NickCon was this weekend and we played games of Titan, Thunderstone, and Dominant Species. Dave got eliminated early from the Titan game and decided that since crayon rails is really a lot like solitaire anyway that he'd just play a single player game and count how many turns it took him to win. (46 turns in the new Eurorails.) He also played a game of Innovation with Pounder after he died from Titan as well.
We got to talking afterwards about what sort of rules should be used in a single player crayon rails game. I was a little concerned that you wouldn't get enough calamities to simulate a 'real' game and suggested flipping up 3 more cards for every card you use yourself. Robb pointed out since this always happens after a delivery it won't hurt as much as it 'should'. When Dave was playing he was just setting aside a dollar for each turn so he could count them up afterwards but Robb suggested setting aside the top card of the deck each turn. This causes calamities to happen between your turns some of the time and causes no more bookkeeping since you need to count turns taken anyway. So as long as you're getting a reasonable number of flips compared to a normal game this seems like a pretty good solution.
We did some napkin math and it seemed like it should work out pretty well to get the same number of card draws as in a 4 player game. The lack of anyone else building track you need to build around, that no one can grab your extra loads, and that no one can build ferries/chunnels on you does still make the game 'easier' than a normal game but it should be a lot shorter and still pretty fun.
We also decided rather arbitrarily that you're not allowed to cycle your hand and need to just run with the cards you draw. I'm not sure how I really feel about that in retrospect but it seems like a reasonable handicap to make up for the lack of interaction with other players.
I'm going to give it a shot sometime this week I think and see if I can't beat Dave's score.
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