Not at all, I think splotter and 18xx have a lot of overlap in player interaction, so it gets to be an honorary member

All of the games by designer Ryan Courtney are my favourites:
-Trailblazers
-Spectral
-Curious Cargo
-Bear Raid
-Pipeline
They are all very different games from each other but manage to be consistently thinky in a way not many other games are. They have a distinct brain feel if you know what I mean

Which do you know, and which are you curious about?

Unless you mean political in the game design sense, meaning direct interaction between more than 2 players occurs, and the game can in some aspects boil down to “vote who wins” in which case, yes, games are often political

Not the same way film, literature, and other artistic media are. When a game makes a clear political statement (mostly grognard wargames) it is an exception. Most games, even those with stronger themes take neutral positions towards history and politics and focus on making a fun mechanical system

I liked this one. I played a couple times in person and a few times online too.
Not beating 1830 or 1817 for me, but a good shorter one. Definitely my favourite lonny design

Me: I’m going to follow board games as a category to avoid political discussion on Bluesky

The board game category:

(Not saying there’s any problem with you posting this, just expressing my disappointment with my algorithm)

I’ve played a few times online. I remember liking the unique private companies, but not much else. Right now my 18xx gaming tends to be the few favourites I’ll choose to get to the table if I get the chance.

I’ll say, the iron clays are expensive, but worth it.
Other cheap poker sets can also do the job, but have far less of a wow factor (depending on the set obv)

I used a cheap poker set for my board games for a while before buying Iron Clays, and any poker set will do for most games, but I like the Iron Clays because the denominations in the 200 set are great for 18xx train games, and other games that use a lot of money.

That said, most of the issues that were around when I started playing it seem to be patched. Tile rendering is still kind of funky sometimes, but other than that it’s working fine.
Right now licensing is the biggest challenge in pushing it forward. Capstone own the art but the designer owns the game

Depends on the game. This one is definitely harder to implement than others. I was part of the Alpha+Beta testing for trailblazers and it went to production super quickly with only a few minor issues along the way.
This one has been in alpha for over a year

If you have space to walk, you have space for more games

Do it! It’s out of print, 2nd edition is being discussed, but who knows how long it’ll take to come out.
get the first if you can!
One of my all time favourites

Gotta sell that oil!

I’d really like to see a polished digital version of Acquire.