WARNING ======= If you look at an 18xx.games game when you're logged out, it lets you play around in sandbox mode. This is pretty handy once you know about it and utterly baffling - "why can't I submit my turn" - until you do. 1846 for novices ================ This is intended to be read alongside the 1846 rules PDF to try and give a bit of an indication of what's going on. Most 18xx games are generally similar. You start with a pot of money and buy shares in railway companies; if you've got the most shares in a company you're the President (or Director) and make decisions for the company, which lays track, buys trains, runs trains, and (maybe) pays a dividend. The game ends when the bank runs out of money; the winner is the player with the most money and stock value. You're trying to line your own pockets, not run good companies (although running good companies that pay large dividends is one way to do it). 3. Private Company Distribution =============================== The distribution of private companies means that the players have an asymmetric position when the main game starts. Most privates work better with some of the main companies than others - for example, the Steamboat Company adds value to anchor hexes, and the B&O's starting hex is a double-anchor hex. It's not terrible to come out with no privates [1] and plenty of money to invest; what is bad is coming out with privates that don't work well with the railway companies you end up running or are heavily invested in. It's good to come out with privates which work well with the railways you run. [1] after a while you don't even notice the "privates" jokes in 18xx. 5. Stock Round ============== When you first play 18xx you think it'll be about buying and selling shares. There's a lot more buying than selling; if a company's really good, players will buy up all the shares and hang onto them. Also, hostile takeovers very rarely happen - in particular, once I own half of a company, no-one can ever take it from me unless I sell - but sometimes the threat of them is important. Why run your own company? First of all, the President's certificate is worth two shares. When you bump into the certificate limit (5.4) each Presidency is an extra share in your portfolio. It's possible to win without ever being a President, but it's unusual. Secondly, if you make the decisions for a railway you can make sure it builds track and lays tokens in a way that's convenient for your other plans - often to help out a second railway you're invested in. However, it's bad to run a railway with no trains and money. Then you're on the hook for a replacement train. Why start a company at a low price? This doesn't necessarily make a difference to the company's initial capital - if you have $300 to invest, you can buy six shares at $50 just as well as two at $150; but now you get 60% of the dividends not 20%, and the low share price means it's easier for the price to "double-jump" when dividends are paid, increasing the value of your shares. Why start a company at a high price? In the end, it'll have more money in it (if the shares sell at all) - not only will the shares sell at a higher price, but in the scenario above, 80% of the initial dividends will end up in the company's pocket. This will make it easy for the company to invest in better trains as the game goes on. What do you do if someone with more money tries to steal your company in the first stock round? Sell it as soon as they buy a second share. Only the President can sell shares in a company that hasn't operated, so once they steal it it's too late - but if you sell first, you get all your money back and they're now President of a company that has two shares in the market and lost a stock price increment because the President sold shares. Why invest in someone else's railway? You expect it to pay good dividends and the stock price to rise. But often also it's an offensive move; when I start a railway, I want all the shares to be either mine or in the company treasury. When you buy them, you're putting a bit of money in now but siphoning off my dividends and the prospect of a later sale at a higher price. (Conversely it can be a cooperative move, if I want money I don't have to buy it a second train.) If someone sets up a particularly fine alliance of private and public company - like the B&O and Steamboat above - but all 5 players buy two shares each, that fine alliance isn't actually giving any player a monetary advantage. If you can buy from the Stock Market and the corporation's treasury, you buy from the treasury to get money in the company now (but it loses dividend income); from the Stock Market to stop the price dropping in 5.52. Be careful when starting one of the three Eastern railways - PRR, NYC, and the Erie. These can easily box each other in - eg if the PRR builds F18 and then E17 Cleveland, the NYC and the Erie can't go anywhere until the green tiles let them upgrade Cleveland... and if the green tiles are out, the B&O might get to Cleveland first and token it. If you start one of these, you want either to be sure you can build track in the first OR to let you access the rest of the map, or have a "teleport" (eg, own the C&WI private which lets you drop a token in Chicago). 