RR Tycoon -- Do I HAVE to be in the Northeast?

I played a game of Railroad Tycoon last night where I owned the south (I arrived late and inherited a starting position there) including hotels in Atlanta and Charleston, and plenty of goods to cross back and forth. Three guys duked it out in the Northeast so things were just way too crowded for my tastes. Everyone else moved into the northwest, but I was shipping and picking up 6-10 points a turn plus building out and giving nobody else any help at all, and I finished in the middle of the pack. I even picked up three or four cards on top of the hotels I grabbed.

I had $80,000 in cash at the end of the game -- I was turn-bound, not cash-bound. I got onto the second half of the scoring track, but two other guys just clocked me. Is the Northeast a positive must-have to win the game?

By the way, the guy that owns the game bought two slices of vinyl siding to hold the board pieces together -- the edging stuff. Cost him a dollar and made that huge ornery board behave like a well-trained bichon frise. A great idea.

Sag.

I'm not very experienced with the game but I think the answer is no. I've certainly seen one win from someone who took control of the SE corner of the map and stayed out of the NE almost entirely. If you're going to pull it off though you do need to ensure that no single player gains a NE monopoly which either means some cunning table talk or the occasional bit of track claimed in the NE just to stop someone else getting it.

Alternatively just get Rails of Europe

Winning is usually about who uses those cards (can't even remember what they're called) best getting all the bonus points - I never bother with them so always finish middle/bottom of the track.

To a large extent I think the winner is decided by which seat you choose at the table. Last time I sat in Texas and the bulk of my play was in the west. I didn't fare well though I had a good time. This time I sat in the Gulf and the south made sense because of my starting position and physical location. I did a bit better. Given the size of the board, Toronto just wasn't something worth going after.

It's not that I'm too lazy to get up, it's just that it's hard to keep an eye on things that far away and you sure aren't going to sneak up on anything if you have to get up to place your pieces or ask someone else to place them for you.

The ringer we had playing last night said that you can't let someone own Chicago outright. Fair enough. But at the time he said it there was one guy with two lines coming out of it and he was looking for one of us to go in after it instead of him. I find that if I'm making a move to block one other player while all the others (opponents mind you -- not teammates) are working on something else, the fun stops pretty quickly. Given the layout moving into Chicago didn't make sense for me. Apparently it didn't make much sense for anybody else either, because the guy held all but one line coming out of it at the end of the game.

I finished with a huge wad of money . . . tell me again why I didn't win?

Sag.

Sagrilarus wrote:

To a large extent I think the winner is decided by which seat you choose at the table.

True - in that if you have someone who always likes going first and will then do their best to win the auction, then with the stupid auction rules (only the winner pays) sitting to this persons left means you will get to go second often for no cost.

I was merely speaking of the geography of the board, but you're right. For the life of me I don't understand why the turn order doesn't reverse direction each turn. I even brought it up at the table last night.

Sag.

I think a lot of people play that the turn order is determined by who bids the highest all the way down, a la Age of Steam. So the person to the left of the Auction winner doesn't always get the second best seat.

Bah. I've played over 100 RRT games and the NE is only assured a top finish if one player is allowed to remain up there unmolested.

The distribution of product cubes is far more important than seating position or geographic location. Experienced players will spend a few minutes studying the product distribution and initial card outlay and then decide on a bidding strategy.

I've won the game playing in the NE, SE, South, Midwest, all of them. The Tycoon cards have rarely ever decided a game but are a nice bonus in the final tally if you make yours.

DW

Ladies and Gentlemen!

The Ellusive but oh so influential DW TRIPP makes a rare appearance here!

*Applause*

DW, thank you for responding. I realize that volunteer work for the Obama administration takes up most of your time now.

If no region is favored that's good news. Out west and down south means more expensive links, but you generally don't have to fight with people so hard to get them. To some extent I could claim every doggone point because I didn't have to ship through anyone else, but I paid the same penalty since they didn't ship through me.

