As alluded to very briefly earlier in the week, I managed to land a copy of Tresham's 1829-Mainline.  The game was produced in 2007 and comes 33 years after the first 18XX game was created.  It is a financial game of buying and selling shares, setting up railroads and running trains and track over the English countryside.  One of the main reasons why I picked up the game was that it featured a solo variant right in the rules and I finally had a chance to sit down and get through most of it tonight. Some of the more interesting points involve what I think of the stock market as being a "solitaire mini-game" where shares are purchased as they come off the stack.  The game also allows you to start laying track in yellow in one direction.  There are three operating rounds per stock round and there are variable cities which are worth more (or less) than your best static valued station on the map.  The trains are also "slower" in that they only go two to four stops, but later trains have the ability to start at smaller stations and work out, take the best four destinations on the route, or double-back on the same route for twice the money.  The map and tile mix are complicated and mesh together quite well with a limited pile of hexes to work with.  Finally, you can lay track in color order regardless of turn.  It was designed to be a more approachable 18XX game.  

I won't go into too many details about the session.  Essentially, I started running the GCR in the south and eventually started up the GCW up in the middle.  Eventually more shares became available and after paying out some healthy dividends on the first company, I was able to start the MR and then started the L&MW (?) the turn after.  By then my routes were earning $300+ for a couple railroads and it was a matter of time before holding dividends on the railroads would deplete the $3000 bank.  So I stopped after being two hours into it.

Some thoughts:

• It was a fun game to play seeing as Tresham's games have been around since 1974 and still chugging along (sorry for the pun - couldn't resist).
• The card game for the stocks is a neat twist, especially in solitaire mode, to force certain companies to be built before others.  The initial struggle for cash was also welcome.
• The board is tough to work through.  Several areas of the map are simply off-limits until the faster engines come out.  The station rules are different than in 1830 in that you have to be able to reach the next station with a current train.  Ouch!
• London didn't play prominantly into the game at first, but Birmingham washuge.
• I struggled with some upgrading rules, but things became more apparent after referring to a rules index found at BGG and keeping the real rulebook at the ready.
• This game has a lot of math in it in terms of multiplication and addition.  Nothing too bad mind you, but figuring out 23 pounds x 7 shares and working through the routes with variable station bonuses takes a fair amount of time to go through.  It's no worse than 18xx, but then again, that's one reason why 18xx simply isn't as popular unless you are running with a moderator to speed up calculations.

It was interesting to play this from a game design perspective.  I had a great time seeing what someone else had put together and the attention to detail was amazing in terms of tile layouts, board diversity, etc.  Open Rails is inspired from the 18XX family of games (1830 in particular), so it was interesting to play this game from the perspective of my own game design.  I don't 1829 Mainline is a game I could have designed as I would not have been satisfied with certain parts of it as a designer as some parts of it feel "rough", but it is definitely a welcome addition to the 18XX universe. 

It was also interesting to contrast it with a tile-based 18XX game I am working on at the moment.  Testing has been coming along rather well on it.  It seems with the 18XX style of games you will always have a certain amount of cold calculation to do, and even with square tiles with limited upgrades, no distinction between player and company money (the player is the company) and a freeform map, the game still ends up running 45 to 60 minutes for only five turns worth of action.  Why?  Because of all the calculation of routes, determining what pieces will fit on which track and how they go on the board.  Granted, all of my playtesting has been simulating two players so maybe it would faster with another person in real life, but I kinda doubt it.  The game also needs a little more pizzaz in terms of how actions can be spent and determined.  The game seems to be generating a few standard outcomes, but the range of scores has been great with most games won by $10 or less on a scale of $70 to $110 for high scores.  The game felt like a mini-18xx.  The questions is, do I really want to do this?  The answer is a self-assured yes, but I'm still looking for ways to trim down time and make the game less complicated while keeping elements of the series in the game.  This may not be possible.

Playing Mainline also had me thinking about a solitaire mode for Open Rails.  There has to be a way to do it and I'm hoping to mull it over this week when I'm out of town.   My one disadvantage is that the shares are colored through and through so there is no notion of a card back and it would be possible for someone to peek and see roughly what was coming up next in the stack.  Maybe it isn't a disadvantage.  Maybe its a feature.  Anyhow, the idea would be for a limited number of shares to be available to purchase from each round.  Since the game has 8 turns with 8 companies with 5 shares apiece, it works out at first blush to a seven card draw to start companies.  I'm thinking an abbreviated game of some sort would be in order, but the interplay of all the companies is integral to the regular Open Rails game and I'm not sure how well the game would survive without that tension.