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18Rhl: Rhineland

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Chris Shaffer edited this page May 13, 2023 · 31 revisions

Table of Contents

General Information
Rules Highlights
Rules Clarifications
Implementation Notes
Known Problems

This game is in beta

General Information

Rules Highlights

Compare 18Rhl to another 18xx

  • A short description can be found on Marflow Games' home page.

  • Rhine can be passed in 4 places - the remaining Rhine edges are impassible through the whole game.

    • The edge between C8 and B9 (Wesel) can be passed by laying tiles in each hex. C9 requires a one time upgrade cost of 30M, and the first tile must have an exit that goes towards B9.
    • The three Rhine Metrpolis hexes (D9 Duisburg, F9 Düsseldorf, I10 Köln) start as hexes with 3 city slots, although the 2 on one side of Rhine is the same city (and can therefor not be part of the same route). When upgraded to green this means that a train ferry (Trajekt) makes it possible for routes to pass from one side to the other using the ferry, but for a cost of 10M. When upgraded to brown and gray the hexes becomes a single city and a regular bridge is built across Rhine.

  • Initial auction is similar to 1830.

  • The private companies bought during initial auction can never be sold. They are closed when a 5 train is purchased (unless closed earlier - see description of each). Private companies 1-4 have some special effect that the owner can use during the play.

  • Corporations float at 50% (exception is the orange Krefelder Eisenbahngesellschaft (KEG) corporation that floats at 60% as the first three certificates are 20% each).

image

  • Corporations floated are incremental cap (with one exception - see next bullet). When they are floated the remaining shares are moved to treasury. Corporation receives the price of the purchased shares as treasury (exception RhE which receives only the price for president share - the price of the remaining 3 shares is received when there is a link Aachen - Düren - Köln). At the end of the SR that the corporation floated, the stock price goes up 1 step (unless it is already at the top).

  • For Corporations that float in phase 5 (or later) instead use full capitalization. This means that the Corporation treasury receives corresponding to 100% of the share value. The remaining unsold IPO shares are moved to the Market. Full capitalization Corporations do not get the "1 step up" bonus during the SR that it floats (as are mentioned in the previous bullet).

  • When shares are sold, the price goes down one row regardless of how many shares were sold and who is selling.

  • Towns are not counted for distance. Routes may not start/stop in town. 8 trains (see below) ignores towns.

  • There are several bonus available for routes:

    • Eastern Ruhr bonus (Östliches Ruhrgebeit): A route starting/ending in eastern Ruhr gets from 20M to 50M depending on how many links (1-4) that has been established to this area.
    • Montan bonus: Check how many Coal mine (K) and Steel mill (S) that are part of the route. K/S are part of the route if the route passes a hex with that icon, or if the route use one of the connections to eastern Ruhr area. Note: The S icon is counted if Siegerland is part of the route.
      • Montan Bonus is 20M per K and S pair. 40M in brown and gray phases.
    • Eisern Rhein bonus (Iron Rhein, ERh): A route from Roermond to eastern Ruhr gets 80M. Note! A token in Roermond makes this bonus only available for the owning corporation.

  • The 8 train is called "The Rheingold-Express". This is a train that can visit any number of cities, off-board and towns. But it only counts the best 8 cities and off-boards.

    • Towns do not count for income
    • Rheingold Express never counts Montan or Eisern Rhein bonuses.
    • Rheingold Express must start in one of the off-board hexes with a RGE icon (A4, A6, L11, L13) and must run towards an RGE icon on the other side of the board.
    • If Rheingold Express connects RGE in the North to RGE in the South, all Rhine Metropolis hexes (Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Köln) it visits are doubled.

  • When paying dividend, for the stock price to increase, the total revenue must be equal to or higher than the current share price. Dividend for shares in treasury is paid to the corporation. Dividend for shares in the open market remains in the Bank.

  • 6 trains are available after the first 5 train is purchased. 8 trains are available after the first 6 is purchased.

  • Game ends when the OR set is completed after Bank has broken. Bankruptcy does not end the game, and bankrupt players must sell all their shares. This might leave corporations without director - in which case the corporation is under receivership until someone becomes owner of 20% or more of the corporation. Note! If a corporation is forced to buy a train, and the current director goes bankrupt, the new director will have to buy that train.

