Game: Dutch InterCity

Thread: First experience, with five players

msaari — 2008-06-13T15:00:05+00:00

As my order from Northumbria Games arrived in just two days, we started our games with Dutch InterCity. We had four players, but fifth arrived just when we were about to start. Five, then.

Dutch InterCity is an older title from Winsome Games and a progenitor for the Riding series. It is somewhat similar to Chicago Express, but even smaller and more minimalist.

The game features five railroad companies building track in the Netherlands. Each turn starts with a share selling phase. Each player chooses a share to sell. There's an auction, and the high bidder gets the share. First share is the director's share, after that the player with the most shares in a company will be the director. The share auction continues at least until every player has chosen a share to sell. Once that happens, the auction will continue until somebody runs out of money.

Then the companies get to build track. Each director chooses which connection the company wants to build that turn. The track costs 2-6, paid from the company treasury (supplied by the share auction). However, if two companies want to build the same track, there's a blind bid and the company that pays more gets to build and the other doesn't build.

Next up is dividends. The dividends are determined by the longest continuous run of track: each share pays that amount, so the dividends are not diluted like in Wabash. The turn ends with the turn order rearrangement: the richest player goes first, the poorest is last.

This continues until the map is completely built or a turn goes without any building at all. That doesn't take long, because the map is fairly small. Four to six rounds, says J C Lawrence, and that sounds pretty accurate. In the end, companies are liquidated. The value of the track (sum of the values of the company track) is added to the treasury and the pot is divided to the shareholders. The director takes the remainder.

It's very simple and clever, but takes surprisingly long. I suppose playing the game in 45 minutes or so is possible, but out first game took 75 minutes. It depends on how long you take in the auctions, because that's the main part of the game.

The auction is clever. The ending condition is interesting. The strategies aren't obvious. Ending with just few dollars is clearly a bad idea, though, as you'll lose all control over the auction. Overpaying can be a good idea, especially as you can get part of the money back from the company treasury in the end. In the first round, one of the players was able to get a bid of a lead: everybody bought one share, then the first player simply went all-in and outbid everyone else to score a second share and ending the auction immediately. The auction strategies take some thinking.

Dutch InterCity is a fairly minimalist game; mostly an interesting auction, really. The track-building is less interesting, the options are fairly constricted. There's some guess-work and choosing between risky but valuable and safer but less profitable options involved. In most of our game each company was controlled by a different player, but controlling more than one company is certainly useful in the track-building phase.

As this is a Winsome game, the production values are very minimalist, but work pretty well. The map is fairly ugly, and I would prefer that the track lines would show the value of the tracks. The game has small cardboard chits to mark the tracks, but using those is a pain. I highly recommend using wet-erase pens, as the board is laminated. Also, using railway value chart from Geek is a good idea.

I like it, and my fellow gamers were interested in trying again, so this one'll see some table time. It'll take some more experience to say how Dutch InterCity compares with Wabash Cannonball; so far I'd say Wabash is slightly more interesting, but Dutch InterCity is definitely worth trying (but is it worth paying a lot or hunting with great effort, is another thing).

(Also published as Thursday session: Dutch InterCity, Modern Art at Gameblog)

Thread: Early Experience: Dutch Intercity

clearclaw — 2008-05-20T08:21:30+00:00

Note: This review was originally written for and posted on my blog.

Dutch Intercity by Han Heidema is a likely early design progenitor of The Riding Series and was published by Winsome Games in 1999.

Minimalist, austere, spartan: dinosaurs in natural history museums than have more fat than this little mechanical mousetrap. There is a watchmaker’s delight in the tightly whirring little flensing blades of the game. Dutch Intercity is a game of iterative predatory auctions of shares with highly unstable values interspersed with quick activities to generate those unstable values. And really, that’s pretty much the game as everything else is just a cog or whirring flywheel thrown in to provide predation, (interesting) auctions or shares with unstable values. If you thought Wabash Cannonball was about as stark as you can get for a share speculation game, Dutch Intercity goes several large steps further towards skeletal.

Dutch Intercity consists of 5 companies, each with 10 shares, and a board showing a simplified map of the Netherlands with a pre-drawn graph of 19 historical railway routes. Players iteratively auction shares of companies[1], the directors[2] blind bid to claim railway network routes on the pre-drawn graph and dividends are paid for each player’s shares[3] until the network is full. As the graph is small only 4-6 full rounds will be played depending on route competition levels.

