Riding the Rails with 18xx: Five Suggested Games to Get You Started—and Take You from Beginner to Expert
18xx games vary widely in complexity. And the many choices on offer can be confusing. These recommendations will allow new players to master the basics before trying more challenging titles.
Much as I love the 18xx family of boardgames, I will be the first to admit that it has a terrible name. “18xx” sounds like the age-classification code you’d find on a pornographic movie, or perhaps some sort of shorthand that a geneticist might use to identify a chromosomal abnormality. But in fact, as BGG puts it, 18xx is “the collective term used to describe a set of railroad-themed stock market and tile laying games.”
BGG then goes on to inform us that “the 18xx set has two main branches: the 1829 branch (1829, 1825, 1853, and 1829 Mainline) and the 1830 branch (1830, 1856, 1870, etc). There are also a number of crossover games which [blah blah blah]…” And I’ll just end it right there because throwing out all those four-digit numbers runs at cross-purposes with my goal here, which is to demystify the 18xx system and get more people to play.
So I’ll just offer the following general propositions before moving on to my game picks:
(1) There are several hundred 18xx games out there, most of which have titles that start with year references, such as the ever-popular 1830: Railways & Robber Barons, and 1846: The Race for the Midwest; while others substitute letters for the last numbers, as with the Florida-themed 18FL: Railroads to Paradise. (Oh, and there’s usually a picture of a train on the box.)
In all cases, the idea is that you’re building a rail system in a particular part of the world. The American Midwest is an especially popular backdrop, for some reason, and is featured in numerous 18xx titles.
In some cases, the choice of geography has real in-game effects (as when your tracks have to cross rivers and mountains). And the opportunity to learn about geography is one of the added bonuses of getting into the 18xx genre.
To take one example: I was recently playing a game of 1822PNW, which is set in America’s Pacific Northwest, and I was wondering why the game designer made it so expensive to lay track between the adjacent hexes of Portland, OR and Vancouver, WA. This inquiry led me to the Wikipedia page for the Interstate Bridge.
Likewise, the wonky routes that 1830 requires you to run in and around New York City (see image, above) led me to learn more about the particular bridge-and-tunnel engineering challenges that nineteenth-century railroad engineers faced when it came to getting people in and out of Manhattan.
(2) While most of these titles have only niche followings, there are at least several dozen that are widely played, including on the 18xx.games web site, where many titles can be played electronically—either in real time, or on an asynchronous turn-by-turn basis. (This is where I do most of my 18xx gaming, and you can find me there under the user name @jonkay Toronto EST.)
Important Sidebar: If you do become a regular user of 18xx.games, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon. Another way to support 18xx game developers is to buy physical copies of the games at their respective web sites, which are linked at the main 18xx.games page.
(3) All 18xx games (with some rare exceptions, such as 21Moon, which, as the name suggests, involves building rail lines on the moon in the twenty-second century) are based, at least loosely, on the real historical precedents offered up by the golden age of rail development in the nineteenth and early-to-mid twentieth centuries. You don’t have to know rail history to play these games, but I do find that having real historical knowledge helps increase the fun. (E.g. I am enjoying 1830 more now that I’ve read a review copy of David Alff’s new book on the Northeast Corridor.)
(4) All 18xx games allow players to become the presidents of (as well as passive investors in) companies that lay track, buy rolling stock, run routes, make money, and pay dividends and/or reinvest earnings. The appearance of new tracks on the board is represented by the placement of hexagonal tiles, and ownership of trains and stock is represented by cards that are added to your tableau, as in a eurogame. The winner is determined by the total value of cash and equity holdings at the end of the game, which players maximize by (a) efficient operation of railroads, and (b) the traditional stock-market trick of buying low and selling high. In some cases, as noted above, there will be opportunities for players to loot a company’s assets for their own personal enrichment and then dump control of the company on another (hapless) player—though this isn’t a common dynamic in all 18xx titles.
