18Rhl

The first gathering of the year began exactly as it should: with dealing-room sounds and the smell of charcoal. 18Rhl is the latest release from Fox in the Box, a publisher we love and support—much as we generally support every 18XX that reaches our table. Even so, I cannot say I found anything especially fresh or radical here.

At its core, this is two games in one box, with different maps and rules. RHL, which we played with four, emphasizes building one good company and developing its network around the river. LRA, by contrast, sounds more like a connect-the-dots exercise, where you race to link the ports. In RHL, the overall direction is fairly clear: establish your company, extend its network, and try to make the best use of the map before the other players do.

The most notable changes are that nearly all trains effectively work as expresses, so villages become targets rather than places you want to avoid. The privates are less powerful and, with no 60% ownership limit, you can load up on a company’s shares and milk it. I also appreciated that the playing time remains sensible and the calculations never become a stew, since the largest available train is a 6. On the other hand, there are few genuinely useful advanced tiles; if you are not very careful, you can easily end up locked out of the good networks.

We had a good time, and 18Rhl is certainly good. It is just that, particularly in the style RHL is aiming for, there are games I consider noticeably better. It is an honest addition for anyone wanting another 18XX map on the shelf, but it could have been more.