Railway Rivals game 2: Game End Statements

This is a postal (or PBM) game of Railway Rivals run by Mike Dommett and published in my postal games 'zine, To Win Just Once. Follow the link for an introduction to Railway Rivals.

Previous turns' reports are available here: Turn 12 / Turn 11 / Turn 10 / Turn 9 / Turn 8 / Turn 7 / Turn 6 / Turn 5 / Turn 4 / Turn 3 / Turn 2 / Turn 1 / Start-up

I was fairly certain after the construction phase finished that I had the best network, although I was slightly annoyed that I had only been second to reach the north-east corner of the map, which I considered to be my 'back yard'. However, I had got distracted by running a route into the far north-west so as to be able to challenge Gerald's domination of the western half of the map. In the long term, I think that was probably the right move as, in the final round, we were able to split the races between ourselves rather than face more widespread competition.

In the last few turns, I was able to run almost every race and this freedom of choice meant I could concentrate on the races I was most likely to win. However, the whole game proved to be rather closer than I had expected and I certainly didn't think that Pevans would be my real competition, as his network seemed quite provincial. Just goes to show, you never can tell!

Romania was certainly an interesting map to play. The mountains all over the map mean that most of the connections are obvious. The result is players having monopolies over parts of the country as the cost of competing is prohibitive. A little judicious mountain-crossing is very useful though.

I inherited an initial position in the south from Timothy. This looks pretty good initially as the ground is much more open - and you've got Bucharest. However, it also means that the other players had grabbed most of the routes through the mountains by the time I got there.

The initial races worked in my favour, but the open ground then began to work against me. It made it a lot cheaper for the other players to build additional lines to compete with me than for me to build through the mountains to compete with them.

The result was that Romanov Railways (Nathan) just overhauled me at the end. Darn it!

Congratulations to Nathan, thanks to everybody for participating and thanks to Mike for GMing.

We well came 3rd which, considering some of our lacklustre results and poor dice rolling, isn't too bad. However, I am slightly disappointed that we were so far off the pace.

I really did think at the beginning of the game that we had a really good chance of winning, or at least being close. Especially as we were the only company to start in Western Romania.

But alas the routes just didn't fall kindly for us and losing our map in the middle of the game cost us dearly... I had scribbled a number of notes on where to build and, as (bad) luck would have it, one of those builds was to have been into Bulgaria, the turn before that destination came up. But how much difference 10-20 points would have made, I really don't know.

In the end, I think the main difference was the number of races both Nathan and Pevans could run each turn, especially solo runs. Whereas I was struggling to even manage the maximum number of races per turn.

Well done to Nathan on winning. In the end I probably tipped the scales towards him with some of our joints run towards the end, so perhaps I am really the power behind the throne?

Well done to John, for making me sweat for third place, it really was close. But in the end I think it was really a 2 horse race, between Nathan and Pevans with the rest of us also-rans.

I can't actually find my map of this game and I would not be surprised if that is because I ceremonially burnt it after the last turn. What a hard map to play on - and I am not referring to the proliferation of hills, but rather the production values of the map itself (place names at right-angles to hex numbers, place names blending in with the background making them hard to find) which, allied with the generally unpronounce-able Romanian towns and cities made route-planning an ordeal.

I decided at the start of the game to ignore short term gains to be earned through connecting towns and to try and concentrate on building an efficient network. The plan was to get to Bucharest and, in the words of Jim Morrison, "break on through to the other side". Unfortunately, by the time I got close to Bucharest it was a bit like M6 in the rush-hour, and there was no cheap way to break on through. In retrospect, I should have built more in the west where, if memory serves, Impaler had a bit of a monopoly (not that it did him much good if it was Impaler!)

One thing I always overlook in RR is how much of one's income comes from other people using your track. My builds in the racing stage tend to be attempts to create a new route from one city to another whereas I might be better off simply cutting corners to make existing routes more attractive to my rivals.

Notwithstanding the grottiness of the map (which Mike is now going to reveal he personally hand-drew) I had a great time in this game. Communication was good from all players except Mark (obviously) and I have no complaints about the final result. I can't recall any particularly egregious dice rolling by the Dommett so I can't even whinge about being unlucky in the races, though one can always claim that had the race destinations come out differently things might have been different.

Congratulations to Nathan on his victory, and to Gerald for pipping me on the final turn. Hard lines to Pevans, but we can't have 'zine editors winning in their own 'zines. Most of all, many thanks to Mike for running the game efficiently. Please put me down for another game, preferably on a map with place names that only have one syllable.

GM Comments

The profusion of mountains does tend to dominate the map, and I agree with Paul's assessment of this. I also hate the names and unreadability of the towns, but I did want to run Railway Rivals in the country I visited with a Morris side for a cultural exchange a year after the revolution.

Mark Jones dropped out, but I don't think that this affected the result. There were a lot of joint runs and, in the end, Romanov Railways' connections into the mountains proved decisive.

I quite fancy an English map for the next game - any preferences?

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