Setting up an 1825 game with all the Units has been an arduous task. I hoped to make it a yearly tradition in 2019, but then Covid-19 happened. After that, every attempt has failed somehow. Today, one of our players got stranded in Berlin, but as we had four players present, we made it.

This time, we used 18xx.games as a moderator. This speeded up the game greatly. With the default £16,000 bank, we played ten stock rounds in four and half hours. In total, the game was over in less than five hours including setup and teaching.

NBR and LBSC didn’t start in the game. NER got started, but built nothing; it was stripped of its assets and abandoned. The track development in Scotland was weak, so GNoS and HR also never started. All other companies started. SECR ran a 2+2 to London. LSWR got the best runs, £730 with 4, 5 and 5 trains. We didn’t get to 7 trains.

Final scores were Nooa £15,748, Mikko £15,273, Ville £14,985 and Elia £13,646. I was doing well in the end, thanks to all 4-share certificates I hoovered on the final SR as we expected to see only one OR before the bank broke. We got two. In the last two, I earnt £5,412, while Nooa got £5,269. The number of shares isn’t everything: me and Elia had 41 shares, Nooa had 37 and Ville had 31.

All in all this was a pleasant game. 18xx.games works great as a moderator, and we could cut more than an hour from the game length. We were quite rusty with the rules; with more experience the game would go more smoothly and better decisions could be made.

I think I’m done with smaller 1825 games. I’ve packed everything in two boxes, and I don’t want to split it back to single Units. The single Unit games just aren’t that interesting; I prefer playing 18GB, 18 India, 1860, 1846 or 18 BosWash. However, this full set is worth playing even if it’s also quite bizarre and unusual.