4th Oct 2025 Games Day - Scarface and 21Moon
by Robin. Sun 5 Oct (Updated at Sun 5 Oct)The AireCon West people had carelessly planned their big day to clash with our schedule, so we were thinner on the ground than usual at the NPBGC Saturday games day. There were just four games on the board. The Weather Machine group had chosen the increasingly-popular side room for their game, which left just 3 others set up in the main upstairs room. This configuration turned out to be unexpectedly important for what transpired later.
As it turned out, I actually got to play two of the four posted games. Though, for a few minutes early in the morning, it looked as though I might not play any of them. For reasons of illness and miscommunication, I was the only one who'd turned up for Scarface, and I didn't have the game. The other 3 games were all fully booked, but Marton and his group took pity on me and opened up a fifth space on their game 21Moon. They had initially restricted themselves to 4 players, because they hadn't played the game and thought it might go on too long with 5; but, despite a leisurely breakfast and rules run-through, and some additional downtime introduced later on for reasons I'll come onto, we were finished by 5pm.
21Moon is an 1830-type 18xx game (but set, as you may have guessed, on the Moon in the future). So for the first few hours of the day, I settled happily into stock trading and running moon trains. "Happily" insofar as I ever feel that in the early part of 1830 games, which for me tend to start with a sense of pessimism and persecution. It was all going fine until the first stock round, when I was undercut by Pedro and out-marketed by Dave-A, so my company didn't float. I finally got going in the second round, and then they both blocked my route. I guess I was probably causing them problems in return, but it's easier to spot the ones where I'm the victim.
Or at least, so it seemed at the time. Dave kept telling me he was trying to help me, and as it eventually transpired he probably did, though I can't believe anyone realised that at the time. I've played a few 18xx games now, and as far as I can see I've never come lower than 2nd in any of them, but it still feels more like luck than judgement. For now, come 1pm with the game maybe 40% of the way through, I was grumbling away quietly in my corner. Possibly the board game gods were telling me I should have gone to Telford.
But then things took a turn for the better, as in walked Mario with Scarface, all ready to get started. Apparently some nominal rival Saturday games day, somewhere else, starts at 1pm and he'd got the wrong timetable. And just about that time, my 21Moon line finally broke through Dave's various obstructions and started looking very competitive. How the board game gods mock us! I'd signed up for Scarface, and that was always the game I'd wanted to play, and I couldn't subject Mario to the fate that I'd avoided earlier. But after my initial couple of hours of sulking, I was suddenly really looking forward to the next phase of 21Moon. What to do?
This time, it was Ed who stepped in to save the day, with a distinctly Ed-esque brainwave: why don't I play both at the same time? And moreover, with his game of Galactic Cruise still going, he would join Scarface simultaneously as well. As I mentioned earlier, it was lucky that the Weather Machine group had taken the side room: the other 3 games now ran with players shared across them.
So for the next 4 hours, I played two games simultaneously. Not something I'd done before, and not for everyone (though for Ed it was perhaps a step down from his usual 3 or 4); but I did rather enjoy it. We all knew the rules for Scarface so rattled through it quite quickly. I think Galactic Cruise finished a lot earlier in the afternoon, but my two games both finished together at 5pm. I don't think I created too much downtime when both my turns coincided, but I guess other players will correct me if I'm wrong on that. For me, of course, there was very little downtime.
I won't say much about Scarface, as I did a write-up on that previously. I wanted to try the notorious flower-arranger Dion O'Banion this time, also because having previously played as Arnold Rothstein I'd felt like Arnold was overly powerful, and wanted to see what I could make of one of the less-obviously-good bosses. And I didn't manage to do nearly as well with the flowers as Ed managed with Arnold. But then that was Ed, so who knows? Maybe we can play again sometime with Ed doing the flowers and me as Arnold to do a proper analysis.
A bit more on 21Moon now: I ended up winning the game somehow. I think I must have missed some significant developments while playing the other game, and initially it seemed completely implausible that I could have won. But on reflection it begins to make sense. So read on for the lowdown on what's important about 21Moon. What follows is just 18xx stuff, so if you're not one of the 18xx tribe, best stop here...
In 21Moon, you don't entirely choose when your company pays a dividend. Each company has 2 fixed "bases", and each of its trains is assigned to one or other of the bases, which it has to run through. One of the bases is the central spaceport, and the other is that company's (other) base location somewhere else on the map. Income from trains assigned to the spaceport is paid as dividends, while income from trains assigned to the remote base is paid into the company treasury. If you have only one train that touches both bases, you can choose like normal whether you're paying dividends or not; but if you have multiple trains, you can split them and so only pay a partial dividend. The share price still drops if you pay no dividend, but it goes up based on how big your dividend is vs your share price.
I started the "Co-op" company (nothing co-operative here, but it'll be obvious which one I mean when you see the logos). It had the farthest remote base from the central spaceport. This, combined with the aforementioned machinations of Dave and Pedro, meant that for a significant early part of the game, I was forced to run two separate trains, because my two bases were not connected anyway, and they were far too far apart for the low-value trains to reach between them. So while the others were building nice long lines out of the spaceport and getting big(ish) dividends, I was gradually inching my two separate lines towards each other, and the remote base line was generating more revenue, pouring it into the company coffers.
Like most of the 18xx games, there comes a point when the low-value trains rust and you need to get a modern, high-value train to replace them. Unlike most of the other players, my company had comfortably enough money to get one of those at the right time. And critically, I had just about managed to join my bases up at that time. So, before everyone else, I had one long-range train whose income I could direct to dividends or treasury as I pleased. But unlike everyone else, my company still had money in its treasury, so mine started paying out big dividends before the rest.
So far, I think the best tip for the game I can see is "get the Co-op company". But that in itself wasn't enough to win me the game. That's where the "help" that David and Pedro, knowingly or otherwise, had given me came in. Having been repeatedly blocked out of towns between my two bases, I ended up with a long line across the map with very few stops on it, except for the two mineral sites near my remote base, which were the reason that I went for that company in the first place: the two highest-value minerals were both randomly seeded next to my company's base. Moreover, Dave and Pedro had blocked me out so effectively that it was very hard for any other company to reach those minerals.
So I never needed a "diesel" or whatever it was called in this version: I was able to get by with a permanent 6-train until the end, and still make a lot of money. And so my company was able to buy its train upgrade without needing further investment, and get all the big-value earnings.
Was that luck or judgement? At best, a bit of both. But I guess the tips for next time are: far-away remote bases are good; long lines without stations are good (there are specific bonuses for reaching from one side of the map to the other); the high-value minerals are good; and try and get those things while maintaining a pretence of victimisation, so that no-one else will try and get them, or buy your shares. And perhaps also play another game on the side - it worked for me (and it worked for Ed as well, of course).