Lords of the Sierra Madre

Designer's Errata

3.5 (Add) It costs no movement points to move into or out of a police block or coastal block to/from the surrounding district.

3.8 (Add) Coastal blocks may be treated by land units exactly as police blocks, see 3.5.

6.81 (Add) Ships may only attack, and be attacked, by units within the coastal block (see 3.8) they occupy.

7.72 Heirs (Add) A card that is discarded by a dead player (or any card that is abandoned unwanted by everyone) goes into the discard pile. If it is a common card instead of a quarterly card, it goes back into the common card deck, so as to be available on subsequent turns. IOUs are transferable to one's heirs, just like the family gold.

8.34 (Add) Lumber must follow the shortest number of rail lines from the lumber rail chosen to the mine being serviced. Optionally, mines receiving lumber are raised one in profit compared to ones without lumber.

Unless this new optional rule is used, mines do not receive any advantages from connecting to lumber, but nevertheless must accept lumber if it is available, or else are vulnerable to stockholder's meeting. Historically, Greene's mines at Cananea received lumber from Greene's lumber railroad RR27 in Chihuahua, a long ways away.

8.35 (Add) Mines must trace to a smelter to raise their profit, if one is available linked by rail. If more than one is available, they must go to the one the fewest number of districts away. Note that the El Paso smelter can smelt only gold/silver mines. If no smelter is linked to a mine, being linked to a city will raise the profit by two.

8.38 (Add) Investor's capital, including capital enhanced by bank ownership, is immediately available to a player at his hacendado counter location.

8.39 b (Add) A hacienda/slave plantation starts at its initial profit if rebuilt.

8.41 PAYMENTS (Add) If a player chooses not to pay for an immature card, he can sell it to any player willing to take over the capitalization. If nobody takes the card and the enterprise is abandoned, the shareholders are disgruntled and the player must abandon investor's capital for one year. Optionally, if capitalization of a W card is abandoned, it can be seized by a store owner, if any. If more than one, the player abandoning the card chooses.

CHINESE STORE: There is a store location noted in Nogales, Sonora. But there is no card for this store, because when Decision Games decided to remove the expansion set enterprises from the map, they forgot to remove the Chinese store.

8.62 (Add) Players are allowed to use any store location as a starting point for their W cards if no stores have been built. If the store in Nogales, Sonora (the Chinese store) or the store in Guaymas, Sonora (the German store) is used, weapons starting there are legal until moved outside the police block.

NOTE: Historically, Chinese were a major (yet heavily persecuted) factor in small free enterprise operations in Sonora.

9.4 (Add) Immature C or RR cards on strike shift their maturation one to the right during the maturation segment.

10.0 (Add) There are no limits to the number of tactical rounds. Optionally, if players do not mind the complication of keeping track of the number of rounds, it may be specified that after 45 rounds (in which for every round each player gets an opportunity to move), all players are forced into the rebasing segment.

11.34 (Add) Troop counters cannot be eliminated until all rifles or machine guns are eliminated first.

11.41 (Add) Counters not in a police block cannot attack police or strikers within the block, nor interfere with taxing within the block.

11.43 (Add) Counters must surrender as a stack. The surviving members of a counter stack must surrender if they take any losses after losing all rifle, machine gun, and gunboat counters.

11.75 (Add) A Hacendado gets half the tax money collected, rounding down. This means that the hacendado does not get the gold if only one Au is collected, which is the normal (peacetime) limit of tax collectors.

11.86 (Add) Money spent rebuilding bridges also goes to a store owner, if any, (as long as a store owner does not end up paying himself.)

12.1 (Add) Multiple military forces of a territory may rebase to the same fort or HQ.

13.17 (Add) A military leader, or any regional puppet, can run for office outside his territory. For instance, a leader of Chihuahuan federales can run for office in Sonora. If a military leader is elected to office, his troops are assumed to be led by a replacement leader of the original leadership.

13.41 (Add) Presidents cannot personally lead troops; in times of war or peace they must remain at their residence.

14.3 (Add) IOUs deduct from a player's ending victory total.

MAP ERRATA: Movement from Texas to Dona Ana County cannot occur except by crossing the bridge over the Rio Grande.

7.5 Decision Games made it an optional rule how much gold players start with. I prefer having the players start with no gold. Otherwise, there is an artificial 1898 "feeding frenzy" wherein all the desirable common cards are bought.

After Action Report

Phoenix Historical Games Society, Dec. 30, 1995.

Wm. Ran. Hearst (Jim Gutt) 16 Au
Wm. Greene (Jason Curcio) Killed in Spanish American war, his heir received 32 Au
Luis Terrazas (Glenn Gieske) 40 Au
Albert Fall (Bill Banks) 60 Au
Lord Cowdray (Tim Barr) 2 Au
Rafael Ysabel (Chris LeFevre) Killed fighting in Yucatan

Five hour game, six player, play until 1908. This was one of two LotSM games played at the same time. I think Tim did not shuffle the deck very well, since every disaster, plague and misfortune possible occurred, and at one point every enterprise was busted. Fall started an Ostrich farm near Yuma, only to have it succumb to hoof and mouth disease. Fall (Banks) wondered if this were scientifically possible. Two players died in wars, including Bill Greene (Jason) who would have been a Democratic Party Presidential contender had he survived. As it was, William Randolph Hearst (Jim Gutt) ran in 1904 against Roosevelt, and again in 1908 against Taft. Losing both times even though he was the favorite. Eventually, the stock crash ends, Fall gets a mine going and wins handily.

Wm. Greene (Phil Eklund) 73 Au
Luis Terrazas (Don Dedecker) 26 Au
Von Kleist (Joel Borie) 12 Au
Lord Cowdray (Tim Dedecker) 80 Au
Rafael Ysabel (Mike Paetz) 51 Au

Five hour game, five player, play until 1906. This game was played simultaneous to the calamitous previous game mentioned. This game contrasted sharply with the other one in that there were 6 mines and a smelter going, with two more mines and two more smelters imminent, plus various haciendas, etc. Halley's comet was the only real nuisance. Oh, and the pesky Baja Bandits. These Maderistas, funded by the nefarious German player (Joel), shrugged off attacks from rurales, federales, rail artillery, machine guns, and buffalo soldiers. Before they were finally destroyed, my (Greene's) Phelps Dodge mines in Sonora were completely destroyed. Thus, the British player (pre-teenaged Tim Dedecker) plucked out the victory.

The Game Cabinet - editor@gamecabinet.com - Ken Tidwell