Tower Hill
And may the Saints Preserve Us!
Hee. That’s put the cat among the pigeons. Not my turn though, not until… <does the math>… well, no sense screaming it out. 
I admit to a bit of ire over my abortive win attempt being crushed.
And like Malacandra, I will now defer until…something happens. Something involving zone 3 stations. Heh heh heh…
If you really want to see something happen, wait until someone puts the river boat service into play. Something will happen, mark my words.
I’ll factor that into my sims tomorrow. And if that doesn’t help, I’ll update my sims with Welsh.
Oooops!
[She sneaks into a corner hoping no-one will notice]
Perfectly understandable. This has been an odd game, because of the plethora of asides, non-plays, etc. You obviously SAW Ravenscourt Park used… just not as a play. Lord knows my own embarassing fog moment snatched … er… continuation from the jaws of victory.
I must admit, the topology of this particular game is as wild as I’ve ever seen. I feel we’re at the cusp of falling into some higher-order dimensional matrixing here - which hasn’t been seen since the Prague Winternationals back in 2002, when Pei actually vanished between moves. Now I know most folks claim that the security video caught him sneaking off for a smoke during Bullfinch’s turns, but I know he really was sucked through a Moebius Inversion when he conjoined the Metropolitan, Central, and Hammersmith and City Lines with a **Mile End - Liverpool Street **Combination in Moves 267a and 267c.
I mean, obviously, the Security Video was a future echo - if you’d notice, his beard has more gray in it than can normally be explained by the usual MC stress.
I’m very suspicious of the fact that no-one has played since post 241, but despite a thorough Meta-Analysis using a neat little program I wrote (and don’t try to tell me that’s not allowed, it’s perfectly acceptable except when playing at the weekend under Jewish Rules), I can’t work out why no-one has gone for Morden. But I suspect I’m about to find out.
That went much better this morning. I updated my sims with the Anticongruency Principle as per the Bosnia & Herzegovina - Republika Sprska quarterly scrum guidelines, and found that MC is reachable in no less than 15 moves from our current position. At least as per the Fall 2009 scrum, where the BiH team thought they’d wear out the RS team, but the RS team had used this principle with the aforementioned Priory Rule to con BiH into the Dollis Hill Loop three times, finally exiting at MC. Scrum final score: Republicans 5, Federals 2.
So to start a potential game-ending sequence (but hardly definite, because I don’t understand enough Serbian to be certain of my simulations): Walthamstow Queen’s Road, refilling my Oyster card at the line transfer, and shuffling the discards back into the deck.
NETA: Dead Cat, the Straczynski Attack would have been devastating here, if you hadn’t posted under my write-up. With the near simulpost, it’s a strong (though not commanding) sequence.
I will decline Purple Flags and move to a Zone 1 location.
Waterloo, positioning myself by depositing gold tokens at Bank. I hope to capitalize in the Early Endgame by this move.
Ah, my plan is coming together.
And by coming together, I mean meandering off towards central London in a completely unplanned direction.
So, salvaging at least position: Sloane Square.
Victoria
Nubs in.
Farringdon. And Zone 1 travel re-established.
I am just a passing observer, but it appears no one played Shadwell after Bank, which leads to a very suspect call on the nubs in. I know this is a casual game, but Lord Blitherhithe was pretty specific on that point.
Whoops, no one actually played Bank, my bad, round of muffins for all, my shout.
Cliffy did, in post 214. Pints and muffins both.
Paddington with connections to NR and both ends of the Circle Line.
Well, all I can say is thank goodness Scuba Ben posted so soon after I did, probably without seeing move - I re-ran my Meta-Analysis program and it seems that after my Morden, Bricker had MC in one! I must be more careful next time - I forgot that Tudor Court Rules had appeared earlier in the game, which threw all the calculations off. A lucky escape.
Anyway, I continue to apply pressure to terminuses with Ealing Broadway.
The Earl of Middlesex would have been proud of that move. Now two yellows dropped on the oyster card and day return to MudChute would have been more elegant, but obviously early Tudor Court methodologies had only scratched the surface of forward options and token defaults. Some scholars have suggested that early Elizabeathan era futures trading was delveloped from the Tudor Court rules and ultimatly led to todays advanced financial derivative instruments. Frankly if a certain someone had spent less time throwing the keys to the royal carriage into the maze at hampton court during wife swapping parties and more time refining the Aldywytch - Blackfriars variations we would not have the banking crisis we have today, and more importantly, Fotheram would not have made such a fool of himself at the 1829 Peking Regional Invitational.