The hinge point is in the intersection of two patterns: turn order for the auction[4] and auction duration[5]. Those two in combination, a pattern also used in Han’s The Riding Series, are responsible for most of the subtlety and tension in the game. Controlling and predicting how many rounds the auction will last and thus how many shares will be issued (and which shares) is key. One obvious result of this set of intersections is that it is frequently worthwhile to bid well over the estimated value of a share in order to run yourself out of cash and thus stop any further shares from being sold[6]. Being left with only a few gulden, unable to compete and also unable to end the auction campaign while the other players rip more shares out is a salutary lesson hopefully learned only once.

I’ve played only once and only with three players. The ideal player is clearly more. I suspect that 4 or 5 is the sweet spot but the game officially extends up to 6. Playtime should run around 45-60 minutes for groups that don’t get caught up in predicting and explicitly manipulating turn order or 90-105 minutes for those that do.

An alternate ruleset is mentioned in the game rules as available by request from Winsome Games. I’ve requested a copy but have not yet received or played it. I’ll try remember to comment on it when I do get a copy.

1. The monies from share auctions will fund the operations of the company and thus its future share value. Buy too cheaply and you’ll likely have a dead-duck company, pay too much and you’ve lost ground on the other players.
2. Company directors are the plurality share holders
3. Dividends are equal to the longest non-looping path that can be traced for the company’s network.
4. Turn order is variable and set at the beginning of the phase in order of descending cash.
5. Once all players have had the opportunity to auction a share, the auction continues in turn order rotation until one player has no cash.
6. This over-bidding has the side effect of also priming the company with competitive cash for route-claiming, as well offering a small potential (shades of the The Riding Series) for hiding cash in company treasuries for end-game scoring retrieval.

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MrUnicorn — 2006-10-19T06:27:28+00:00

"Ready to play" boxed edition of Dutch InterCity

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MrUnicorn — 2006-10-19T06:26:34+00:00

Examples of "track deed" cards.

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MrUnicorn — 2006-10-19T06:26:31+00:00

Contents of the "ready to play" boxed version of Dutch InterCity

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MrUnicorn — 2006-10-19T06:26:17+00:00

Dutch InterCity map-board. Laminated paper.

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BigWoo — 2006-02-16T13:43:23+00:00

Dutch InterCity (ziplock edition)

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joe_games — 2002-08-26T23:01:09+00:00

Thread: Session Report

BoardGameGeek — 2001-07-03T18:36:39+00:00

My three boys, ages 13, 11, and 10, gave me a nice Father's Day present by agreeing to play Dutch InterCity with me. The game lasted six turns, and I squeaked out a 162, 153, 144, 113 victory. While three of us ended with the same total number of shares (10), my victory was probably helped by having an additional share than the other players during the first three turns (what can I say? I spent my remaining cash ($7) on the fifth share offered in the first round, and none of them could top me...)

We are still learning the nuances of this game. For example, the red line was never started, and we seemed to underbid shares in the beginning (never more than $10 until turn 4) and overbid terribly in the end. I must confess, I spent $37 for the last blue share in the last turn, which is at least twice as much as I should have spent. We didn't try to calculate eventual worth of stock as we were bidding; rather, we based our purchases on our emotions and desired control of railroads.

We only had track building contentions three times, and in each case the railroad that won the auction probably paid too much ($13 for a 6 green over black, $16 for a 6 green over black, and $19 for a 6 black over green). The first contention was justified, as it ensured the growth of the railroad, but the other two were overzealous. The blue line finished with a length of 6, yellow and green at 5, and black at 3 (with lots of branches). For value, blue=38, green=32, yellow=28, and black=28.

We had no problems with the math -- the forms on boardgamegeek came in very handy. ;-)

We rate this game a solid 8.

Thread: Preview

PBrennan — 2001-04-09T09:54:04+00:00

We played Dutch InterCity for the first time last night and had an 'interesting' time, especially in light of having played its sister game Prairie Railroads the weekend before.

It's a train / stock / crayon game featuring the major routes of Holland. Being a small country, there are only 20 routes available. Divide that between 5 companies and you get competition very early. You'd also expect a shorter game than say Prairie Railroads (PR) which has a heap of expansionistic routes - but for a difference in the stock valuations which slows the game dramatically in the final stages.

A round is made up of three phases - offer stock, purchase track, pay dividends.

In the offer stock round, each player offers a stock from one of the five companies and this is auctioned off round-table / out once you pass style. Unlike PR, the stock offered needn't be for a new company in the first round - in fact it's possible that the first round ends and only one company has been opened if each player offers the same company stock! Like PR though, the winner wants to bid enough to build at least the first bit of track - the winning bid goes into the company's treasury and this is used to purchase track. After each player has had a chance to offer stock, if everyone still has money left, players continue to offer stock until the first person runs out.

