There is a core debate over the various 18xx with larger player counts, especially once past the point that players can float companies without assistance from another player in the early game. 6 player 1830 is the poster child in this camp and there are strong contingents who will never ever play 1830 with 6 players and an equally strong and loud group who consider that the game is at its very shining best with 6 players. There are similar arguments for other titles and their threshold-crossing player counts.

The key element is that the games undergo a fundamental change in character once the threshold has been crossed. 6 player 1856 just isn't the same game as 4 player. It plays differently; the challenges, risks and thought processes involved in good play are not the same with the larger player count as the order of importances in game decisions has changed. Some adore that change, other's don't. I didn't until I got together with a group who simply wouldn't think of playing 1830 with less than 6 players. As they said, Why bother?

The simplest element with larger player counts is that control of where Priority ends up each round becomes ever more important and as a result Stock rounds become more brinksmanship-based dances as players insert judicious passes so as to push Priority to the right or left of a key player. A similar thing happens with the stock market and attempts to control the operating order of companies in order to ensure various timings for the train rush (especially in getting to and through the poison 4, or amusingly enough in last night's game of 18Mex, to and through the poison 3-train). Lastly high player count games tend to exaggerate the core element of the game in question. Is it a Where's-The-Free-Money 18xx, a Run-Good-Companies-18xx or a Hit-Milestones-Accurately-And-Plug-Things-Together 18xx? Whichever style of 18xx it is, the value of that core trait will tend to have a (seemingly) exaggerated importance with higher player counts. Those moments when Bubba sells his privates in and hits the certificate limit long before anyone else is even close or Bernie's two companies are both running for $50/share when everyone else is still struggling in the teens or Boffo's companies all merge and turn out to have all the best trains and key station markers...with larger player counts these events are more common even more often the hinge points in the game, They're also great sources of dramatic shifts in the game, which is another stylistic preference.

Very well articulated response JC. I don't profess to have enough experience with 18xx to understand some of these nuances, but I think you articulated very well some of our feelings and observations after playing this.

>While Mike will claim that this [certificate limit] was the primary reason for the game being wacky, I think it was a contributor but not the key

The certificate limit issue was the primary reason the game bogged down. With fewer certificates, there were fewer companies in play, therefore no pressure on the trains, so the game stagnated. The odd decisions were the cause of the wacky play, although with 3 newbs (and the rest of us are not all exactly expert or even frewuent players) perhaps it was only to be expected, and it should have been treated more as a learning game.

As JC says, and we saw in spades, 6 player 18xx requires a lot more co-operation that we didn't see in the early game. I'd still like to give this another go, and plan to spend more time playing 18xx this year.

Well, I'll still assert that we don't know enough about what most impacted the slowdown (there are many factors at work here beyond the cert limit), I don't disagree that the cert limit had an impact. I'm not sure I'm up for another 6 player game of 1850 to figure this out, either!

Reading a little between the lines here, it sounds like none of the group are experienced 18xx players. It also sounds like most if not all of you are (well) trained/habituated by more typical German/Designer fare towards single player optimisation rather than negotiated or emergent player collusion/cooperation. If both those things are true, then yes, you're going to have a problems with larger player count 18xx until you comfortably internalise how/why/when players (ex|im)plicitly working together in the game and then later just as (ex|im)plicitly breaking apart are a Fine & Wonderful Thing for all the parties involved. It can be hard to cross that bridge without an experienced guide.

The speed bump of the player left holding the company when the stock gets dumped/trashed as others pull out to start their own companies can be a perceived problem in this learning curve as it can seem that the target player was capriciously dumped on without chance to control or predict. However in practice that's not really a problem and the seemingly dumped on player while stung is also given considerable positional advantage in the process:

- The sold/market shares pay into the company giving it extra capitalisation
- Increased future token-placing and train-buying ability due to that extra capitalisation (and track building for those games with per-hex costs)
- The player has the option of just running the company back into the yellow/brown and keeping it there as a funding source for his other companies (I love winning 18xx games by running crappy companies)
- The dumped-on player should have enough free cash to cycle across the newly started companies to trash their stocks down several levels (make sure to wait until after they've floated)

The result is that getting stung in this sort of way is really a mixed blessing. Similarly the bailers who jumped ship to start their own companies are likewise facing a mixed situation: they get their own company with that director's share advantage (two shares, one certificate), but it will likely be 6+ ORs until the stock value recovers (more if it gets trashed again) and they don't have the track, token and train infrastructure in order to make the the market share capitalisation really worth much.

BTW: Low certificate limits aren't much of an effective limit on how many companies float in most 18xx. The extra share for the director's certificate plus the bonus of all the capitalisation money to play with (and funnel back into your hands) is normally sufficiently compelling to ensure that all companies are started.

Aside: Many 18xx games are won simply because one player owns more shares than all the other players as they hold more (double-share) director's certificates than the other players. The extra share density of directorships can be a non-trivial advantage.