18BE Railways in the Coal Dust

There are many new ideas in this game. I’ve played a half a game and a full game and I’m far from understanding it. But I’m preordering it.

Opinion after one 5p game: sadly we didn't like it at all.

The worst thing first: we were stuck in Phase 2 for almost 3 hours. We couldn't advance the game because you can't trade trains between companies (which overall is a surprising call as this removes a whole layer of possibilities) and because train limits are low. Probably we could avoid that if we blindly opened as many companies as possible on SR1? There is export, but it happens only if no train has been bought during the OR—we were nullifying it as we kept opening at least one new company every SR.

There is a lot of technically unique, but in practice very similar privates (links). Most of the links are variations on revenue bonuses (+20 to the city; +30 to the city but it closes in Phase 5; +40 overall and so on) or are exchanged against specified shares. Underwhelming even if some of them are interesting.

The first available link of each type may be bough without an auction. If it happens to be something strong, it may feel unjust.

SRs are slow-paced, you can only sell one share at a time and you have to wait for your next turn to buy something. However, if you start an auction for a link and you don't win, you can immediately perfome another action.

The map is very boring. Sure, calculating routes is indeed quick but at the expense of having any texture. All cities are worth the same, no matter their colour, even Brussels. Only offboards differ.

All track tiles are upgradable and all colours are available since the beginning. Because of that there is no competition on the map.

In such a rich game, terrain costs of 10 are laughable. And there are the reason why those 3D mountains are on the map.

It really feels like the game needs a lot more development. The impression was that you have to play exactly like the designer envisioned for the game to work. Imagine 1822 with no additional train exports for unsold minors because during playtesting players were always buying all of them—it felt like that.

On a positive note, I liked how the stock market works, though it's sometimes taxing when you decide where to go, you often want to recalculate your routes so you know from where you may jump more times.

The game end is sped up thanks to freezing some companies (they no longer operate but the shares keep their value; there's no certificate limit so it doesn't hurt you) and limited number of ORs. That's neat.

We played again at 4 players, trying to buy trains faster. I still didn't like the game but at least this time it was advancing. We even had some minor blocking going on on the map.

Now I see how this may appeal to folks who adore operational games. I'm not one of them but I like 1822, 18EUS or 1844 (I listed 3 games that have some similarities with 18BE) much, much more, even if they aren't anywhere near my personal top.