{"id":3895,"date":"2004-04-08T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-08T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2004\/04\/08\/desert-steam\/"},"modified":"2004-04-08T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-04-08T10:00:00","slug":"desert-steam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2004\/04\/08\/desert-steam\/","title":{"rendered":"DESERT STEAM"},"content":{"rendered":"

DESERT STEAM<\/h1>\n

A preview of “1895 – Namibia”<\/h4>\n

\"Railway1895 is located in Namibia or “Deutsch-Suedwest
\nAfrika” as it was called at the time. Namibia is situated south of the equator at
\nthe west coast of Africa and being a country dominated by the Namib Desert there are not
\nthat many cities and possible routes for railroad lines. An interesting
\n“feature” of Namibia is the “Caprivi Zipfel”, a strip of land in the
\nnorth east of Namibia presenting an additional challenge to railway operators. We will
\nsee later how the game deals with this.<\/p>\n

Railway building in Namibia began with some smaller mining rail lines in 1895 and
\ndeveloped full speed in 1897 when the German Colonial Authority launched a project to
\nbuild the “Staatsbahn” (state railway) from Swakopmund to Windhoek.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

HERE I STAND<\/u><\/h4>\n

Even earlier, in 1894, the German artist Troost intended to revolutionize the
\ntransportation in the desert by replacing the tedious ox-wagons by a steam traction
\nengine hauling several wagons which operated out of Swakopmund. \"MartinThe engine was imported from its manufacturer Dehne
\nnear Halberstadt, Germany and was landed at Walvis Bay. Three months later it was
\ndelivered to Troost at Swakopmund. It had practically been pushed the entire distance
\nbecause of its tendency to dig itself into the deep sand every time an effort was made to
\nmove it under its own power. Service was started and the traction engine did surprisingly
\nwell once it had passed the coastal sand belt, but eventually the desert was stronger,
\nand it blew a tube which could not be replaced. Later the people of Namibia called it
\n“The Martin Luther”, after his famous quote “Here I stand and I cannot do
\notherwise.” \"MartinToday, the first steam traction engine to
\noperate in Namibia has been restored and declared a national monument.<\/p>\n

It does not come as a surprise that an 18xx game situated in Namibia includes the
\nMartin Luther as the very first “private company” available for purchase. What
\nis a surprise though is the fact that the Martin Luther is the only private company
\navailable in the game. Its sole purpose is to act as a tie-breaker in case no player is
\nwilling to buy stock or obligations as the owner of the Martin Luther cashes in 5 Marks
\ndividends at the beginning of each operation round (throughout this article it is assumed
\nthat readers are familiar with the 18xx game concepts; readers not familiar with the
\nbasics of the 18xx series should have a look at our 18xx
\nsection<\/a>).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

MUCH OBLIGED<\/u><\/h4>\n

Once the Martin Luther has found its owner obligations became available for purchase
\nvia auctioning. Obligations are a new element to 18xx and constitute a players obligation
\nto connect two cities with railway tracks. The player who successfully bid on an
\nobligation, receives one free 10% share certificate of the corresponding corporation. At
\nthe time of auctioning these share certificates have no value and cannot be sold. They
\nonly become dividend paying shares once the track between the two cities has been build.
\n\"StateThis happens irrespective of the fact
\nwhich corporation laid the final connection between the two cities. Another benefit the
\nowner of an obligation gets is the option to buy the president’s certificate of the
\ncorresponding corporation once it is available for purchase. This option may even be
\nexecuted if the certificate becomes available during the turn of another player. In this
\ncase, if the player owning the obligation wants to buy the president’s certificate
\ns\/he may do so immediately and out of sequence provided s\/he holds sufficient money in
\nhand – no shares may be sold to raise money at this point.<\/p>\n

While obligations present the advantage of receiving a free share and the purchase
\noption for the presidency these advantages are linked to challenging conditions: only
\nbuilding a predefined railway connection valuates the free share and executing the
\npurchase option requires sufficient money in hand at the right point in time.<\/p>\n

