18 - -

In 1974 Francis Tresham produced a boardgame called 1829.  The theme was the development of railways in England & Wales and was a mix of operating the railways as a company, and investing (or not) in shares in those companies.  

This game spawned a ridiculous number* of subsequent games along the same lines, sharing similar stylistic elements and broad mechanisms - covered by the umbrella term 18XX.

As a general rule I'm not into these games (or any game that really requires a spreadsheet) but I do have one 'lightweight' 18XX - 18 Lilliput.  Indeed so lightweight the 18XX fraternity largely disown it.

Other than it being 'small' in comparison to the hefty 'real world' 18XXs I'm not sure what the Gulliver's Travels reference is supposed to be.  I was pleased to get it off the shelf today with a 2-player 're-learning' game with D; a friend of very many years.

It proved quite a close game.

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From Boardgamegeek: 
"18xx is the collective term used to describe a set of railroad-themed stock market and tile laying games. The 18xx set has two main branches: the 1829 branch (1829, 1825, 1853, and 1829 Mainline) and the 1830 branch (1830, 1856, 1870, etc). There are also a number of crossover games which sit somewhere between the two branches (eg 1860). While general railroad operations such as track laying are critical to both branches, the two branches are fundamentally quite different in character and player focus. The 1829 branch games emphasize stock-picking and portfolio management while the 1830 branch concentrates more on financial prediction and stock market manipulation."

* BGG currently lists 282 variant 18XX games and expansions...