18xx with Ambie: Where to Get Games

Hi! I’m Ambie, and this is my video series about 18xx games. If you’re not sure what 18xx games are, check out my 18xx intro video. In this video, I’ll go over how you can acquire 18xx games.

One of the main barriers to get into 18xx games is acquiring them. As I mentioned in my Where to Start video, there are a couple games that have been printed by major publishers and are widely available, but that’s pretty rare. Most of the 18xx games are more difficult and expensive to get, since they’re either not widely published or out of print.

One of the easiest ways to get new 18xx games is through specialty publishers like All-Aboard Games or Golden Spike Games. Unlike traditional publishers, these are basically one person making the games by hand, so that drives up the price of the products. But there are quite a few games you can order from them if you’re willing and able to spend the money. And even though the games aren’t traditionally published, the component quality is still really nice. Here’s an example of a game from All-Aboard Games - it has mounted boards and nicely laminated pieces.

If you’d rather spend the time yourself, you can print and play your own game. There are a bunch of 18xx games that the designers have made available for print and play. We’ve print and played a couple of games, but there are a lot of pieces to cut out and it takes a lot of time to make a complete game, especially if you’re not experienced at making games! There’s also a bit of an upfront cost for this method, since you’ll need to get crafting equipment. We got a printer, laminator, a rotary cutter, a cutting mat, and ruler in order to make our print and play.

The other way you can get games is by getting used copies of games, and that’s actually how we got most of our games. You can find some games on eBay, but the website BoardGameGeek also has some good tools for finding used games. If you have a specific title you want, then you can look at the Geek Market on the game page to see all the copies people have listed for sale. You can also see the price history here. Since a lot of the 18xx games are out of print and rare, they generally cost a lot on the secondary market, so it’s useful to check the price history of the game to see how much it usually costs.

In addition to the Geek Market, you can also trade games through BoardGameGeek under GeekTrade. We’ve got a couple of our 18xx games through trading other board games. But with buying and trading used games, your first request doesn’t always go through. Unless you get lucky, you’ll probably need to message a lot of different people in order to get what you want. So basically if you want a specific game, keep an eye on the game page on BoardGameGeek and message everyone who has it for sale or trade!

There is also a yahoo mailing list with a lot of 18xx gamers that I’ll link in the notes below. There are a lot of 18xx veterans in the list, so if you join the group you can find used copies of games there as well. Thanks for watching 18xx With Ambie! You can comment below or email me at ambie@dicetower.com with any questions, comments, or suggestions for future videos!

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