18CZ: Building tracks in the Czech Lands

My gaming group really loves 18xx games. But since there’s a whole lot of AP during our games, there’s no way we can really play one on a weeknight. Hence, we try to schedule our games on Saturdays as one game seriously takes an entire day for us.

Last Saturday, we punched out and busted a new 18xx game to most of us: 18CZ, set in the Czech Lands. As with most other 18xx games, the purpose of this game is to have the most personal money, and to increase the stock price of companies you own while also owning high-valued stocks. 

The game is unique to other 18xx games we’ve played recently as there are a fixed number of rounds. Usually, when players break the bank, that’s when the game ends. In 18CZ, there are eight stock rounds and the number of operating rounds with each stock round increases as the game progresses, culminating in three operating rounds in the last phase. And trains rust after each set of stock round and operating rounds. 

But before the game gets started, a pre-stock round occurs where players can purchase private companies. The privates are randomly placed on this board based on their sizes (there are small, medium and large companies), which prices then in increasing order, and players take turns in a snake draft, buying them until they all pass. 

These privates provide income to whoever owns them, and they can later only be purchased by a company of the same size or larger. For example, a medium company later cannot buy a large private company. They also provide a one-time use to build a special tile upgrade. Other than purchase price, they’re all identical.

Small, medium and large sized companies — and their matching sized trains — make up 18CZ. Trains rust immediately when another player purchases a larger train of that type. And it’s printed on the train card itself too as a reminder. 

Unlike other 18xx games, when you float your company, it’s fully capitalized. You don’t need to try to convince others to buy into it. But you suddenly flushed with $1,000 in your company coffers if you set its initial stock price at $100. Having all this money is great — you can immediately buy a train or two. But being fully capitalized makes it much, much harder to funnel money into your company when you need to purchase a very expensive train.

You’ll have to withhold payouts to add to your company coffers, which decreases the price of your stock. And unlike some other 18xx, regardless of how much you pay out to stockholders, your stock will jump once, and twice if you’re a large company.

Maximum ownership also varies for the different types of companies. Players can have 75% of their small company, and 60% of medium and large companies. Lastly, there’s no bankruptcy in this game. 

Starting a large company can’t occur until later in the game. And players get to select their starting location from one of two hexes on the board. This is another neat mechanism of this game. You can start building your network over on this side of the map, but there’s a chance you won’t be able to build that large company near it to connect everything. 

Mergers allow you to fold a company of the same size or small into your new company, and you can upgrade your trains this way as well. You can flip the orientation of your current train card or scrap it to get a larger train, and you’ll only have to pay the difference. This was helpful later to acquire larger trains. 

Each company comes with fewer station tokens than other 18xx games I’ve played, so you have to be judicial during placement. In other games, you can use one to block another player, but there didn’t seem to be much blocking in this game as you couldn’t afford to waste a station.

Our game ended up going for about 6 hours, which seems on par with the box description of 4 hours. My gamer group is slow and methodical, and we usually tack on some extra time to what it says on the box, even though we have cut time by not using actual paper money in the game. We just write everything down in our ledger. I highly recommend it!

I really enjoyed how unique 18CZ is compared with other 18xx games I’ve played recently. There’s a running joke among us saying that we play an 18xx game once and then never return to it. Maybe that pattern will change this year, and we’ll actually play the same 18xx twice! 18CZ is the one I’d totally recommend for that.

For those train folks, what’s your favorite 18xx game?