18SW

18 Somewhere

A kinder, gentler 18XX designed for to play well with 2 - 4 players and with new 18XX players in mind.

1. Rusting is replaced with maintenance.
2. The inability to rust or scrap your last train combined with restrictions on train selling between companies makes company dumps not particularly painful.
3. Companies with special powers gives a euro-y feel to it.

However, so that it's also interesting to experienced 18XXers,

1. There are 3 levels of play, basic, advanced, and full.
2. The advanced level adds player controlled 2-, 5-, and 10-share companies twisting the availability of shares and the benefits of lots of early cash. It also adds an auction for starting companies which evens out the initial priority.
3. The full game adds bonds (basically loans from players to companies). Bonds do not count against the certificate limit giving early cash an added benefit and giving companies another way to raise money.
4. Although, in theory, train maintenance reduces the stress of the train rush, limiting the number of all trains (including the biggest brown trains) means the late train rush is brutal, often going from the first brown train to the last in less than one OR.

Replayability and scaling by player count is also covered:

1. Although the basic map is static, 4 of the 7 big dollar city locations vary from game to game. In addition, players choose their starting city when they start their RR. All this changes optimal routes from game to game.
2. The size of the map and the tile count scales by the number of players. This also changes which big dollar cities and which RRs are included from game to game.

Play time: The game is designed to be from 90 - 180 minutes although it needs repeated plays to achieve.