6. Operating Rounds =================== The Sequence of Play here is less important than it seems. The only important constraints are that you run trains before buying them and that you can't spend the money from running trains before the point you actually run them. Why issue shares? To raise money for immediate needs. Why emergency-issue shares as part of a forced train purchase? It's almost always a mistake - issuing them earlier normally would not damage the stock price. Why redeem shares? To spend excess money in the company on stopping the price dropping in 5.52, increasing the value of your own holdings; to trade the company's capital now for more Treasury income and the hope that someone will buy the share later at a higher price. 18xx.games does automatic route calculation (work out the maximum income you can make by running trains), which is a boon because it's a right bugger otherwise. Before retaining revenue or paying a half-dividend to save up for bigger trains, consider that if most or all of a dividend will end up in your pocket or the company treasury, you might as well make a full payout. If you're forced to buy a train with some of your own money, it can be the money you just paid yourself, and this way the stock price is higher. When laying and upgrading tiles, it's pretty obvious that I'm trying to increase the value of my routes, but I'm also trying to frustrate other companies I'm not invested in, either by blocking them off or by using the tiles they're going to want. In particular, there's only four token spots in Chicago; only four railways will ever run a lucrative East-West route to Chicago Connections. Why would I buy a 3/5 train not a 4, or a 4/6 not a 5? Sometimes there's a really lucrative city one stop too far away, but more often it's because the 3/5 or 4/6 will just make an East-West route. Why would I buy a 6 train not a 7/8? I can't afford a 7/8, or I'm really completely sealed in with other company's tokens. The 7/8 is "just better". There's no way to make money on your very first operating turn, because you buy trains after you run them. 9. Advancing the Game Phase =========================== This will happen faster than you expect, especially the removal of private companies in Phase III. Make sure your private companies get bought up before that happens. 10. Game End ============ The bank doesn't empty out gradually, as you might naively expect. Until players reach the certificate limit, whenever they get money they spend it on shares. Then, all of a sudden, they can't spend money and the game's full of 7/8 trains and the bank empties in an Operating Round or two. Greg's thoughts =============== Starting out: The first thing to happen is buying private companies. These often provide a small income, but that’s a sideshow. Mostly they provide a train company with a bonus of some sort. Many of these bonuses are specific to a particular part of the game board and will reward a particular train company. You probably want to own that company. Less obviously, private companies are a way to move money from a train company to a player (and then back into a train company via share purchases). When you sell a private to a company you run, you set the price. You can make it a low price if the company needs cash urgently before the next round of share purchases, or a high one if you want the cash yourself in order to buy shares later. Big 4/Michigan Southern are a slightly different proposition. In a company’s hands they become a cheap train and token, but in a player’s hands they are a way of building extra track (and getting some money to the player). Both functions have value in early turns. Buying your first train company This is a good thing to do, unless you are playing silly buggers. See the next topic. Shares, and the husbandry thereof: Shares are how you the player win. Own shares, reap dividends and mostly benefit from share equity. But… that’s late game stuff. Sure, you want to prepare for that. But there’s other stuff to consider in the early game. Shares are how a train company generates working capital at the start of the game. So it gets money when you start it depending on the share price you set, and then when shares are sold from the company treasury. It also gets money from dividends… but only while the treasury holds shares. Companies can sell their own shares to the market rather than waiting for players to buy them. This is an expensive way to get money: a) you sell at a discount, b)other players who want to invest in you will buy the market shares instead of pumping money into your company coffers, and c) less of the dividend payments the company makes get recycled into the petty cash. Oh, and d) shares in the market reduce your share price and that’s often undesirable. That said, if you need the money urgently for a good reason then by all means sell the shares. It might be worth having a plan for recovering them though. Cash management: don’t sell shares in order to generate a cash reserve for the distant future. Sell them in order to fund