Plays in October

martinfowlercom — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 23:20:30 +0000

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(See this post for how I choose my ratings.)

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[BGCOLOR=#CC99FF] 5 [/BGCOLOR] 1822MX
I've been playing a few games of 1822 recently, and very much enjoying them. 1822MX adds some good twists to the core game. There is a national railway that will build track and act as a reliable, if unexciting investment. There's also “builder cubes” that allow me to trade money for time when building through difficult terrain. (Adding a builder cube to a hex acts as my track build action and reduces the terrain cost in the future by $40.) I did enjoy the game, but its problem is that it runs long, with fiscal players we ran out of time after four hours. That makes it too long to be a game I'm going to play regularly. In this game I quickly found out I'd started badly, when I saw I had four shares while the two leaders had seven. At that point, I knew my goose was cooked, although I didn't figure out how it got in the oven.

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[BGCOLOR=#99FFFF] 7 [/BGCOLOR] 1862: Railway Mania in the Eastern Counties
I'd played this earlier, and found its extra rules complexity daunting for someone new to 18xx. Now I've got more 18xx under my belt, it feels more approachable, yet still pretty hard to get my head around. I do like the tightness of the map, the random setup of the companies promises a lot of variety, and I think I'll get used to the different classes of trains and company funding models. There's a lot to explore here, and it plays quickly enough (2½ hours on 18xx.games) that it's easy to see how I could get the plays in gain more understanding.

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[BGCOLOR=#CC99FF] 5 [/BGCOLOR] Witchstone NEW!
I found this game flowed very well, I liked how we built up an increasingly powerful actions via domino tiles on our player boards, while these actions played into our position on the shared board. I felt that put a decent balance between the head-down and heads-up. On the negative side, the actions were rather point-salady, with plenty of somewhat independent paths to explore, although each one had notable side-effects into the others. It was also quick-playing, fitting easily into a ninety minute slot. Overall, however, there was nothing here that sparkled for me, nothing that had that hook that would make it an interesting game.

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[BGCOLOR=#99FFFF] 7 [/BGCOLOR] Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar
This is one of those games that for a decade: I play, think it would be nice to play it again soon to solidify what I learned, then don't play for a couple of years, so forget everything. Of the various “T” games, this is still my favorite. There's a nice mix of different things to do, and a challenge in getting the right engine for corn and resources by manipulating the wheels in the right way. The wheel mechanism and the on-or-off flow makes it a worthy twist on the worker-placement genre. The setting is distinctive, but there's no theme there. Maybe some day I'll get into it this game enough to get past the bumbling stage.

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[BGCOLOR=#99FFFF] 7 [/BGCOLOR] 1880: Romania x2 NEW!
Fresh new game, so even the other Fiscal players hadn't played it before (although they had played 1880 China). For me it was another fun mix of the familiar 18xx elements. I liked how the alternative plus trains made dits more valuable. The player-driven timing of the stock rounds caught me out a couple of times, so that takes a bit of getting used to. The privates proved quite significant and the outside investors were their own twist on minor companies. On my first game I was caught out by not having a permit to build in late stages of the game, which I could (and should) have prevented by starting a second company at the right time. All in all this is a good package, and one that is easily able to play in an evening. I'm looking forward to getting some more plays of it. (I'm finding it interesting that while it seems common for 18xx players to hate some 18xx games, I haven't found one I've disliked yet, other than for game length.)

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[BGCOLOR=#99FFFF] 7 [/BGCOLOR] Railways of the Lost Atlas
Tried out the new online implementation. It's a great implementation, although there's always a few features we'd like. (For me some compact display of all the companies and/or all the players, to save clicking on icons.) It's attractive and smooth playing. We did a short game, which everyone I play with finds too short, but I still rather like. There's something to be said for an 18xx we can play in ninety minutes (albeit online). I also suspect that if we played the short game more often, we would get used to the truncated tempo of the game.

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[BGCOLOR=#CC99FF] 5 [/BGCOLOR] Wings for the Baron (Second Edition) NEW!
I liked the interesting mix of mechanisms here, with a theme of developing aircraft during World War One. Each round we choose actions to research technologies (draw cards), implement technologies on a tech tree, or improve how many aircraft we can build and sell. After the actions, we sell aircraft, with priority to those with the best mix of technologies. Choosing actions means balancing the desire to produce more with spending time on R&D. The downside was that there was a fair bit of die rolling to see if the chosen action succeeded, which is the kind of output randomness that hasn't appealed to me in decades.

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[BGCOLOR=#FF66CC] 4 [/BGCOLOR] Flixo NEW!
As might be expected from the green man, this is a game with some inventive twists. It is a co-op, and my groups are rarely excited by those. But this provides a neat puzzle in gradually shedding cards from our tableaux while timing the end-game trigger.

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[BGCOLOR=#9999FF] 6 [/BGCOLOR] Right Now NEW!
I get a hand of cards, where each card has two of seven colors. I cannot rearrange cards in my hand, nor rotate them. We play a shedding game where I can play one or more consecutive cards of the same color on top or bottom as one of the colors on the discard pile. As I get close to emptying my hand, I can either chose to close out for nine minus hand-size or hope to either empty my hand, or be the last player in, for ten points.

I usually find these quick card games too thin to be worthwhile, but I rather enjoyed this one. The color matching provides a good exercise in hand management and the close-out decision adds a spicy dash of push-your-luck.

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[BGCOLOR=#CC99FF] 5 [/BGCOLOR] Timespan NEW!
Civilization themed game, with much of the usual building of technologies, increasing science and culture. Unlike most civ games, there's no military component to the game. The puzzle was interesting, but not my taste of game due to the extremely limited interaction (“makes Ark Nova seem interactive”). Most actions occur simultaneously, which makes the game move along more quickly but (as I discovered with Steampunk Rally) only increases the solitaire element. It's easy to forget there's anyone else at the table. But if you like civ themes, dislike military elements, and enjoy multi-player solitaire, then this is well worth trying.

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[BGCOLOR=#33CC99] 9 [/BGCOLOR] Power Grid
[BGCOLOR=#99FFFF] 7 [/BGCOLOR] 1846: The Race for the Midwest
[BGCOLOR=#CC99FF] 5 [/BGCOLOR] Show Manager
[BGCOLOR=#FF66CC] 4 [/BGCOLOR] Loop 40 NEW!
[BGCOLOR=#FF6699] 3 [/BGCOLOR] Abraca Who? NEW!

Martin's 7th Decade | BoardGameGeek

Plays in October