All my games
At the age of 23 I wanted to build my own 18xx, bigger than 1835. So I started to develop 1837: larger map, more companies...
It was not very well playtested (I was still green behind the ears) but I was lucky - it seemed to work. Only the rules were a little bit a mess - I apologize for the confusion I caused and thank for all the helping hands trying to solve this Gordic knot.
The Austrian game guru Ferdinand de Cassan encouragead me to offer my game for sale, so I made twenty colour copies of it and offerend them as a gamekit on the game fair 1994 in Essen. I was very surprised of the demand - I got orders for 40 more.
Stuart Dagger interviewed me and wrote an article in his magacine "Sumo". I was very proud of it.
My self-confidence was low, so it took me a long time to publish my next title: 1854. It was not very originally to place it in the same country as it's predecessor. But I introduced a lot of new features.
Again I introduced it on the game fair in Essen, Germany, in 2002. This time I sold 80 copies at once.
Then Helmut Ohley approached me with the suggestion to improve 1837. The result was a complete new game: 1824.
This was the start of the successful label Double-O.
A journey through Australia hat led me to a library in Melbourne where I deepened my knowledge about Australian railway history. And so Double-O-games finished in 2007 the next project: 1848.
We produced our games by ourselves, I can't count the tiles I had to cut out.
The picture of the box cover was taken by myself. Not the best one. There is no train on it...
In the interview with Stuart Dagger in 1994 I already had told him about plans of setting an 18xx game in ancient greek. Helmut and I realised this idea.
We got inot contact with Hanno Girke from Lookout Games. Because of the 10th anniversary of his company and because of his faible for 18xx games he published Poseidon. A milestone in my designer career: The first professionally published game!
Why not China as next country? Research in the internet brought up a lot of interesting issues for our next project.
From June 2009 until May 2010 I mad a journey round the world. During this time we playtested 1880 very, very much via email. It was funny to sit in Port Vila, Vanuatu, working on the train mix.
Russian Railroads! Award winning and astonishing!
We started with 18xx in Russia, added the TransSib track, and then - one day - we scipped the map board.
When we offered our prototype Hans im Glück company, the track pieces were still yellow, green, brown, gray and red.
It was the design which took the most time. After that our partnership broke up.
Scott Petersen from All Aboard Games asked me for permission for a reprint of 1837.
Granted.
We could convince Lookout Games to publish a combined 18xx: 1844 from Helmut Ohley and 1854 from Leonhard Orgler. Working title was 18Lederhosen.
The next milestone: I founded my own company to publish my own titles. I started with 18CZ. (I learned: no more games set in Austria! At least officially...)
As fate had it a producer from Czech Republic was looking for an 18xx title to publish a Czech version of it. So I started a cooperation with fox in the box and David Hanacek.
I used the crowdfunding platform kickstarter. It was a great success.
The Austrian Game Guru Ferdinand de Cassan asked me for a 18xx card game for the Austrian Spielefest. It didn't go into production.
In the year 2017 Ferdinand de Cassan died. Dedicated to him I published the card game.
A very good 18xx for beginners.
Because I wanted to publish one title every year I took the opportunity for a reprint of 1824.
A 2-player-version and a variant were added.
It was the most successful kickstarter campaign for me until today.
The idea for this game had been in my head for a long time: A Vienna tramway game! A lot of new
mechanisms are introduced.
In 18Mag I created a game for fans of minor companies. They last the whole game. Major Companies only give benefits for the minors.
In all of my games, I try to achieve historical accuracy. At the beginning of the 19nineties there was no internet, so I spent hours in the Austrian National Library to learn about Austrian railway history.
Nowadays I study Wikipedia and other sites - the internet is rich of useful information.
GMT released a reprint of 1848. Of course in much better quality.
In the same year Lookout Games released a reprint of 1888. Some call it one of the best 18xx games...