the current operating round. Long term cash comes from selling shares from the treasury and dividends paid to treasury shares. In phases I-III your companies should be thinking about how to fund replacing obsolete trains. Once you hit phase IV, the company is either rich and successful or a minor player. If the former, you want enough cash to buy one or two phase IV trains and then maybe $100-200 for playing with track. Any more than that should have been a dividend. You will also want to be getting rid of phase III trains to let you buy the phase IV trains. If your company is an also-ran, you will be wanting to buy a phase III train because you’ve been running on a bunch of 3/5s until now. Luckily the major players will be wanting to replace their 5s and 4/6s. Phase changes See above - phase III and IV can be costly to survive and you probably don’t want to pay for new trains from your personal wallet. If you’re doing well, then tempo is a thing. If you initiate a phase change, it hits other people harder than it does you. It’s hard to plan for, but if you have the opportunity then consider it. Founding two companies: This is a risky strategy. One or both of the companies is likely to have cheap shares, with the accompanying risks of low funding in the early rounds and hostile takeover later on. Your personal resources will be stretched to fund it; it may even develop an unhealthy dependency on issuing shares to the market. Don’t expect to get two high performing companies out of this approach. One strong player and one also-ran is a likely result. Bonus: you get to commit massive, flagrant breaches of competition law. You can coordinate track laying. The also-ran can funnel cash into the strong player, buying their unwanted phase III trains at the start of phase IV. And so on. Another possible outcome is a failed company. If you’re heading that way, get an exit strategy. Drive the share price to zero rather than be forced to buy trains for a penniless failed corporation. Share price flooring requires substantial planning and might fail anyway, but: • withholding dividends drops share prices a notch per operating round • Selling shares as a director will drop prices a notch. • Having shares in the market after a share dealing round will drop prices a notch. You pretty much have to plan this from early on, because other players can really interfere with your evil plotting through simple measures such as buying cheap shares from the market. Laying track: This can be done offensively, to cut other players off from lucrative routes. However, it’s difficult to do this and have it stick through a phase change or two. Defensively, you can lay and upgrade track to keep options open. Linking to tracks you don’t immediately need to use can stop you from being cut off by a carefully placed token. Share dealing: Diversification is required - you can’t afford to go without buying all the share certificates you’re allowed to (11) if you want to win. Since you can only buy 5 certs in any one corporation (60% if one of those is the director’s cert), you will end up with shares in at least 3 corps. This leads to these questions: • when to buy? • What to buy? • Where to buy from? When: Earlier is better, because shares in a successful corp will be cheaper before they come into big dividends. However, you have less money early on and investment decisions are harder. What: It’s hard to tell early on. If you know the players, you can take a bet based on previous performance perhaps. After the first couple of operating rounds things should become more clear. Cheaper shares have higher risk/reward, so apply caution and don’t buy more than one if you think the corp in question is at risk. Where: You can buy shares from a corporate treasury or the market. Buying treasury shares funds the corp, which is nice for you if it lets them buy a profitable train and earn a lot. You’ll see the rewards in a few turns time. If you buy from the market you aren’t funding a competitor (up to you whether this is good or not) and your shares are more likely to gain value in the short term (because clearing shares from the market gives a price boost). Selling shares: Why: You may need cash in order to buy a better share, or to prevent someone taking over your corp. It may be obvious a corp is going to fail shortly (this is ‘run for the hills’ territory if you own >1 share because you don’t want to be left directing a corp with no trains). You may own a failing corp and want to dump it on the poor schlub who has 2 or more shares in it. You may want to cut the share price of your own company for some strange reason (selling a share when you’re a director immediately cuts the share price). This can be countered by other players, so think of it as a way to prevent share price rising at the end of the share trading round. You may want to try and drop the share price of a competitor, although you should be prepared for this to fail. When: This is tricky. Once you sell a share, you can’t then buy more shares in that corp. If you want other players to react, do it early. If you don’t, do it late in the share round. Yours, Greg Mathews