Delays and Diversions

 The C&S stuff is still live. But I have some intrusions into my thinking and planning.

Club 1830

I may have become divorced from the "modern boardgame" movement but I still find time for a spot of 18xx (and some solo wargaming).

Club 1830 was already going when I decided to disconnect from other bg noise. It suits me better to have a handful of games to really dig into, than to be constantly sampling other potential delights. During lockdown we had a "support bubble" for a friend who would have not have survived Covid, had he caught it. In that little group I seized my chance to try and get a small group together to play 1830 a couple of times - at least until we all had wrapped our heads around the basic play and could finish a game in an afternoon. We've now got ten "known" games, all with at least a dozen plays, and a couple more awaiting their time.

I'm not of the opinion that 1830 is the King of Games. I don't think any game could claim that title. It just happened that we accidently formed an 18xx group and that I was happy to keep it when I stopped trying to keep up with other games. 

I prefer the 'nastier' titles to the 'gentler' ones. I like the interaction and I like that they're better at allowing a player back into the game (if they're not completely splatted, of course). 

We're not an especially fast group and we like to get a game finished in an afternoon. This filters out any games with a "box time" exceeding five hours. Three to four is preferable.

The games which have been getting the most attention this year have been 18GB and 1882. 

The former was new to us this year. I wasn't certain that I'd enjoy it as it looked to be more operational than financial. It turned out that the main focus was track laying - and luckily that proved to an interesting problem. Usually, track laying is the weakest part of my game - I'm too used to taking a short-term view there. Due the nature of the map, and the monetary incentives to join London to the north of Scotland, there is some keen competition to get stations in the OO and XX tiles which fill the Midlands or to elbow one's way onto Ken's Eastern Bypass.  

1882 has been a favourite since I first got it. We've just had four consecutive plays, each better than the previous. Between the short train roster and the very limited tile set it can be a brutal game. This set of games saw David begin to play a lot more aggressively than usual (starting a second company in SR2 in the last game) and me putting more thinking into my track game.

It will, sadly, get put aside for a few meetings as we learn 1822:PNW. When we were playing 1822:MRS I got slaughtered every time but I'm that this time round the 1822 gameplay will click with me.

The Three Artists referring to earlier material