During a recent game of Mornington crescent, some posters appeared to confused as to the rules. This post is designed to set down a basic set of guidelines for future play.
These rules are for the SDMB only and are obviously not applicable to championship play.
MC
MC on the SDMB does not need an MC, although one can be nominated before play begins BASIC RULES FOR TEAM PLAY
Team play must consist of two teams of two players.
The team on the right must begin playing in a clockwork direction and must always endeavour to travel in that direction when rules permit. The team on the left must always begin playing counter clockwise and must always endeavour to travel in that directions when rules permit.
The player on the far right is deemed to be the runner. The player on his left is his blocker. The player on the far left is deemed to be the runner, the player on his right is his blocker.
BASIC RULES FOR SINGLE PLAY - LINEAR VARIATION
There is one token (poltroon) on the board at the beginning of play. All players use this piece in strict rotation. The counter can be decoupled in two situatuions: sidings and when switching to alternate modes of transpotation.
BASIC RULES FOR PLAY - PARALELL VARIATION
Each player has his or her own token (woblet) on the board at the beginning of play. A player may never control more than one token at any time. Woblets can be combined only in sidings AND while being shunted simultaneously.
STATIONS
Mainline stations are wild.
DLR staions are allowable
The North London Line is allowable
The Thames riverboat is allowable
Buses are permitted ONLY if significant disruption can be avoided.
The use of trams south of the river is allowable, but highly dicouraged.
The Rail Link to Heathrow is NOT allowable under any circumstances. Any attempted use is grounds for a birching from Sven.
Can anyone else suggest rules that should automatically come into play before our next escapade?
But wouldn’t allowing North London Line and Thames riverboat just screw up the nisbet placement? Unless Throckmorton Exception is in force, of course. But I don’t particularily like Throckmorton Exception - I’ve found it makes the game confusing and hard to understand for the outside watcher.
Throckmorton Exception can make for great gameplay providing everyone agrees beforehand on a set number of Moorgate deferrals per player (not so important if playing High Brabbers due to the Throckmorton follow-through). This is where newbies come unstuck.
Yes, playing both sets of stations in the same game leads to all sorts of consternation. But it’s common courtesy to have all stations enscribed onto the board, even if several cannot be played in a particular game. Maybe Mrs Trellis will send some appropiately shaped crotchet covers with her next letter which will cover areas of the board not in play in common variations.
Well,
I would like to thank you for clearing that up for us dumb yanks, I know that I feel much better now (I told ya before, them damn brits is nuts).
unclviny (the self appointed leader of the dumb yanks)
Staggers barred? Mmm, I haven’t tried Mornington Crescent with staggers barred, but I can see the advantages. Might I also suggest that the crontubulation effect at Russell Square is applicable right from the start of the game?
I have no objection to Trellis-Brabbers, but I see no reason that it be compulsory for every game. Desirable yes, just not a given, even if it does block off the DLR
How about restricting ourselves to London? Is there any advantage here? Mornington Croissant, perhaps?
I would also like (as Francesca did in the current game) to bask in a little reflected glory. I actually saw Mrs Trellis play once. I can’t have been more than about seven years old. It was at a private match in North Wales* which I saw on whilst on the Snowdon Light Railway. It left a last impression on me as you can undoubtedly see from my playing style. She is a magnificent woman, even if her playing days are behind her.
Much later I found out that I had stumbled across a "black"match played by the underground railways of Llanberis. Mrs Trellis’ involvement in the illicit MC scene is not often commented on.
That’s been tried on occasion, and whilst the idea has merits, it often leads to double poltroon lock, which as you all know, can occur when a player crontrubulates on the first round before broats can be declared.
Absolutely correct, TheLoadedDog. At the risk of delving a little too deeply into the technical history of the game, it was for precisely this reason that Trellis and others (Zierpinski, Krunk etc.) argued for crontrubulation to be made contingent upon prior lateral movement executed from a non-ordinal station (excluding parks and greens, obviously). This was widely thought to be a neat solution until Lillith Frang’s devastating fifth move in the Stuttgart Invitational Masters of '83, when in desperate time trouble she somehow found the Whitechapel > Upney > Whitechapel (via valid crontrubulation) loop which drove a coach and horses through Trellis’s argument!
Personally, I don’t think the poltroon lock should ever have been made canonical. Sure, it’s fun to play and can add a little ‘zest’ to proceedings, but it can lead to some situations which purists - and I guess I am one - feel aren’t quite in the true spirit of the game. For example, take a standard opening that we’ve all used a zillion times: the Djordjevich Bakerloo Defence. Solid and reliable, right? Wrong! Try it with a perfectly legitimate move such as Royal Oak > Cannon Street, and so long as your opponent isn’t west of the Northern Line s/he can declare poltroon lock in two against any defence. What kind of game play is that?
Tapioca, may I offer a friendly reminder that in the spirit of promoting good MC ethics here on the Boards we do not refer to so-called ‘black’ games, all of which are in any case non-canonical. Also, it may be considered libellous to suggest any ‘name’ player has ever participated in such activity (Jardell .v. Snetterton / Times Newspapers, Royal Courts of Justice, 1993).
What are people’s feelings on Monument/Bank. Should they automatically be considered as a single station? Or should the escalator be played as a seperate move?
Monument and Bank are two separate stations as far as I’m concerned and I always play them as such. And you can’t really play Jellock’s Sacrifice otherwise.