1830

26th October 2019

Saturday evening has rolled round again and we're at Matakishi's for some gaming goodness.

​Tonight we played '1830', or to give it its full name; '1830: The Game of Railroads and Robber Barons'. As you will have surmised, this is a game about railroad building. Actually, it's probably fair to say it's the game about railroad building.

What's in a game?
1830's components are very 'old-school' and clearly favour function over form.

• Game board: The 1830 game board is split into 2 halves. The top half contains a grid filled with numbers, this is used to manage the stock market in the game. The bottom half of the board depicts a hex map of north-eastern United States from Chicago to New York.
• Hex tokens: These tokens show the railway lines that will connect towns and cities. The tokens come in several different colours to represent improvements in technology. As the game progresses, players will gain access to more and more complicated rail layouts and junctions that can be used to 'upgrade' previously played hex tiles.
• Share certificates: There are several 'public' companies in the game and there are shares for each of them. Each certificate is for 10%, except for the first certificate which is the 'President's certificate' and is worth 20%. That's 9 certificates for each company that equal 100%.
• Private company certificates: As well as public companies, there are a number of smaller privately held companies in the 1830.
• Company boards: Each company has its own board. The board has room for the company trains and funds, each board also comes with come some 'station' tokens.
• Train cards: These double sided cards represent train technology and are numbered from 2-6. The higher the number the better the trains that can travel further and make more stops.
• Money: 1830's currency is obviously U.S. dollars, this depicted with paper money. That's right, actual paper money! Haven't seen that in a board game for a long time, as I said 'old-school'.

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Felix (On the left.) provides sound financial advice, despite his drooling,

3 shares in the 'New York, New Haven' company and the 'priority' card.

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How's it play?
Setup
1830 was originally published in 1986. The version we played was published in 2011 by Mayfair Games. There was some head-scratching during set up as it turns out in this edition there are several variants of the game. We had been trying to set up the 'basic' version of the game, which apparently is different to the 'classic' version (Which is what we wanted to play.).

The basic version of the game should be the classic version, do you hear Mayfair Games!

​Anyway, on with setup.

• The game board is set out, as are the train cards,  private companies and company boards.
• The share certificates are put out into stacks for each public company. The president's certificate goes on top.
• $2400 is divided amongst the players.

That's pretty straightforward.

Bidding
Bidding only occurs once in the game (Right at the start.).

Players have to bid for the right to buy one of the private companies.
Auctioning is actually very straightforward. One player makes a starting bid (Whoever is nominated as 'The Banker' should start.), then proceeding clockwise, each player has to make a higher bid or pass. If a player passes, then they are out of the auction permanently.
When everybody has passed, then the player who was the highest bidder, gets the 'privilege' of choosing which private company to buy first (Yes, even though you may have bid loads of money, you still have to pay to buy a private company!), also the highest bidder gets to take the 'Priority' card for the first stock market round. Second highest bidder gets second choice of buying a private company and so on until all the players have a private company.

Stock market and operating rounds
This is where the majority of the game takes place.

At the beginning of the game there will be a stock market round followed by an operating round.
Later on, there will be a stock market round followed by two operating rounds.
Even further into the game, the stock market round will be followed by three​ operating rounds.

Stock market round

• The stock market rounds begins with the player who has the priority card and proceeds clockwise.
• Players can choose to buy and sell shares or pass. Obviously, this early in the game, there will be little if any selling of shares. The stock market round continues until all players has consecutively passed. Finally, the priority card is given to the player to the left​ of the last player to buy or sell a share.
• At the start of the game there are no public companies operating, so the starting player can only buy shares.
• When buying a share in a company for the first time, two things happen. Firstly the player who is buying the share sets the price of the stock, this is called the 'Par' and ranges from $67 to $100 for each 10% certificate. Secondly, the president's certificate must be bought before any other certificate (At twice the par cost too! Since it represents 20% of the company). After this, certificates in that company are bought at the normal 10% per certificate.
• Any shares that are sold by a player are put into 'the bank' and are not returned to the stack it was bought from. Selling shares will lower the value of the shares on the stock market, but it does not affect the 'par' price. Player may choose to buy shares from the bank (At the stock market price.) or from the stack (At the par price.). No player may own more than 5 stock certificates in any one company. This includes the president's certificate, so a single player can earn up to 60% of a company.
• When 60% of the shares in a company have been bought (From the stack at the par price) by players, the company has been 'floated', see more below about this.
• At the end of a stock market round, if all the shares in any company have been bought by players, then the stock value of that company increases.