With only two games in I think I fared relatively well, but given my excessive cash at the end I think I would have done better to sell more shares -- especially since I owned the region outright. The cubes weren't going anywhere without me. If I had done that I likely would have picked up ten more points and had a shot at second place. My group seems to think that the Northeast is the only avenue to success, but if that is not the case I think I'll just keep my mouth shut about it for the moment.

Sag.

Yeah Sag, the cash is pointless unless you can score some points due to having the right Tycoon card or just want to be a spoiler for the player who might have that card.

Better things to do with the cash are:

* $10K buys you new cubes in an empty city
* Upgrade your train if it means you can make more profitable deliveries
* Add connections to other cities, especially if you can be assured you'll have an extra delivery or two.

RRT deceives a lot of players because it seems less controllable than AOS. I don't want to visit that argument again but I will say that once you've played enough 4-6 player games it starts to make sense why you lost when you did and won when you did. Several in my game group have played similar numbers of times and it is always intense and never a blow-out when 4 or 5 of us get together.

Thanks for the sympathy regarding my Obama commitment. It's not every day that America is blessed with a self-anointed savior and my work to help crush and eventually imprison or destroy his detractors often goes unnoticed.

I didn't feel anything arbitrary in the play at all. In fact one of the things I like about the game is that the map aspect and broad set of options with the cards gives you a lot of room to set your own agenda and make it work. With all the cash I had I was upgrading cities like crazy within my network to keep my machine running. It quickly got to the point where I didn't want to lose a round of shipping to build out -- the building just wouldn't pay given the opportunities that were already available from industrialization cards and upgrades. Plenty of cubes to choose from and their sheer number meant that the lifts and knocks smoothed out over time. I had good options to choose from until the last turn.

Where I think I might have picked up extra points was being the first to deliver a three-length route and the first with a four-track loco, as each was an available card. I'm debt-averse, so I played it too conservative early on -- only one share out at the end of the game. Had I made investments in a bigger loco early I likely would have pulled stronger at the end when the money wanes and there was so much less need for it.

At this point I think I'll just play my own game regardless of where it is on the map. The south had a great setup for both Charleston (early) and Atlanta, so there just wasn't a need to get into other parts of the map. Granted, New York to Kansas City for 30 points would have been a big finish. I don't see how I would have done that though.

Sag.

Where I think I might have picked up extra points was being the first to deliver a three-length route and the first with a four-track loco, as each was an available card. I'm debt-averse, so I played it too conservative early on -- only one share out at the end of the game.

Exactly. One share? Yep, that killed you.

Among more experienced players the initial bidding focuses entirely on the three gold star cards. It really boils down to setting a bidding limit for the easy points you get by going first or settling for a quick expansion into prime territory and getting that train upgraded.

My own rule of thumb is based completely on how many shares I'm willing to take in the first couple of turns. I hate being over 6 or 7 shares but if I see a clear way to get 20, 30 or more points in the lead I'll do it. Then the others usually have to acquire more debt to catch up.

Up to about 50 or 60 games I was getting killed every time one of two people were in the game. Those guys mashed the competition. They were machines and they won 80% of the games. So I decided to play the game smart and really look at the economics and mechanics and I've beat them now 50% of the time.

One thing I noticed good players do is they don't waste turns doing a build that they can't use quickly. So if I don't see any real near future benefit spending cash and wasting a round connecting somewhere I look for a card to make money on. Hotels, when obtained at the right time, have won me several games where the VP margins were narrow.

**one other thing**

We have a house rule that is a RR Executive card is available on the initial draw it's shuffled back in. That card, when used by a savvy player makes it almost impossible for anyone else to win. The only way to stop it on the initial auction is for one player to sacrifice himself by bidding like an idiot to keep someone from getting it cheap. Then he risks getting stuck with a stupidly high bid himself.

Some of the best players I know like playing in the South (I personally like the cut throat northeast). Charleston is a poormans New York. There is also a couple bonus links and delieveries in the South.

As other people mentioned you didn't spend enough money. In RRT you have to build long links and spend money to upgrade the engine so that you can be making 4 - 6 VP per delievery.