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The trigger happy mergers probably helped me more than they hurt. At one point I dumped a spice company in the chaos and took the cash lead, letting me get a bargain on a rubber merger. It put me back into the game, but it wasn't enough to take the win.

I have played Bus at three. It's been awhile, so I can't say too much about it. That said, I do remember having fun at that count.

As far as expropriation, I felt confusion more than anything. It got better as the game went on, but it does take a moment to wrap your head around it. Still, I though it was an interesting mechanic.

Nah, I probably won't make it to Pax Unplugged. I will be at Age of Steam Con, so I might get a play in there.

Horseless Carriage is great. SoPac is one I still need to try. There was a copy at DoamCon last weekend, but I didn't get a game in. I did get West Riding Revisited in, which is excellent. It's one of the few cube rails to have minor and major railways. I'd like to see it licensed, but it's a little unlikely

I loved John Deere American Farmer back in the day. Unfortunately it doesn't work on modern machines. The menus don't display right. If it wasn't for that, it would be half-playable. The deluxe version might not have that problem, but I never got around to trying it.

One funny quirk was that family members would gain happiness from certain items (housing, bbq, pools, etc) and lose it from working. If happiness dropped too far for two long, you'd get an event about them leaving to join the French Foreign Legion or some other nonsense (there were a handful of variants.) The thing is, though, the happiness gained from these material possessions would degrade over time, meaning that it quickly evolved into a materialism simulator as you built pools (or giant statues of Paul Bunyan) to replace the pools that no longer where providing happiness.

You could also just hire people. That was usually the way to go if you wanted to get any serious work done. As long as you could pay wages, the hired help would stick around.

Maybe the obvious answer, but East of Eden. It's a genuine masterpiece.