OK, Railways of the Lost Atlas, from the perspective of someone who isn't crazy about 18xx games, and was hoping this one had enough of the rough edges smoothed off.
Spoiler: it doesn't, the game will still severely punish new, uncoached players.
🧵
[#]boardgames
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Played a 4p game, "short" version. We abandoned the game halfway through the second cycle, when it became clear that none of us would survive it. We all bought second minor companies in cycle 2, which in retrospect is a thing you shouldn't do, despite the game offering it as an interesting option.
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This was after about 2 hours of a fairly rough onboarding, with long pauses to look up rules online. Nobody really had a good time. Partially my fault for not watching a video beforehand.
But rough onboarding + unforgiving "petard" gameplay = a game that didn't go over well in my group.
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For reference, I've only played 18xx games a few times, and I either faceplanted horribly, or an experienced player coached me past seemingly-interesting decisions that would have led to a faceplant. I don't play often enough to remember what are good moves vs. bad moves.
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If you are an experienced 18xx player, you will probably enjoy this game's wrinkles, especially the corporate mergers.
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If you are an inexperienced 18xx player, but you know someone who can coach you through the game, have them do that. Do not play unless you're willing to sink several hours into a punishing experience with no payoff. Watching several hours of playthrough video would help a bit here too.
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That is a characteristic of the entire 18xx series, not a fault with RotLA. But RotLA does not address this (like I was expecting it to). Trains are expensive, rust comes quickly, and there are no guardrails against bankrupting yourself.
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I don't think RotLA is a bad game, as long as you go in with correct expectations, and some sort of way to make sure that new players are either coached away from the cliffs, or understand that they will be expending a lot of energy to not have much fun in their first game.
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"You can do A or B."
"Which is better?"
🤷
"I choose A."
"Haha, you lose."
This is not a dynamic I enjoy in games.
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So... it was a miss for my game group. A couple were open to trying it again, and maybe I'll give it another go myself, knowing the possible early pratfalls.
But man, the work-to-fun ratio is really tough with this one.
/🧵
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@gilhova finding a truly accessible train game is up my list of things I wish I could find.
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@pathunstrom @gilhova Apart from the obvious Ticket to Ride, did you try Mini Express?
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@stinovlas @gilhova so ticket to ride is train themed but not a train game in my mind. (It's great, and I have multiple variants and after market pieces.)
I'll look into mini express, thanks!
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@pathunstrom Another vote for Mini Express. It's really good.
TransAmerica and TransEuropa are also good, very light and fast train-themed games, and they feel a bit more thematic than TTR (which is still fantastic after all these years).
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@pathunstrom Age of Steam is a bit unforgiving (not as bad as TTR, but definitely a learning curve). But there are a few defanged versions of it, like Steam. Chicago Express is also a nice middleweight.
I think the Empire Builder series isn't terribly heavy gameplay-wise, though it is pretty math-heavy and it takes a few hours to play.
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@pathunstrom Just to be clear, TransAmerica and TransEuropa are super-light, like 20 minutes to play a full game, and rules can be taught to most folks outside the hobby market.
All the other games I mentioned are more middleweight.
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@gilhova So Empire Builder (Well, Iron Dragon) is definitely the game that made me fall in love with the genre, and the long play time with minimal structure makes it hard to introduce to folks less. . . hobby.
I was reading up on Mini Express and I'm going to attempt to pick it up. I'll also check out TransAmerica and TransEuropa, thank you.
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@pathunstrom For people outside the hobby, Mini Rails may be too much, but TA/TE should be approachable for almost anyone
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