\"STAThere is a rough correlation between initial price of an
\nobligation and the length of the route to be built but it turns out to be a rather tough
\ndecision of how much, if anything, one bids for an obligation. In our game we had the
\nsituation that I was “forced” by Walter to execute the purchase option at an
\nextremely bad moment. I was short on cash at the time and had to set the initial price
\nfor the corporation in question to the lowest possible value. This combined with the
\nfollowing purchase “war” to keep the presidency forced me to sell some of my
\nmuch more valuable stock.<\/p>\n

G\u00fcnther, on the other hand, purchased an obligation but chose to not buy the
\ncorresponding presidency. Unfortunately, the corporation’s target route for
\nactivating the obligation’s free share was the longest route on the map: right into
\nthe Caprivi Strip to the eastern-most end of Namibia. The consequence of this was that
\nWalter as the president of the corporation had no intention to build the awkward track
\nwhile G\u00fcnther was left for a long time with an inactive share counting towards his
\ncertificate limit.<\/p>\n

Obligations need not be bought to continue the game.
\nIf all players pass on a single obligation the obligation is removed from the game and
\nthe next obligation comes up for auction. If the last obligation is gone corporation
\nshares become available.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

SOLD OUT<\/u><\/h4>\n

The five corporations also come up for sale in a predefined order. The buyer of the
\npresident’s (20%) share sets the price for a 10% share. \"OtaviThere is only one share price and no distinction between initial
\noffering price and bank pool price, a rule we liked already much in 1951 and which we
\nadopted for 1830 (see our Walter variant<\/a>). Once 60% of
\nthe shares of a corporation are sold, including the still inactive share coming with a
\nsold obligation, the corporation floats. All remaining shares are then transferred to the
\ntreasury of the corporation together with 5 times the initial share price (6 times the
\nshare price if the obligation has not been sold). Any subsequent shares bought from the
\ncorporation’s treasury cost the current price indicated on the stock market chart and
\nthe money is paid to the corporation.<\/p>\n

\"OtaviThere is one aspect during the stock market
\nround which was new to us and we found an excellent idea: a player is allowed to own up
\nto 100% of the shares of a corporation. However, for any share bought in excess of 60% a
\nplayer must pay a 20% commission to the bank and the certificate limit for each player is
\nset 13 so that never all shares can be sold out. This puts players in the position to
\ncompletely control a corporation and not being dependent on robber baron style players
\nand their stock market manipulations. In our game this was used by Walter to his
\nadvantage when he decided to disinvest in all of my shares and instead investing in 100%
\nof the shares of one of his two corporations. Unfortunately for him, in mid-game he
\noverlooked the threat of his route being devastated by a cleverly placed token of another
\ncorporation with the consequence that dividend payments were severely impacted for a
\nwhile. Overall, we found the concept of being able to buy ALL shares of a corporation for
\na 20% premium to be a perfect enhancement of the game system.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

BOARDING THE H-TRAIN<\/u><\/h4>\n

\"trainThis leads us to the operation rounds. By deliberately
\nproviding only a limited supply of brown tiles and the fact that as soon as they become
\navailable corporations may build two yellow tiles per operation round instead of one the
\nduration of the endgame is significantly shortened. A fact we liked a lot as it prevents
\nthose tedious waiting times when one player is trying to still find a worthwhile
\nextention of his routes. Also the well-balanced overall supply of money in the bank
\nsupports this concept.<\/p>\n

