Baltimore & Ohio

We brought out Baltimore & Ohio for the first time last night. B&O was just released, as part of the Winsome Games Essen 2009 set. It has been compared to the 18XX genre of games and probably has a playing time of around 4-6 hours. I talked to Mike and Dan, and I asked if it would be okay to start the game with the goal of stopping half way and picking up where we left off next week. Everyone agreed and we were up and running after a good bit of rules talk. Like all Winsome games, the rules are short and are, overall, not that difficult to read through. However, the strategy is tough, and it takes some time to wrap your head around the different way that share price and the selling/buying of shares works. And heck, even then, you still have to figure out how they work to drive you towards winning the game.

The idea was sound, but the implementation didn't work last night. Mike and I were basically in the game, but Dan fell into a hole and probably was not going to dig himself out of it. I suspect that the problem had to do with the under-capitalization of his company. He started two and the second had a severe lack of money that was simply difficult to make up for. We also forgot to enforce a rule that would have kept Mike out of a profitable city early on, so Dan had alot stacked up against him.

We didn't finish the game last night. I believe that we ended about half way through, and my railroad had the highest share value of (I think) $120. We also decided that we would not continue with this particular game. I enjoyed the first half play, so I hope that we will get it out again soon. But I did know that it could not be fun for Dan to have to sit through what we all believed to be a losing situation. I am not sure if we will try the "complete half and then finish the next week" strategy or if we will do a weekend session, but again, I hope we play it soon.