In the second phase, the director of each company (most shares owned, or first owned in a tie) declares which of the 20 routes they would like to purchase. Track must be contiguous. You can pass. If 2 directors have chosen the same route, there's an in-the-fist auction for the right to the track.

In the third phase, dividends are paid out. For each share, you get 1 dollar per branch for the longest non-branching, non-circling-back track. Game ends when all routes are built or if no track is built on a turn.

The final payout is value of track built PLUS money in the treasury - unlike PR which is just value of track built and the income each track derives (which isn't a feature in Dutch InterCity). This difference creates quite a significant difference in game play. Most money wins.

The first half of the game was quite fun. No one had a clue on how much to bid for a stock, except to try and get yours as cheap as possible but still with enough cash to build track. With a second game, the bidding strategy may change somewhat - as cash in the treasury is included in the final valuation, a company's stock is worth whatever you pay for it - plus you get to collect dividends along the way. The only way to lose money relatively is if your share is devalued by someone paying less for a future share. So in this sense you can pay as much as you like, as long as you can bid the price up to the same level in future turns. Therefore the bidding levels, in the early turns anyway, may centre more around expected cash streams (dividends).

The purchase track bit is straight forward. Given that cash in the treasury provides the same valuation as purchasing track, the only reason for building is to provide a dividend stream which naturally, as company director, you'd like. Everyone has a safe (non-competitive) build for turn 1, but competition for reaching the middle of the country can be fierce from turn 2 onwards and everywhere else, even around the edges, from about turn 3 or 4 on. Our game only lasted 6 turns. In a competition, the company director has the choice of paying more than required to guarantee track to firstly generate more dividends and secondly stop another line from building at all this turn. Therefore the companies with most cash in the treasury (shares sold for most) will be better positioned - another issue to consider
when offering / purchasing stock. Although again, it's only worth bidding excess to the amount of the expected increase in dividends over the remaining turns as cash in the treasury and track built hold the same value.

Dividends are then paid out and turn order / auction order is changed to reflect who has most to least cash.

So then we get to the latter half of the game - in our case the final two rounds. There's quite a few shares been sold by now and bigger dividends are coming in, which means everyone's cashed up. If you remember, the offer stock phase continues until everyone runs out of money. This means more and more shares need to be offered each turn before that happens. And now the game is in its final stages, you can directly value each share: (how much track has been built + cash in treasury + amount bid) divided by new total of shares, and then add how many dividends you expect for the rest of the game. If you're the company director, you can also add some dollars on your bid to make the total value one less then that required to evenly distribute the cash to all the shares n the final payout, and this is a cunning ploy because no one will beat that bid, and the company director gets to keep all excess cash once the final dividend is made out - this can be game-winning.

As you can gather, all this math starts making the game tedious in the last round or two. Not only to do the calc for each share as it gets offered, but with everyone cashed up, and no one willing to overpay, it takes a looooong time for anyone to run out of cash to allow the phase to end. Our game came in at 2 hours but could have easily gone on for another half hour or more except that someone fell on their sword and spent all their cash to stop it.

The significant difference with PR is that cash doesn't count in the final valuation. Here, each time a share gets sold, the amount bid pumps up the share price another notch or two so that the stock must be re-valued each time. It seems common sense to keep offering stock in your company to pump up the share price and make those earlier share purchases worth more. In PR, treasury cash isn't included in the final valuation, so the share valuation only changes when track is built. There, it seems common sense to offer
stock in your company early on to get enough cash to build track, but then later in the game to offer stock in other companies to dilute the value of each share, as it's unlikely that that company will get enough turns to
spend all its treasury on building track.

Even though I preferred the tightness and competition for routes that characterise Dutch Intercity, I think I preferred the Prairie Railroads stock process more - the play was faster (offer one stock, move on, next player's turn to offer or build), less math-prone, the offer strategy seemed more dimensional and there was only 5 stock rather than 10 so the build / offer ratio was in better alignment. When it comes down to it, Dutch Intercity is virtually nothing but a continual stock auction game with
occasional 2 minute timeouts to adjust their dividend stream by building track and to cash up dividends for the next auction round.

A rating of 5 after 1 play for 'average game, take it or leave it'. The big caveat of course is on the 1 game only aspect - new playings may generate a slew of new tactics on how to close the auction rounds down more quickly to your advantage - in which case the rating would rise considerably as the game seems quite worthy except for this end-game issue. Btw, plan for an hour or two beforehand to cut out all the pieces.