Company flotation
When a company is floated, the following occurs:

• Whoever has the most shares becomes president of the company. If this is not the player with the president's share, then it is swapped for two shares with the player who has the most shares. 
• The president receives the company board, this will include station tokens and 'operating capital' equal to ten times the par value.

Operating rounds
So now we're on to the operating round(s). The following occurs:

• The private companies pay out to the players that own them. They're a useful source of income early in the game, but eventually they disappear from the game as the publicly held companies come to dominate.
• Next the publicly held companies operate. They do this in order of the stock value, the most valuable company goes first. They can carry out the following actions.
• Lay track: The president can put down a hex token on a part of their rail network to expand it. If the he goes over 'rough terrain', it incurs a cost that must be paid out of the companies operating capital, sometimes going into another city also costs. If this is the first operating round for a newly floated company, then it will have it's own unique starting hex, players must start their expansion from this hex. As the game progresses, more and more advanced hex tokens become available that allow more complicated junctions to appear on a hex token, these can be used to upgrade previously placed hexes.
• Run a service: Starting from the company's home hex (Or a station token that has been paid for and placed by the company.), the president must run a rail service. The number of stations that the service can stop at is dependant on the train cards that the company owns. If a company owns a 3 point train card, then the service will stop at a maximum of 3 stations. A company may run multiple services if they own multiple train cards, but they cannot use the same rail lines again in the same round.
• Income: Once the service has been run, the president calculates how much income the service makes. Then the president decides whether to add the money to the company's operating capital or pay it out as a dividend. If it's paid out as a dividend, then all players who own shares in the company will receive a percentage of the profit according to the stocks they own. If a company pays out a dividend, the stock market value of the company rises, if the income is given to the company, the stock market value drops.
• Purchase trains: You will have noticed that trains are bought after running a service; this means during a company's first operating round, it cannot run a service! There's a nasty twist in the rules here, because as improved trains come into player, older trains become obsolete. So when the first 4 point trains is bought by a player, all 2 point trains are removed from play. If a player isn't careful, the train(s) of a company that they control will removed in someone else's turn. Then the player cannot buy a train until after running a service! Nasty!
• After the operating rounds have completed. Play returns to the stock market round, beginning with the player who currently holds the priority card.

There are more situational rules in the game, but there's no need to go into too much detail here.

Endgame​
Play continues until all the money from the bank has been paid out to the players.

Winning is determined by who has acquired the most personal wealth.
Players add up all the personal money they have accumulated and the combined stock market value of all the shares they own. The operating capital of any companies that the player may control is not added to the final tally.

Highest score wins.​

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Overall
It's a testament to 1830's design that 30 years on, it's mechanics and rules are still totally solid and watertight.
The stock market round is well balanced so it has enough depth to be engaging and interesting, but is not head scratching in complexity.
I really like it that player's money is entirely separated from the money needed to run a company. I also like how in order to maximise your personal profitability, you'll also need to invest in companies run by other players. Because no player can own more than 60% in a company, this will happen.
The operating rounds give players plenty of choice and options when expanding their companies. Eventually there will be sets of intricate and convoluted rail networks interacting and criss-crossing with each other.
​Players also need to pay close attention to the money that their companies maintain as having a company go bankrupt will have serious consequences for the stock value.

On the box of 1830, it says that it takes 3-6 hours to play and that's no exaggeration. It is the only drawback to 1830 is that I can think of.

1830 is a classic and there's no doubt about it. There are plenty of other rail building games and many of them are good. But if you've got the hours to spare, none are as good as 1830.

It only remains for me to say that it seems that the game was last in print a few years ago. It's criminal that it's still out of print now, considering just how good a game 1830 is.