18AL, or “The One We May Have Played Correctly”

JD, Jacob and I played 18AL yesterday morning and had a fantastic time of it. This is my 3rd play in about 3 months and we seem to have managed the game well and got all of the rules right. I sketched out an additional player aid that I'll post to the 'geek soon as we found it useful to track company income, par values, and to have a phase summary that includes the train limits (a rule we messed up in Salishan in December).

This was one of the first games I've played where I did something borderline nasty in the game, but I think quite within the spirit of 18xx games. In the second to last operating round of the game (we knew the end was approaching quickly as the bank was nearly cleaned out), I bought the only train (a 6) from a company where I was president but owned the same number of shares (4) as JD. Jacob had priority deal and I knew I would take the next stock action after him. I then dumped my four shares to the open market in the stock round, making JD the president and forcing him to hold onto his shares. This meant that the company was guaranteed to not operate in the final operating round, thereby devaluing his shares even more.

The finish was very tight, with Jacob playing a solid game operating only one company throughout (the L&N). Final scores: Chris - $5309, Jacob - $5101, JD - $4918.