Today I will tell you about the game play time and why it was so important, especially at the beginning of our adventure with 18xx. Because now we are not afraid of any playtime anymore, no matter if it is 3, 5 or 8 hours. If the title is good and worth playing, then we have separate meetings for these games once a month, then we play all day.
A few years ago, when my 18xx adventure was just the beginning, everyone around was ‘euro player’, we only met in the evenings and at best we had 5-6 hours to play games. For my first 18xx I bought 1830 and it took us over 6 hours to play only half of the game! It wasn’t a title to convince others to 18xx and to play it during any of our meetings. We tried the next 18xx (1846, 1889), but some of us complained about the mechanics, that the end of the game is boring, that waiting for your turn is too long, and some other complained about the graphics that these titles are so ugly.
Then I found 1836jr, although it wasn’t the most beautiful game, it was the first title I could show during the short 4-hour meetings that were held during the week! I had time to explain it and we could play it from start to finish. In a short time, a few friends asked me to make them a copy of the 36jr, and at the end of 2017, when I was doing a summary and I was asking my friends what title they thought was the best, 1836jr won the first prize without a doubt! https://www.railsonboards.com/2018/01/18/podsumowanie-2017-best-of-2017/
What did they think was the most important? The time of the game and the number of decisions that must be made. The fact that something is happening to the very end, that we are constantly building the map and even the last rounds are interesting, but also that the race lasted until the end, when, for example, the opponent bought a D-train partially out of his own pocket and ran it across three countries.
This is a huge plus for ‘jr’. The fact that the length of the game can compete with euro games. You can play it in the pub in the evening in the middle of the week! And the best thing is that in our release it will be as beautiful as your most beautiful titles!