Rules Clarifications

  • The following red hexes have special handling if tokened:
    • Münster and Minden - if tokened by another corporation these are worth 0.
    • Boxtel - similar to Münster and Minden, worth zero if tokened by another corporation.
    • Roermond - similar to Münster and Minden. Also, the ERh bonus cannot be gained if tokened by another corporation.
  • Venlo and Siegerland give off-board revenue even if tokened by another corporation. And Siegerland can be the Steel mill part of a Montan Bonus.
  • Private 4 (Trajektanstalt) has a token teleport but this can only be used as part of the private ability to upgrade Köln / Düsseldorf / Duisburg hex to green, and not as a separate tokening. See forum thread about this.
  • Private 5 (Niederrheinische Licht- und Kraftwerke) gives a GVE share. When GVE president share is bought, put 3 times par value in treasury (president share plus the one received when buying private 5). See forum thread about this.
  • RhE does receive the winning bid of Private 6 as starting treasury. The 3 shares that are moved to bank pool gets 3 times the par put aside next to it. The RhE president decide a par value, but can only choose 70, 75 or 80 mark. See forum thread about this.
  • The following routes are illegal, as they are the same off-board area:
    • Hamburg to Berlin in north east
    • Nimwegen to Arnheim in the north
    • Basel to Frankfurt in south east
    • C14 to D15 (Östliches Ruhrgebiet)
    • Two cities on a single bank routes on yellow Rhine Metropolis hexes (but see Trajekt below)

Trajekts

Trajekts are ferrys that exists in the game for the 3 Rhine Metropolis hexes when they have green tiles.

These tiles are a bit special. They do look like two cities, but in reality they work as a 3 slot city.

Some effects of this:

  • If not all three slots are tokened, the hex is passable for all corporations.
  • If all three slots are tokened, the hex are passable for the three corporations with tokens there.
  • Token location (west or east side of Rhine) do affect if the trajekt will be used when passing through the hex.
  • If trajekt is used the revenue for the hex will be 30 Mark instead of 40 Mark.

When upgraded to brown, the hex becomes a normal 3 slot city.

Here is an example of a route that uses the trajekt in Duisburg, while passing through the other metropolises without using the ferry.

image

In this example BME can route through the east bank of Duisburg and do not have to use the ferry, so Duisburg pays 40 Mark. Even though both slots on the east side of Duisburg are tokened, Duisburg are still passable for BME as the west slot is still open.

image

More information can be found on the BGG rule forum.

Variants and Optional Rules

All official variants from the Rule book are supported.

The gray tiles in the standard version are the following:

image

When using the promotion tiles variant the gray tiles become:

image

The gray Essen tile is only possible to place in the Essen hex (D13). The town on the hex has revenue 20 and can be rotated in any way.

The gray Duisburg tile (949) has a 20 revenue town, but this tile can only use orientation so that town is located on the north-west exit.

The gray Moers tile has a 10 revenue town. Can be rotated in two ways depending on how the brown Moers tile is rotated.

The Ratingen variant

The official Ratingen variant will be linked to when it appears on Marflow's homepage. Here are brief explanation of the changes applied for the Ratingen variant:

  • Private 1 (Angertalbahn) replaces private 1 in base game. The ability of private 1 is changed to giving the owner the possibility for an extra tile lay in hex E12 but requires unblocked track link to E12. Also, using the private 1 ability closes the private.

  • New map tiles for Hex E10 and E12.

  • New track tiles 1910 and 1911 that is used to upgrade Hex E10. image image

  • Hex E12 is barred from laying a yellow tile there until green phase, and only owner of private 1 may place a tile there. This restriction becomes obsolete after beginning of brown phase.

  • Revenue of any route that includes both E12 and at least one steel mill will get a 30 Mark bonus. Rheingold express trains does not get this bonus as it does not transport Steel.

Implementation Notes

  • In the physical first version of 18Rhl, published by Marflow Games, the orange corporation was named Krefeld-Kreis-Kempener Eisenbahn. It has been renamed to Krefelder Eisenbahngesellschaft.
  • The rules do allow for laying tiles via private companies after a train buy. But that could be problematic from an implementation angle, while giving only a small benefit. So therefor this possibility was stopped. An issue was created on this.

Known Problems

  • Corporation that has no president after a bankruptcy probably crashes the game; work is ongoing to fix this. ((2022-06-08/Per Westling: Fix for this has been created. So I will remove this line when that has been deployed.))
  • Ratingen variants is missing from the linked rules.
  • Open Issues
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