(5) In all of these games, one of the key ideas to master is the distinction between your identity as a player and the separate corporate identities of the companies you serve as president. This is important for functional purposes—as your assets are separate from the assets of the companies you operate. But it is also important from a larger conceptual perspective: One of the key mistakes that new players make is that they begin to blur the line between their own identity and that of the companies they run. So they hang on to those companies even when they really should be selling them. The victor of an 18xx game will often cycle through several companies during the course of a game. It’s even possible to win some 18xx games without becoming the president of any companies, and simply being a good investor (though this is rare).
(6) This is probably the most important point to make for anyone who is part of a gaming group that is considering getting into 18xx: There are all sorts of esoteric distinctions among different 18xx games. But once you get a handle on the basics, the most important distinction you will have to consider is the one that separates (A) the 18xx games that tend to reward patient, quasi-solitare-like development of companies and rail networks; and (B) the 18xx games that reward speculative corporate gambits, by which players buy and sell companies in quick succession, seeking to extract as much value from the companies for their personal enrichment, and then dumping their empty husks on opponents.
For simplicity sake, I will call the Type A games, “investor”-type 18xx games, and the Type B games, “speculator”-type 18xx games—although this isn’t terminology that most 18xx gamers employ, to my knowledge, and most games combine elements from both categories.
In general, I prefer investor-type (or, at least, investor-leaning) 18xx games because they give you an opportunity to develop your assets without always being anxious about everything falling apart thanks to the cynical stock market shenanigans of your opponent.
This distinction is really important from a social perspective, because if you pick the wrong type of game for your inaugural 18xx experience, it can sour your whole regular meet-up gaming group on the entire 18xx genre. (The same thing can happen if you pick a complex 18xx game to start with, regardless of type, as your fellow players may well become put off by the steep learning curve—which is why I suggest starting with some of the easier ones, as listed below.)
Specifically: If your gaming group is into modern euro-games such as Terraforming Mars or Ark Nova, i.e. engine-builders that are mostly about developing a map and one’s individual tableau, not sticking it to your opponents—then you’re going to want to go with investor-type games such as 1822 and 1846.
To be even more specific: Many people who teach 18xx gaming often (inexplicably) start off with 1830, which is a perfectly fine (and very popular) 18xx title, but which also has a speculator-type dynamic, and so can be quite cutthroat. Be careful if someone is trying to use 1830 as a teaching game. (My suggestion for the first-time-learner role would be the more kind-and-gentle 18MS, as described in more detail below.)
On the other hand, if you’re part of some hardcore war-gaming group, and you all love the cut and thrust of intense competitive play, then the speculator-type genre might be more your thing. That would include 1830, as well as 18Chesapeake (with the Off the Rails variant for an even more intense competitive experience).
Or if you really love cutthroat market manipulation, you could try 1817, which adds in all sorts of complex market mechanisms such as short selling. (I’ve never tried 1817, though it sounds fun, and I do want to play it eventually. But just to be clear: I am absolutely not recommending 1817 for first-time 18xx players.)
(7) While you certainly don’t need to be an expert in economics or finance to play 18xx, the game mechanics definitely do reflect (and help teach) real concepts that undergraduates in these fields learn about in their first-year courses—such as supply and demand, the difference between equity and debt financing, market capitalization, price-to-equity ratio, opportunity cost, fixed cost, stranded assets, and even related-party financial transactions. In a former life, I was a tax lawyer, and often struggled to understand these concepts as I worked with corporate clients. I can honestly say that playing 18xx taught me a lot of nuances in these areas that once felt mysterious to me.
(8) The problem with privates: The primary way by which 18xx game designers ensure variability in game play—i.e. making sure every game isn’t the same—is by the (often randomized) inclusion of private companies in the game mix. These are not true railroads, but rather power-boosting add-ons, reserved locations, free trains, and the like. These add some spice to the game, especially in the first few turns, but they come with a big drawback: Because (in most cases), they are auctioned off at the beginning of the game, beginner players are put at a huge disadvantage, since they have no idea how much they should be bidding. So in your first game or two of 18xx, it might be worth asking the (presumably more experienced) player running the game if you could play without the privates. Failing that, you might want to consult some kind of online strategy guide (there are plenty) to get a ballpark idea of what you should be bidding.