Trains come in the H-variant, traveling their designated number of mid-hex distances
\nrather than a given number of stations. There are 8 different trains available, starting
\nwith the tiny 2H up to the giant 16H, which can cover nearly any north-south route of the
\nmap. Supply of trains is very limited, though. All but the 2H (4) and 3H (3) trains types
\nhave only 2 trains, except for the 16H, which has an endless supply. Scrapping of
\nobsolete trains occurs whenever a train with twice the size is first bought, i.e. 8H
\ntrains scrap 4H trains and results in 10H, 12H and 16H trains being saved from scrapping.
\nEven with our empire building style of game play this led to a very dynamic mid-game in
\nterms of train acquisition; sometimes making it difficult to get at least one run out of
\na newly purchased train. The amount of dynamics in train acquisition and operation is
\nsomething we have not seen before in an 18xx game and which definitely is another
\nhighlight of 1895.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

WORKING IN A COALMINE<\/u><\/h4>\n

\"diamond<\/p>\n

Another new feature is the two mines on the map, one coal mine and one diamond mine.
\nIf connected to a route a corporation collects additional income when using that route.
\nDifferent to the normal income of a corporation the mine income may not be used for
\ndividends but is paid into the corporation’s treasury straight away. We found this to
\nbe a very welcomed extra income for a corporation virtually at no extra cost other than
\nusing a route along a mine field.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

AND IN THE END<\/u><\/h4>\n

In the end G\u00fcnther won the game by a small margin. This is remarkable in so far as
\nG\u00fcnther was the player with only one presidency and who had the additional handicap of a
\nreduced certificate limit due to the blocked share, which came with the obligation.
\nWalter and I both owned two presidencies, Walter owning 100% and 50% of his corporations
\nand I owning 80% and 60% of my corporations. In retrospect the forced floating of my
\nsecond corporation at a very low share price only to keep the benefits of the obligation
\nwas definitely a mistake and probably cost me the game.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

CONCLUSION<\/u><\/h4>\n

1895 is a 3-player game, designed to last 2 hours or less if played without a
\nmoderator program (the configuration file for Lemmi’s 18xx moderator program is
\nalready available on Adam’s homepage<\/a>). As with most 18xx games the designer took care to
\nreflect the historical development of the railway system in the respective country with
\nsome accuracy. Four of the five railroad corporations in the game are real railroad
\ncompanies of that period. Most likely, trackbuilding also follows historical routes due
\nto the obligation’s target cities and the cleverly placed fields with extra costs
\n(terrain) or benefits (mines).<\/p>\n

\"NamibiaThe idea to design a short 3-player variant of an 18xx game has
\nbeen implemented very well indeed. 1895 is highly dynamic both in the bank round, due to
\nthe low certificate limit as well as in the operation rounds, due to the limited supply
\nof trains of a single type. The concept of obligations works very well and provides an
\nextra dimension to the game which we found challenging both in determining the right
\nprice for them as well as using their benefits to a player’s best advantage. Comined
\nwith the excellent production quality of the game (map, tiles, certificates and trains
\nare laminated) makes 1895 a highly recommended game. Walter gave it a ranking of 10 (out
\nof 10), which puts 1895 in line with his much liked 1830. For me 1895 is a excellent
\naddition to the 18xx series, especially due to the fact that it is a short, 3-player game
\nand still has a lot of dynamics and challenges. But the “suspense factor” of
\n1830 is still my favorite; hence my ranking is 9 out of 10.<\/p>\n

Our thanks go to Adam Romoth<\/a>
\n(designer) and Helmut Ohley<\/a>
\n(co-designer and producer) for making it possible to play “1895 – Namibia” a
\nfew months before the scheduled re-release date in October, in time for “Spiel
\n2004” in Essen. The improvements made to the inital design released in 2002 are
\nconsiderable and resulted in an overall enhancement of the game.<\/p>\n

Details about the games availability can be found here<\/a> soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DESERT STEAM A preview of “1895 – Namibia” 1895 is located in Namibia or “Deutsch-Suedwest Afrika” as it was called at the time. Namibia is situated south of the equator at the west coast of Africa and being a country dominated by the Namib Desert there are not that many cities and possible routes for … DESERT STEAM<\/span> weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spieleabende"],"views":4,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}