1830: An old friend remembered yesterday
Yesterday, Kendahl asked me if I still had my copy of 1830. Unfortunately, I stupidly E-Bayed my copy away about ten years ago when I went through a brief phase where I thought I was done with gaming (between the death of AH and the rise of Euro's... otherwise known as the Magic Era...).Anyway, Kendahl's question caused me to think a lot about my past love of all games 18XX, but none more so than 1830. This game really was a eurogame before its time. The game had no player elmination; nothing random; an amazingly elegant simulation of stock market manipulation, auctions, and financial double dealing; and a relatively short playing time for its day. This game had it all!
So, I fired up the now freely downloadable PC version of the game and had a great time! After playing the 18XX board games almost every week for a year, I used to be able to totally destroy the computer on its ultrahard AI setting. Now, I had a very tough time just on hard... oh well... it was still great fun. Anyway, I highly recommend that if you ever see an 18XX game at a decent price... buy it!!
posted by Ben @ 4:36 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Here's the link to the site where you can download 1830 plus the full users manual:
http://tinyurl.com/cxngz
You'll need to use the manual to answer the initial, one-time copy protection question.
After you install the game, but before you run it, you'll also need to install VDMSound on your computer. Because 1830 is DOS-based software, it doesn't work too well with Windows XP. VDMSound fixes this problem.
After you install VDMSound, just right click on 1830.exe and select "Run with VDMSound." Ta-da! It works. Here's the link to VDMSound:
http://tinyurl.com/3rp3k
I have a fair chunk of the 18xx series, if people are interested. But it has a steep learning curve...
Check out 18MEX on BGG... San Antonio makes an 18XX appearance!
If anyone has trouble downloading the 1830 game files and manual, just let me know. They're small enough I can just e-mail them.
In my opinion, if you like games like Powergrid, you're probably going to like 1830. 1830 is just a bit more complex, with the ability to buy/sell shares in each others companies; operate small, private companies; and lay / block different routes between cities. The similarities are many, since you're trying to connect cities together and purchase the most efficient locomotives to power your network.
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