I’m not going to say much about the actual rules to 18xx games in this post, because they vary from game to game, and, in any case, there are plenty of videos you can watch that will do a far better job than I can of teaching you how to play. Rather, I’ll confine my advice to which 18xx games you should start with if you want to develop your skills, starting at a novice level.
In picking these titles, I’ve tried to go for 18xx variants that are commonly played on the 18xx.games web site, so that if they interest you, you won’t have too much trouble finding a game.
1. Getting Started: 18MS: The Railroads Come to Mississippi
This is a relatively recent addition to the 18xx family (2020), but it’s my favourite for teaching people the basics of the 18xx system.
One obvious reason it’s so great for beginners is that the map is relatively small and uncomplicated. A second reason is that it’s one of the few 18xx titles that works serviceably with just two players. (In general, the sweet spot for most 18xx games is anywhere between three and six players.)
The third reason is that the game offers a heavily simplified version of what’s known as the “train rush”—a feature of 18xx games that many new players (understandably) find complicated and discouraging.
Okay, so I said I wouldn’t get too deep into the rules, but the train-rush concept is important, so I will briefly describe it here.
In 18xx games, your companies typically start out with slow, technologically primitive short-range trains that run on wood or coal. Then, as the game goes on, you have the ability to buy bigger, faster, more expensive trains that correspond to the development of diesel and electric power. This technological step function is abstracted with trains numbered 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc., with the more advanced trains having higher numbers.
And here we get to the “rusting” process. What typically happens is that the purchase of fancier, more advanced trains “rusts” the older trains, which are removed from the game. And this happens for everyone—so if another player buys, say, a 4-train, it may “rust” all the 2-trains owned by your own companies. And then the 7-trains may, in turn, rust those 4-trains. (Eventually, you get to a type of train, often starting at 5-trains, that never rust. They are known as “permanent” trains.)
And so once the first 4-train is bought (in this example), your formerly profitable company, which had been merrily chugging along with a few 2-trains, now has no trains, and so no income, thereby forcing the president of the company to buy a new train out of his or her own personal income…or face bankruptcy. This can be very frustrating for new players (especially since, in some games, one player’s bankruptcy ends the game for everyone).
And not only is it frustrating, it can be unpredictable, since the timing of the train rush isn’t in any one player’s control. You have to play 18xx a fair bit before you can predict when it will happen.
This is why 18MS is such a great training game. Unlike in every other 18xx game I’ve played, the rusting takes place on a predetermined schedule—so you know that the 2-trains will rust after turn four, the 3-trains will rust after turn six, the 4-trains will rust after turn eight, and the whole game will end after turn ten (or turn 11, if you pick the extended game option).
To be clear, this is not a representative game mechanic for the 18xx system as a whole. But it’s a useful modification to help get new players familiarized with the overall 18xx game mechanics without the stress that comes with worrying about when your precious trains will disappear.
2. Sophomore Step: Shikoku 1889
With Shikoku 1889, we get into what can properly be called a “real” 18xx—complete with more complex terrain types such as mountains (which increase the cost of track construction, just like in real life), and a real train rush—even if the map is small compared to other 18xx games.
And there are a few other nuances that a new player will encounter in 1889 as he or she makes the step up from 18MS. For instance, some of the available companies are located adjacent to lucrative income sources, while others are off in the hinterland. There’s also a wide variation in the number of “stations” that each company can place on the map—outposts that serve as anchor points for operating routes. The Uwajima Railway has three stations, for instance, while the Tosa Kuroshio Railway has only one.
Again, I won’t get into the details of the rules here, except to such extent that it allows me to tick off some of the key concepts that each of these games will help introduce to new players. Overall, I think it’s fair to say that a new 18xx player who gets a few games of 1889 under his or her belt, and feels comfortable with the rules and the basics of strategy, will have all the concepts he or she needs to make a run at more complex 18xx games.
