Plays in September

martinfowlercom — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 22:33:51 +0000

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

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[BGCOLOR=#99FFFF] 7 [/BGCOLOR] 1822: The Railways of Great Britain
After three plays of the Northern Regional Scenario last month, I got a chance to try the Medium Regional Scenario this time. London plays a strange role here - a valuable destination, but essentially a cluster of off-boards that mostly blocks the south east corner of the map. This may seem strange to my fellow players, but makes perfect sense to me, as that's the way the railways are with London. A valuable city to get to, but no way to get through it (the period of this game long pre-dates Thameslink). This blocking effect of London adds an interesting twist to the map, and again I found the flow of 1822 very much to my liking. It helped that I managed to get a decent network for LBSCR, linking together the south coast cities and getting a good run into the channel. I also started GWR, getting it to have a big overlap on its route, including its own channel run.

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[BGCOLOR=#99FFFF] 7 [/BGCOLOR] 1822CA
Gave the Eastern Regional Scenario a try. I continue to like the basic 1822 system, with its steady progression of minor companies in the auction. The eastern Canada map is pleasantly different to the two UK maps, with several cities vying for attention. I made a mistake in thinking it would be easy to link a minor in Toronto to the major starting there, but messed up the track so the merge was more difficult than it should be. I'd like to explore this scenario some more.

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[BGCOLOR=#9999FF] 6 [/BGCOLOR] Traumfabrik
Yet another in the long line of Knizia auction games, but one of the most tricky to get hold of. The mechanics are the usual Knizian simplicity. Each year shows a sequence of lots to bid on, each lot contains tiles with a role (camera, actor, effects) each of which has a number of points on it. Everyone is dealt a hand of movies, each one needs a different combination of roles. Once we fill all the roles, we finish the movie, score the points, and are eligible for bonuses based on movies that are early or score high. The money is a closed economy, winning bids are divided up between the other players. It reminds me of Ra, in that we are carrying out set collection and the value of the lots varies depending on who needs what roles.

I an easily see this joining the list of top flight Knizia games. The tricky part is the setting. The setting of the original edition, which we played, is Hollywood movies of the 30s-50s. If you're familiar with those movies and stars, the setting is lovely. Imagine Marilyn Monroe and Ingrid Bergman in Gentleman Prefer Blondes directed by Hitchcock. Unfortunately various laws meant that original 2000 version had to be reset, often to fictional movie worlds that just don't have the same appeal (under the names Hollywood Blockbuster, Dream Factory, or Nightmare Productions).

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[BGCOLOR=#9999FF] 6 [/BGCOLOR] Der Garten des Sonnenkönigs
Another quirky auction game, not by Knizia, but with a similar feel. The board is a grid of squares, all fall into overlapping sets of regions. We bid, with victory points, for each square, the winner will acquire a token when the region is filled. The amount of the bid controls which square will be bid next. Whenever a region is filled, we get income based on the tokens we have. I have to value the square based on how quickly I think the region will score, and how valuable the tokens are when I get them. I'm a bit concerned that there's a strong snowball effect, but that's hard to tell from a single play.

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[BGCOLOR=#99FFFF] 7 [/BGCOLOR] Railways of the Lost Atlas x2
The Landscape of the Lost Atlas expansion arrived, and was a trigger for two games on the Heavy Cardboard stream. I like this game because it creates a fun form of 18xx that doesn't take itself too seriously. Minor companies with wacky powers, a map created by the players for each game - and now some funky landscape powers. The result is often a bit wild, but I like the fun it produces. Both of the stream games were 6 round “long” games. I think the game is closer to its heart in the shorter 4 round game, where any limitations of the variable setup don't last too long, and the fun element is able to dominate.

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[BGCOLOR=#9999FF] 6 [/BGCOLOR] 1894 NEW!
This twist on the 18xx formula has a couple of notable new rules. Trains can always be traded in, at half-value, for a train one step higher on the roster. This encourages rapid movement of trains, as it's an incentive to trade up before all the trains are bought on the rank above. The other feature is that green tiles with multiple coalesced cities upgrade to brown with the cities and track split into separate lines. This causes track layouts to fracture as we go into the brown phase. I enjoyed playing this, but feel I'd rather get a bit more time with the ones I'm gaining familiarity with before giving this one some serious time.

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[BGCOLOR=#99FFFF] 7 [/BGCOLOR] Vinhos: Deluxe Edition
It was a rainy day when we played it, but the weather outside was better than the weather in the game, where nearly every year was bad weather that depressed our yields. All of which led to a low scoring game. As usual I blundered around too much with this, as it's a long time since I last played, and forgot what I should be doing. What's worse is that I didn't get the chance to binge the game when I acquired it, so didn't get familiar with it even then. I suppose that means it's less for me to forget, but it increases the frustration of not really knowing how the game plays out.

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[BGCOLOR=#99FFFF] 7 [/BGCOLOR] 1846: The Race for the Midwest
[BGCOLOR=#00CC00] 10 [/BGCOLOR] Race for the Galaxy
[BGCOLOR=#FF66CC] 4 [/BGCOLOR] Kuhhandel Master
[BGCOLOR=#FF66CC] 4 [/BGCOLOR] Shark NEW!

Martin's 7th Decade | BoardGameGeek

Plays in September