Leonardo Martino
Italy
Milano
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Hi I like Chicago express but my group always plays it wrong!
Every player gets one color and goes straight to Chicago and game feels absolutely flat, despite I can see its potential. What can we do about it?
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brian
United States
Cedar Lake
Indiana
Mourning the end of the Manning era.
Welcome baby brother Toby James, 03/24, 8 lb. 15 oz.
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kalevi1999 wrote: Hi I like Chicago express but my group always plays it wrong!
Every player gets one color and goes straight to Chicago and game feels absolutely flat, despite I can see its potential. What can we do about it?
Get the same color and run the line out before they get to Chicago.
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Blorb Plorbst
United States
Bloomington
Indiana
I think we're all bozos on this bus.
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Let them run, invest wisely.
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Aaron
United States
Huntington Beach
California
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Nothing to complain about. Sounds like an easy win to me.
Continue to destroy them each and every game, and they will eventually come around.
If they don't,maybe you should try a simpler game like pick up sticks or something. 
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Jake Waltier
United States
Seattle
Washington
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Part of an open-ended game like this (or Caylus, or Hansa Teutonica, etc.) is that there are many different strategies to win, and the best one for the situation depends on what other players are doing. If they are taking one train to Chicago and winning, figure out how to disrupt them, and show them that their strategies are actually quite poor. For example, if they care so much about holding onto the Penn, make them pay a ton of money for that second and third Penn stock. They will be paying lots of money (i.e. victory points) for no increased gain in victory points.
I'm still just a few games into my love affair with CE, so I can't help a lot. But don't worry, I'm sure Clearclaw will be here soon to give advice no one will understand.
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Doug Bass
United States
Winston-Salem
North Carolina
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kalevi1999 wrote: Hi I like Chicago express but my group always plays it wrong!
Every player gets one color and goes straight to Chicago and game feels absolutely flat, despite I can see its potential. What can we do about it?
Sounds dull indeed, and not much fun. When a share goes up for auction, are the players bidding aggressively against the person who controls all the other shares of that color or are they just letting them win it without a fight? Do the players understand they're not restricted to owning shares of only one color and they can leech off anyone who's focused on a single color? Next time you play, refuse to buy a share before the game starts and then don't buy any shares except ones already owned by other players. You should have enough money and it should cure them.
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Eric Flood
United States
Sunnyvale
California
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kalevi1999 wrote: Hi I like Chicago express but my group always plays it wrong!
Every player gets one color and goes straight to Chicago and game feels absolutely flat, despite I can see its potential. What can we do about it?
Let them overbid for opening-round shares.
Only take Capitalization actions.
Win.
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J C Lawrence
United States
Campbell
California
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blueatheart wrote: Let them overbid for opening-round shares.
Only take Capitalization actions.
And Expand actions which doom the companies they have over-invested in.
Quote: Win.
Oh, verily, like falling off a log.
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blueatheart wrote: Let them overbid for opening-round shares.
Only take Capitalization actions.
Win.
Precisely. Don't even need a "???" between step 3 and step 4.
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Simon Woodward
New Zealand
Hamilton
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So assuming they're bidding low, you'd need to buy a share for half your money (or less), then try to buy the next share for the same amount, forcing them to bid higher to overbid you etc?
Following this, assuming each player then starts with a single share, you then follow the strategy of putting up new shares in "their" companies and trying to buy them, keeping the price up in case they want to buy them. If you fail to buy a second share, you use any remaining actions to develop the company you have a share in. etc.? Is that right?
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Eric Flood
United States
Sunnyvale
California
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At the point which the OP is discussing, *anything* to stir the pot will do.
In my games with all new players, I will often choose Capitalization (null or otherwise), even when it's not the best option in the given situation (and especially when I don't intend to win the share). At some point, when I am (usually) ahead, some player will ask me how I did that. I then ask them how many Expansion actions I took, and how many Capitalization actions I took. A light usually goes on somewhere deep in their eyes. In the games with new players where I don't need to have this conversation, I often lose, but keep on course simply to teach.
manukajoe wrote: So assuming they're bidding low, you'd need to buy a share for half your money (or less), then try to buy the next share for the same amount, forcing them to bid higher to overbid you etc?
If they're playing a "I want this company" game, they'll bid high, not low. If they bid low, take it. Then do similar with the next company. They will think that allowing you to "take" two companies for low is insufferable (correctly, but for the wrong reasons) and overbid you for the last three shares. Now they've bid high.
Quote: Following this, assuming each player then starts with a single share, you then follow the strategy of putting up new shares in "their" companies and trying to buy them, keeping the price up in case they want to buy them. If you fail to buy a second share, you use any remaining actions to develop the company you have a share in. etc.? Is that right?
Let's say I have the Blue share, doesn't matter which player number I am. Everyone else expands. I Capitalize Red. Red player spends the remainder of their money to keep it out of my clutches. I let them, assuming they didn't massively overbid on the first share. I do the same in the following round with Green. Then Yellow (assuming they all Develop in-between once the Expand actions are gone). I'll probably even win one, but that's irrelevant. Assume very other player has paid all of their money for two shares, while I have paid half my money for a single share. Their shares pay out ~$4 - $5 /share. My blue, without touching it, pays $6. At the beginning of Round 2, I have ~$20-23, they have ~$10 each. Guess who's winning two of the next three auctions? If they *really* don't catch on, my share will never be split, I will never have to do anything except hurt their profits, and we'll probably wind up in a situation, by the end of the game, whereby I have something on the order of 2 Green, 2-3 Yellow, 1 (unsplit) Blue, and 1 Red, while each other player has the complementary shares of "their" company. I watch my timing incentives (i.e. if I really have 7 shares, I drag the game out for as long as possible) when I take shares. I would hope it doesn't result in that extreme of a situation (i.e. the other players catch on before that), but...I've done it before. If the other players let me get away with that, I won't play with any of them ever again. They'd better catch on to what I'm doing far before I've accumulated 7 shares.
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