The Zen of 1830 BC

[dzm]

After biking on Saturday, I went over to desireearmfeldt's for potential gaming, which eventually attracted cmouse, purplebob, nuclearpolymer, and a post-plumber Mr. Armfeldt. We settled on 1830 BC (the 18xx game of Mesopotamian canal-building), and it finally made a little more sense to me.

Comments

[astra_nomer]

Mr. Armfeldt? heehee! No worse than Mr. Nomer, I guess. :)

[dcltdw]

I was just thinking, he needs calling cards made.

Mr Armfeldt
Post-Plumber

Um...

[desireearmfeldt]

It's a new one on me. :)

[nuclearpolymer]

I think that this game is also one of those games where each time we play it, we'll find out that we were confused about at least one of the rules. For example, this time we were a bit confused about when you could purchase land inside an independent nation. I think we may have played it before where we were confused about who got to decide whether a pump could go into a space.

[dzm]

It's true. We did eventually figure out a consistent set of rules for Die Macher so there's hope. Last time we had missed the rule that you need the land owner's permission to build a waterwork there (another reason to buy shoreline property!) and so kings irrigated their vast inland empires and other players' empires without asking first. This time we had assumed that you couldn't buy land in an independent state before it's been assimilated, but that was wrong (there is a prohibition against developing there though).

(I do think the length of the game is quite variable. Rounds towards the end of the game get pretty long, but whether the game ends or not depends a lot on how much the rivers get drained out and what phase the game is in; if we hadn't moved in to the 7-water phase it would have ended a round sooner, and if people are really aggressive about building out then it'll end even quicker.)