A guide to 1862

This is a mad game with a lot of companies on a tiny map. Every hex
has a large or a small station but only some trains care about small
stations. Bear in mind I've never played it so I'm as confused as you.

Besides the usual "bank broken" and "company has maximum share price",
there's a third end condition (I think, the expected end condition);
at the start of the stock round after the first final-phase train is
bought there's all kinds of rules changes, one more stock round, one
more set of operating rounds, and the game ends because supposedly the
LNER has formed and bought out every company on the map. I'll refer to
this as "LNER is forming" because "at or after the stock round after
the first final-phase train is bought" is a mouthful.

There's two kinds of companies; chartered and unchartered. Chartered
companies are started by auctioning off the rights to start them in a
"Parliamentary Round", which there's one of before each stock round;
they get full funding (10x initial share price) immediately but don't
start out with Treasury shares so won't normally take a tranche of
their own income. Unchartered companies are started in stock rounds
and work more or less like 1846 majors.

The Director's share is 30% because er dunno. Companies start to
operate when 50% is sold. There is a horrible penalty if you win a
charter and don't start the company by the end of the stock round.
There's no obligation for a company to have a Director, and the forced
train purchase mechanism wrecks companies not players.

When you start a company you buy its supply of tokens; they cost £0 to
place after that, but you have to decide (unchartered) how many you
want up front, and pay for them (any company) up front. You can only
get more after that by merging with another company.

There's three kinds of trains - express, freight, and local. There's
only one stack of train cards; when you buy a train you decide which
way up the card is. How the game IRL has three-sided cards I dunno.
Each company starts with a permit to run one kind of train and can
only get more by merging.

Companies can merge with other companies with a track connection and
the consent of both directors. The resulting company gets both
companies' stuff. There's a complex procedure for doing the merger,
but the basic idea is for every two shares you started with, you end
up with one in the resulting company. The resulting company inherits
all the trains, tokens, money, permits.

A company that's removed from the game pops back up next stock round
as a company to start. Its home space and permit type don't change,
but everything else starts afresh.

You can't sell shares that you bought in the same stock round. (You
_can_ sell other shares in the same company, if you have them). Stock
sales of a trainless company are at half price (but purchases are
not).

The stockmarket is a zig-zag, two tracks one above the other, offset
by half a space. Payouts move the price left and right; stock sales
make it zigzag down. Non-Director sales don't make the price drop if
it hasn't floated or the LNER is forming or in some cases if the price
is very low or very high.

A company without a Director is in receivership. It doesn't build,
runs for as much revenue as possible, withholds, buys one train if
possible, and goes bankrupt if not.

London is special. A token represents the company laying track to
London; it can't be the only token on a route, and you place it there
as a track build. It's only like a token inasmuch as it uses up one of
the supply of tokens.

When you build you can do one of:
 Lay one yellow 'N' tile (high-value tiles for Norwich and Cambridge).
 Lay two other yellow tiles.
 Place a small station.
 Do one upgrade.
 Put a token in London.

Place a small station? WTF? Well, yellow small station tiles have one
bit of track and one small station. They upgrade to greens with two
bits of track (which don't join up) and one small station. You can put a
small station on the other bit of track. Those upgrade to russets with
one or two small stations and three bits of track which also don't
join up.

The ends of routes have to be large stations or off-map areas. (The
rules consistently say "port" to mean an off-map sea area next to a
place which is a port IRL. This is confusing. I will say "off-map
[sea|land] area".) Both ends of a route cannot be off-map areas of the
same type, but you can run from the sea to the land.

One route has to visit your home station. Your second route must meet
that route at a large station (even one that is tokened out). A third
route must meet the first or second route at a large station, and so
forth.

Trains can run on the same track as each other, but a given hex is
only ever scored once for revenue.

Freight trains are described as FN, where N is the number of hexes the
train can visit in addition to the starting hex. A freight train
scores its endpoints and gets +20 per intervening hex as the crow
flies - ie counting the shortest distance without regard to track or
other obstructions. This bonus increases to +30 if the route includes
an off-map sea area.

If you have two or more freight trains they must run end-to-end, so an
F2 and an F3 run as, effectively, one F5.

Local trains have a count of large stations which they score all of,
and also score any intervening small stations, but can never run
off-map. The company also gets £10 subsidy (paid into the Treasury)
for every hex its local trains visit. Some of them are N/M, like 1846,
but there is no requirement for the N stations to include a token.

Express trains have a count of large stations and off-map areas; they
ignore small stations completely. They also come in N/M. They are the
most like "normal" trains if you squint and ignore the small stations
on the map.

Phases and trains are lettered A-H.

You withhold or pay out; there's no half-pay. You can do a "George
Hudson Manoeuvre" where, if the payout was not enough to earn a single
share price bump, you raid the company Treasury for enough cash to
increase the dividend to that point.

You don't discard excess trains if you're over the train limit; you
just can't buy anymore. Train sales to other companies are at the face
price, halved if the train is not from the current phase; there's no
free choice of price.

There's a "warranty" mechanism which lets you, when buying a train,
potentially delay it rusting. You can buy up to 3 warranty cards
(phase A and D trains get one for free) at £50 each; every time the
train runs (whether or not it is obsolete) one is discarded, and the
train doesn't rust until the last one goes.

If a company has no train and can't afford a bank train or negotiate a
purchase from another company, it tries two emergency money raising
procedures, one after the other. It can't do both; either the first
one will raise enough money, or the second one will, or the company is
bankrupt and neither procedure is carried out.

The first is to sell any Treasury shares it holds. These sell at full
price even though the company has no train, because the procedure is
only carried out if it will result in the company having a train.

The second is to refinance (supposedly issuing more stock) which
reduces existing shareholdings 2 to 1 using the merger procedure and
brings in a lump of money.

When a company is bankrupt, existing shareholders get compensation of
half their shares' price, and then it is removed (and pops back into
life next stock round, as usual).

You can redeem one share per operating round.

The LNER
========

When the LNER is forming, the certificate limit increases. Stock sales
don't change the share price. There's no more construction, starting
of companies, mergers, or cross-company train sales. Any IPO shares in
the game become market shares. The bank breaking does not end the game.