Gamehelpeighteenroyalgorgerailsoffremont

Overview

Colorado, the 1870s: the Denver & Rio Grande and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe are locked in a real historical standoff — the "Royal Gorge War" — over the only practical rail route through a narrow canyon on the Arkansas River. 18RoyalGorge drops players into that moment as financiers rather than railroad men: you buy private assets, found and capitalize railroad companies, lay track across the map, and run trains for revenue, while the stock market rewards well-run companies and punishes neglected ones. Two side industries — Colorado Fuel & Iron (steel) and Victor Gold (gold mining) — feed income back into the whole table. Highest personal net worth when the game ends wins.

18RoyalGorge is a fan-made, from-the-ground-up design built for the Colorado market and railroad history, playable standalone without owning any other 18xx title.

• Designer/Publisher theme: Colorado railroads, 1870s–1880s
• Players: 2–4
• Playing time: ≈ 90 minutes
• Complexity: Moderate–heavy (18xx family); best for players comfortable with stock-and-route economic games
• BGA status: Alpha

How you win

At game end, each player totals:

• Cash on hand
• Market value of every share held
• Value of privates still personally owned

Highest total wins; ties are settled by most cash on hand.

The game loop

Private Asset Auction (once, at game start)
        ↓
   Stock Round  <---------------------+
        ↓                             |
   Operating Round 1                  |
        ↓                             |
   Operating Round 2                  |
        ↓                             |
   End-of-Round Upkeep  --------------+
   (repeats until a game-end trigger fires)

One Stock Round is always followed by two Operating Rounds before the upkeep step runs and the cycle repeats.

Private asset auction

The game opens with a one-time auction of five private assets — two yellow, two green, one brown tier — sold left to right in ascending $5 bids. Winning a private grants its owner a small ongoing income and, later, a special ability once the private is sold into a railroad company. Whoever finishes the auction with the most cash gets first priority in the opening Stock Round.

Stock Round

Players buy and sell railroad shares. Selling shares moves a company's stock price down; a company whose shares are entirely held by players (none left in the bank pool) sees its price tick up at round's end. Buying a company's president's certificate is how new railroads get founded — the buyer sets a starting share price, pays double into the company treasury, and places its home station on the map. Whoever holds the most shares in a company is its president and runs it during Operating Rounds.

Operating Round

Each company, richest stock price first, takes a turn to:

1. Lay track — extend or upgrade tiles across the map
2. Build a station — plant a token to claim a city for its routes
3. Run trains — choose the best-paying route(s) for each train
4. Pay or withhold — send revenue to shareholders (raises share price) or keep it in the treasury (drops share price)
5. Buy trains — from the bank or another company, to keep pace as the available train fleet advances through phases
6. Buy a private (optional) — absorb a private asset's income and ability directly into the company

As the newest trains are bought, the game phases forward (yellow → green → brown → silver), unlocking new tile colors, letting more companies start, and eventually rusting out the oldest trains.

Colorado-specific flavor

• Colorado Fuel & Iron (steel) — every tile laid consumes steel from a shared market; money spent on steel accumulates and is paid out as a dividend to CF&I shareholders.
• Victor Gold & gold mining — companies can ship gold cubes from gold-mine hexes for bonus revenue; that income likewise builds toward a dividend for Victor Gold shareholders.
• The Royal Gorge itself — a contested set of hexes with reserved station space; the historic Treaty of Boston event auto-resolves the standoff mid-game, handing Rio Grande extra station tokens and saddling both feuding railroads with debt they must pay down before the game ends.

Game end

Play continues until a game-end trigger fires (bank runs low, or a specific end condition described in the rulebook), after which the current set of Operating Rounds finishes before final scoring.

Full rules & in-game reference

• The complete rulebook PDF is linked from the BGA game page.
• For a dense mid-play lookup (turn-by-turn rules, tables of costs and thresholds), see the in-game "How to play?" tab, sourced from Gamehelpeighteenroyalgorgerailsoffremont.md in this same directory.