3. An Italian Variant: 1849: The Game of Sicilian Railways
If a new player has mastered 1889 and is looking for more challenges, the next title I’d suggest is 1849: The Game of Sicilian Railways.
There are two twists in this game.
The first is that the game is designed to be cash-poor: Players are really scrambling to make their railroads profitable before they get swallowed up by the train rush, so there’s often a lot of stock that gets dumped on the market early in the game, as players sacrifice their stock price in a desperate bid to raise capital to buy trains. (I realize that sentence won’t make sense to you if you haven’t played a lot of 18xx. But come back to it after you’ve played 1849, and I promise it will sound completely logical.)
The second twist is that, unlike in most other 18xx games, players are not at liberty to just go ahead and start any company they want. Instead, the company sequence is randomized at the beginning of the game and they can only be started up in the order of that sequence. And so the dynamic is completely different from 1889, where every game begins with the first players predictably starting up the two or three companies that promise the greatest revenue. In 1849, the first few companies might be real dogs, and so players have to figure out whether they might instead simply wait it out for an opportunity to start a more profitable company.
Again, I realize that what I am writing here won’t make much sense to 18xx noobs. But in the long run, for those who stay with 18xx, 1849 offers some great training in the valuation of companies. It also makes every game completely different, since the pre-game ordering of companies offers hundreds of different unique game-start conditions.
4. Love It Or Hate It: 1822: The Railways of Great Britain
If 1849 offers players a fixed corporate table d'hôte, then 1822 offers the ultimate à la carte experience. Everything in 1822 can be yours—from companies, to permanent un-rustable trains, to third-party revenue sources—if the price is right. Which is to say: If you bid enough for it at auction.
Indeed, the game is full of auctions, which is one reason some people love it, and other people hate it. And this is a meta-lesson worth imparting to you: Once you get away from basic games such as 1889 and the U.S. eastern/midwestern staples such as 1830 and 1846, you’ll find some very strong opinions about game choice among the 18xx cognoscenti. I, for instance, happen to love 1822, while my regular gaming buddy, Jack of Guelph, loathes it.
(This is one of the things I love about the 18xx.games site: No matter how specific your 18xx tastes, you’ll usually find a critical mass of people who share them. If you confine your 18xxx play to cardboard in-person play, on the other hand, it may be very difficult to find enough gamers in your area to play.)
I should add that it isn’t just the auctions that I enjoy in 1822 and its offshoots (such as the Canadian-themed 18CA). It’s also the fact that the game features dozens of tiny regional rail lines that players can build in the first few turns, and then integrate into a larger corporate conglomerate.
Yes, that makes the game a little more complicated. But it also makes the game more realistic, since the stitching together of tiny regional lines is really how most major rail companies took root.
5. Next Level: 18OE: On the Rails of the Orient Express
If riding the rails in Japan, Italy, Mississippi, or England isn’t enough for you, you may want to eventually work your way up to 18OE: On the Rails of the Orient Express, a game that spans all of Europe, from Gibraltar to Scotland to Leningrad to Istanbul—and takes players from the dawn of rail to the nationalization of railways in the twentieth century. This is an epic 18xx game that takes a whole day to play.
It’s also an 18xx game I’ve never played (though I own it).
As much as I love 18xx gaming, there never seems to be enough time to play all the titles I want, and I keep discovering new ones to add to my wish list. So even if the learning curve appears steep, bear in mind that you’re not just learning a single game, but a whole game system. And as with a profitable company with a permanent train, you’ll find that those (recreational) dividends keep pouring in for a very long time.
"This is an epic 18xx game that takes a whole day to play." My very brief experience of 18xx suggests all of them take 6 to 10 hours ... which I'd consider "a whole day". But I am encouraged to learn here of the introductory ones which hopefully will be shorter?!
I purchased 1856 more than 25 years ago but have never played it. I couldn't get my family to try it.