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efore he almost single-handedly
invented the empire-building
genre with the epic historical
strategy game Civilization in
1980, Francis Tresham had
already pioneered a very di erent – but no less
in uential – type of game.
e British designer’s 1829 – named for
the year that George Stephenson debuted
the legendary steam-powered Rocket
locomotive, and published almost 150 years
later in 1974 – combined players’ running of
railroad corporations through building track,
operating trains and earning money with the
background dealing of stock and shares in
the companies.
While 1829 was the rst game of its kind, it
would be 1830: Railways & Robber Barons – a
revised version of Tresham’s design developed
by Bruce Shelley and released over a decade
later – that would fully propel the innovative
game style into the history books.WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
As in 1829 , 1830 puts players in the
boardrooms of a number of railroad
corporations looking to grow their tracks
and pro ts. Players can choose to invest
their money in a company to earn from its
operation – even becoming the president in
control of where its track is built and trains are
run if they hold the majority of shares.
e aim is simply to have the most money
by the time the game ends, but with no
element of luck or chance at all in the game’s
pure strategy that’s easier said than done. To
pull ahead of your opponents, you need to
time your investments carefully to earn o the
back of rising companies and be the rst to
sell when a company starts to fall in value.
Once a company has been oated by
enough investment from the players, it can
begin to make its mark on the game’s main
board, placing sections of track to link up
cities across the North American hex map.
Once two or more cities have been connected,
the company can run trains it’s purchased
between locations to earn revenue based on
the value of the cities travelled
between, choosing whether to
split the earnings between
shareholders in the company –
propelling them towards victory
and keeping other investors
happy – or reinvest them back
into the company.
As the rounds progress and the
companies purchase more and more
locomotives, the options available to
them change, granting access to trains
that can travel further and earn more
revenue, but cost more and makeolder trains obsolete, removing them from
play. By the end of the game, players might
even be able to buy expensive diesel trains
that can cover unlimited distance. e track
tiles that corporation presidents can lay also
change, opening up greater opportunity to
expand their rail network and link up a greater
number of cities.
All the while, the value of companies will
be shifting up and down, forcing players to
carefully choose where their money goes. In
the earlier rounds, private companies that
don’t build track or run trains o er another
way to earn regular income, but are closed
later in the game, requiring players to nd
other ways of bringing in money.
While the going can certainly be tough, the
game ends immediately if one player falls into
bankruptcy, avoiding any long stretches of
sitting around twiddling your thumbs after a
few bad decisions. at’s a relief, given that a
single playthrough of 1830 can take anywhere
from three to six hours – or more. ( 1829 was
even longer!)WHY SHOULD YOU TRY IT?
While its dense theme and rules might seem
intimidating at rst (something helped a bit
by the updated versions of the game), 1830
is actually relatively straightforward to play:
you buy, you sell, you build and you operate.
Where its complexity lies is in the way it puts
the pressure on the players to strategise as best
they can, without a helping hand from the roll
of a die or draw of a card.
e way that the fate of the railroad
corporations depends on the players
themselves makes the game a highly social
experience, similar to fellow classic Diplomacy
or a more modern economic gem likeContainer. Working with and against your
fellow shareholders is key to amassing the
most money by the end of the game, making
sure to keep the companies you control raking
it in and ditching those that look certain to
collapse under poor leadership.
As the people around the table drive the
action, 1830 can play out in a huge variety of
ways from game to game. While players are
given lots of freedom in how they invest their
money, individual decisions aren’t so open
that they become overwhelming – and there’s
plenty of room to play aggressively against
your opponents as you compete for space
on the map and tactically shift stock to leave
others footing the bill for corporations’ debt.
e game itself includes a healthy number
of variant rules and scenarios that invite fans
to play around with its gameplay. 1830 ’s core
concepts have also gone on to de ne the
‘18XX’ genre of similar economic train games,
which have spanned numerous centuries,
continents and play styles across dozens of
games. e genre has seen more streamlined,
approachable modern successors in games
such as Age of Steam and Railways of the
World, which often put more focus on the
route-building of laying tracks alongside
lighter economic elements.
1830 isn’t for everyone. It needs a group of
players willing to put in the time – and crunch
some brain-busting numbers – to chug along
without derailing. Modern descendants have
made its gameplay easier to digest and ask less
of players to even get the game to the table, but
the original remains a de nitive experience
that’s worth playing at least once. Best of all,
it’s a way to discover a genre with endless
variations and new experiences if you nd
yourself on track with where it all began.You do build track in 1830 , but it’s not really the focus of the game e British designer’s 1829
the year that George Stephenson debuted
the legendary steam-powered Rocket
locomotive, and published almost 150 years
later in 1974 – combined players’ running of
railroad corporations through building track,
operating trains and earning money with the
background dealing of stock and shares in
the companies.WHAT’S IT ABOUT?