Played 1850 last night, and the wackiest game of 1850 it turned out to be. The first Operating Round saw no companies floated, as everyone (except George, I think) started their own company, with me having priority, and no-one having enough cash to float the company by themselves. In the next stock round I still had priority, so had the difficult decision of whether to buy another share of the company I started, or jump in with another company. I choose to go with Matt's Great Northern, and then everyone did the same. The end effect was that Mat got 2 full Operating Rounds of income, as well as watching his share value go up, and everyone else stagnate.

The next Stock Round, everyone jumped into Chris' CRIP, and it floated next, but with no cash I couldn't change my position. Then everyone bought up on JD's MP line, as it floated next. I was in a position where I had little money, little income, and no floated company. With no options I made the mistake of selling a share of my unfloated UP, planning to buy the 2 remaining shares of GN, forgetting, duh, that you can only buy one share in your turn, and I didn't need to sell that share. Of course, now everyone decided to jump into UP, and having sold a share I couldn't buy back in that round, lost control of UP to Chris, and my game was over.

I then spent the next 4-5 hours watching some of the wackiest play I've ever seen. Selling shares in operating, profitable companies for starting low value new companies that were never going to get back to the net value of the previous company. Ignoring building profitable future runs that would pay $100+ for immediate $20 runs that couldn't increase. Setting opening share prices such that no-one could afford to buy in and get the company floated, so the money is tied up for several rounds. It was almost as if everyone was playing randomly, and it was certainly different to previous games of 18xx I've played.

After those first few Operating Rounds I knew I was going to be last or there-abouts, and the order was going to be Matt, Chris, JD, George, and then myself or Alex. Then, after playing for around 4+ hours, and the game having stagnated, Chris noticed that the certificate limit was 9, not 8. This of course meant that all through the game we've been playing with 6 certificates short, which meant that at least one other company would have been floated, and there would have been pressure on buying trains to move the game along. Without that, we were stuck in limbo, the game progressing very slowly.

At this point I started a company, mostly for something to do, knowing that it would probably make my position worse, and managed to get it floated. We played for a couple more rounds, by which time it was around midnight, and we decided to play one more set of Operating Rounds. At the end of that, the order was Matt, Chris, JD, George, Myself, Alex. And we'd barely got through 2/3rds of the bank, so really had a long time to go, but with having screwed up so much it wasn't worth going on, anyway.

We found a lot of problems with the rules. Nowhere does it state who gets the money for share purchases, nor which company operates first when 2 (or more) have the same share value. The rules for certificate limits are very unclear, and the table makes it more confusing, which is why we got it wrong.

All in all, a pretty disastrous attempt to play 1850, ranking pretty close to my Here I Stand experience.