Augh!  You're breaking my game!

Yep, it finally happened.  Leave it to my brother to poke a hole in a perfectly good game that I'd already sent off to get looked at. 

Basically, he took the Canadian Pacific and started it off out west.  He never bought a train, but since he was furthest west, he kept his share price up.  Furthermore, since my wife and I were dumb enough to keep shares in the blasted company, he made money off that, too.  At one point I was about ready to throttle him.  How dare he mess with my game?  Very calmly, he stated, "It wasn't in the rules."  To which, I considered saying, "Well, we're playtesting, this is an exploit, and it needs to get patched now!", but instead I fumed for a while and wisely calmed down for the remainder of the game.  I still made efforts to throttle down his stock and I thought about putting blocking stations down, but it never came to pass.  I figured I'd play the equivalent of a day trader and continued to trash and buy stock for the remainder of the game.  He won with $650 or so, I had $560 and the wife had $470 which included a gift from me in the form of the C&O railroad.  I made my profit to start another railroad to mess with my brother which didn't pan out.  Truth be told, CanPac and PRR worked out very well for Justin and I, so short of some other dealings, I had no good way to catch up, but no new way to fall behind.  Incidentally, CanPac ended at around $18/share, so its worth was questionable.  A frustrating game, but a valuable learning experience once I calmed down.

So, after some armchair quarterbacking last night and going over strategy with Justin, I thought a while about some of the issues I'd noticed.  It irked me that you could build for turns out west and take no hit in stock price.  Also having all shares out on a company without a train bothered me.  The straw that broke the camel's back, however, was the fact that you could build track indefinitely and take only a modest hit in stock price.  I didn't like that particular blocking mechanism and it didn't feel "real" to me.  In real life, the Erie Railroad ran competing track and it had trains running up and down the tracks while it was helping to hijack other's fortunes!  In 1830, train buying was done after building track and taking income.  I did not want to revert to this system either as there are times when it might be very important to block.  But you should take a severe hit if you do so.  

So, two new rules changes.  (And it's not a real blog post from me unless you throw a bulleted list and/or a semi-colon in somewhere):

• Westward bonus and All Shares Out bonus is only eligible for railroads running a profit (i.e. trains).  You can build out west if you want to, but you damn well better bring a train with you.
• Don't run a train?  Drop two rungs and cozy up to the bottom of the stock ladder.  The only time you drop one is if it is the first round for a railroad and they use their only build to buy a train in which they only go down one rung as in before.

Other changes involved incorporating an Income Track separate from the board (which I would like to see merged with the main board in a future edition when I have time) and a few other rules clarifications.  Nothing earth-shattering.  The only other variant I put into the mix was a dice-based variant where you do not automatically increase your stock value on paying out earnings.  Basically, if you roll less than your train value, your stock goes up - otherwise, it stays the same.  I thought about putting a punitive '6' value where if you roll that number, it goes down one rung anyways.  I decided against it.  But it would be an interesting way to push the trains and make stock slightly less valuable in the end game for those who are so inclined.

The other thing that kind of bothered me was watching my wife clearly struggling with the game.  I knew it was not her cup of tea.  She said it was a good game, but there was too much to digest going into it.  To be fair, my brother and I can tend to dominate a table and she is a big fan (as am I) of lighter fare such as Ticket To Ride, Blokus, and other quick games.  She had played Chicago Express which helped her get into this one, but it was not an entry level train game that I was hoping for.  Open Rails is a streamlined train game for those are well travelled in the genre, but it is not the best teaching game to branch into the world of shares, tracks, stations and the like.  She did catch on to the mechanics, but it wore on too long for her.  She said that she would try a two player game at some point which I am thankful for, as I think a more intimate setting to learn some of the subtle points in the game would make it more enjoyable for her.

It was interesting as well to watch my brother play.  Open Rails at a recent playtest with five people took 2-1/2 hours which is a pretty good clip for a train genre game.  The games with the kids at the house typically take two hours for three players (split into one hour segments over two nights).  My private self-playtesting took roughly 1-1/2 hours for 3 and 4 player games.  The first game with my brother (in which he won by 900 to 700 or so) took 4-1/2 hours from start to finish.  The three-player game was only slightly faster at 3-3/4 hours.  I ribbed on him a lot for this on the second game (and he didn't care because he won), but it is quite a science to watch people play and analyze a board. 

For those who care, I tend to go on gut and rarely make detailed calculations for my moves - which is why I am usually in second place on any particular game).  I also enjoy mind games during the game and if I have a feel for the players, I would much rather play on their paranoia or traits over and above any regard for formal strategy in whatever game I'm playing.  It's my favorite part of board gaming and is what draws me away from computer and console games.  It's truly a meta-game at that point, and quite an enjoyable one at that.

Other oddities:

• Unlike other playtests, he played town upgrades extremely well and was able to get over $1/2 and $2/3 income humps pretty well with sister railroads.
• Betsy passed up the PRR and went with the NYNHH at $9/share.  From there, she built due southeast and went down the coast into the Smokies.  I had never seen a build quite like that.
• In the game prior to the one described above, I had taken the Erie and made it to Chicago and was about to go to the $8 on the edge of the board.  Justin