I have put together a few helpful tools that you might find useful for your game nights.

• Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor score calculator
• 18 BosWash score calculator

Lately, I have been spending a lot of time playing Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor. Most of my matches happen on Board Game Arena, where I play about 40 times every month. It is safe to say that I really enjoy this game. To me, it feels like a big step up from the original Forest Shuffle. It offers a nice change of pace compared to the expanded version of the game as well.

There is one specific plan of action that stands out as the best way to win. If you want to know the secrets, you can look up the ultimate Dartmoor strategy online. However, actually carrying out this strategy is much more engaging than just hoping to draw deer and wolves like in the base game. It is a very strong approach, too. When I play against opponents who do not use this specific strategy, I usually win. There is one other method that can keep up, but only if it gets a very lucky start. When I face someone else using that top strategy, the matches become a real battle. It often comes down to who can get their engine running faster. But for a game that only takes about 15 minutes, it is a great experience.

Since no one else had created a scoring app for Dartmoor yet, I decided to make one. I based my version on the excellent Forest Shuffle app that already exists. My tool is a bit simpler and only handles scoring for a single player. On the plus side, it is very lightweight, consisting of just one HTML page and one JavaScript file. This makes it really easy to update or edit in the future if needed.

When we play 18xx games, we usually use the 18xx.games website to act as our game moderator. However, 18 BosWash is not available on that site. It is a streamlined version of 18 India that comes from the Traxx magazine. Because it is not on the website, we have to use physical poker chips when we play it. Using chips is not bad, but the scoring at the end of the game can be a hassle.

Just like in 18 India, the final value of shares in 18 BosWash depends on two things: the stock market price of the share and the total value of the company’s assets. Those assets include cash, rolling stock, and any shares the company owns. Calculating all of that by hand is a real pain and takes a long time.

Using a spreadsheet makes it much easier. That is what we used to do for 18 India before 18xx.games started supporting it. However, carrying around the game, a pile of poker chips, and a laptop is pretty annoying. So, I created a simple app using HTML and JavaScript. It makes it easy to figure out the value of each company and the final scores for players based on the shares they hold. This tool should make the end of the game go much faster and helps prevent mistakes in the math.

By the way, 18 BosWash is an awesome game. It is definitely one of the best 18xx titles out there. It takes the best elements from 18 India but streamlines the rules to cut out the extra weight. Both games have a spot in my collection, but right now, I think I prefer 18 BosWash just a little bit more.

Of course, the most interesting 18xx game in my collection is still 18Korea.

I have been playing so many 18xx games with poker chips recently that I decided it was time to buy a set of Ruben’s Mini-Chips. Having a smaller, high-quality set of poker chips that is easy to carry around started to sound very attractive to me.

I chose a set of 300 chips with the following breakdown: 70 chips worth 1, 70 chips worth 5, 80 chips worth 20, 50 chips worth 100, 20 chips worth 500, and 1 chip worth 2,000. I went with the Hex design. I wanted to be able to see the denominations clearly, and that style appealed to me the most. The “Chains” design was too simple for my taste, and “Rails” felt a bit too decorative.

I am hoping this set works out well for us. The last time we used my Venerati set, we ran a bit short on the 1-value chips, and that set only has 50 of them to begin with. The Mini-Chip set is also much lighter; it weighs 1.2 kilos less than the Venerati set. The size of the Mini-Chip boxes is 1.5 dm³, while the Venerati boxes are 2.2 dm³, so there is a big difference in how much space they take up, too.