shares, so I didn't want to repeat that. So, we funded Rason. The shares were split 4-3-2-1 or so, and I got three, so I was happy. In the end, Rason wasn't a great company. After the initial burst, it defected to South and got good tokens, but it had to withdraw a lot. I sold my shares at the right time and even thought it ran for 1170 at the end, it was a very low value share.
I started Sinuju on the first SR and even though it had a slow start, it had the Long Distance Specialist asset (pays 20 won extra per tile for the longest run on each OR), and that made me a ton of money during the game, making funding trains easier.
We've played seven games of 18Korea so far. The first one was a bit of a bust and ended before the war, so it doesn't really count. Of the other six, I've won five. For some reason, I'm better in 18Korea than in most other 18xx games (or the other players make more mistakes in 18Korea). This game was mostly close – I won clearly with 8,188 won, but the other four players were all within 572 won (6,280 to 6,852 won). The difference between the fourth and the fifth place was just 4 won, which is practically a tie.
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