Played 18CZ yesterday … apparently it was my second time, but the first was pushing a decade ago. (I do vaguely remember playing it, in that I can tell you where I was when I played it, but no details of the game). The “hook” of CZ is that there are small, medium and large companies, and larger companies can buy out smaller companies and get their trains, cash, tokens, etc. They don’t even have to be connected.

Like many of “Lonny’s” games, there are novel mechanisms. There’s also a fixed time scale (as compared to a fixed bank). Apart from the S/M/L companies, there are also privates that are auctioned off and provide cash flow and can be sold to companies for a slowly increasing value (based on turn), which is quite interesting in terms of capitalization. They also have some special powers, but all privates with the same income stream have the same powers.

Having played this and now a growing number of Lonny’s games (1848, 1880: China, 1840, 18 Lilliput, 18 Mag, and Russian Railways) …. I’ve never loved any of them, although I would play them all again. (China especially deserves a second try, I think). He’s got interesting ideas, but he’s thrown them at the wall and — at least for me — they haven’t stuck.

Rating — Indifferent (but would play again).