Happy good afternoon...

The latest map for Open Rails features a swath of land from Lake Erie to the highlands of West Virginia.  I ended up playing with regular rules with two players.  The map played a little flat on the base rules, but I wanted to get a feel for how it would go to just play it that way.  The map seems very balanced between the off board areas in the south and the urban centers of Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo.  The off board areas are guarded by mountain ranges.  The railroads seemed pretty balanced all in all with very little contention unless there is building towards other areas or collusion between pairs of railroads.

So, it played okay.  Nothing terribly exciting.  Game played pretty static with two.

The rule change I'm thinking of adding is adding the notion of shares of industry.  The idea is to take a certain aspect of the map which is a different slice of the game action that promotes another game goal without explicitly throwing victory points.  On this map, coal was a major driving force, came from the mountains and was brought east or to the port cities on Lake Erie.  I'm tinkering with the idea of a "sixth" company that deals with the notion of the coal industry.  Basically, there are no trains or moving parts to this company... however... revenue from the company is based on the amount of mountain track from all railroads on the map.  As opposed to the regular railroad company shares, each share receives a portion of the final income similar to how Chicago Express handles it shares.  So, for example, if there are 10 cubes in the mountains and three shares have been purchased, each share would be worth $4, rounding up.  The value of each share in a future round would be worth $4.  Money earned from this industry can then be put into any participating company in that company or it goes right into the shareholder pocket.  These shares would sell for $1 if someone needed the money.

Another idea I had was to include a second industry (mail, maybe) which would encourage connected railroads from each map edge by any railroad.  I also like the idea of having only 3 shares available of each industry to force a little more contentious bidding.  Another idea I was tinkering with was the idea of "construction" companies which would make plowing through certain areas or terrain a little less expensive.  Money is tight in the game as it is and this would accelerate the train rush a little more too.

Need time to tinker.  Unfortunately, with the way my next two weeks is looking, I doubt I will have the chance to play around with things much as there is some major programming to do for the primary job, hence the April time frame.  Maybe I'll luck out and catch a break...