Ticket to Ride – Gangrene’s Review
First, here is the boardgamegeek link:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9209
Basically, the goal of Ticket to Ride is to build the biggest railroad empire, by claiming routes on a map of the US. (Other versions of the game take place in the whole of Europe, or Germany.) The game ends when any player has 2 or less train cars to place. Points are awarded for the number of cars in a route, for having the highest number of cars in a contiuous path, and for completing paths between cities (for example, San Francisco to Miami).
Game One
I played this for the first time two weeks ago, with my wife and father-in-law. As with most of my game experiences, I had to somehow maneuver my victims into playing through subterfuge, or bullying. I can’t remember which.
My wife detests rules, she seems to think they get in the way of gameplay. Luckily, the number of things that can be done in the game is limited to three.
1) Claim a route on the board.
You do this by “spending” train cards that match the color of the routes marked between cities. A route made of three red cars, requires three red train cars. Certain cards depict Locomotives, which are wild. Any number of Locomotives can be used in place of the necessary colored cards. Some routes are grey, and can be completed by any set of train cards of the same color. For example, a route made of four grey cards could be claimed by placing four black cards, or four green cards, or of course, 2 yellow cards and 2 locomotives.
2) Draw Train cards
There is a common deck of train cards, face down, as well as five cards in a kitty, face up. You are allowed to take one locomotive from the kitty, or two cards from the kitty and/or the deck. After any card is taken from the kitty, it is replaced by a card from the deck.
3) Draw Tickets
There is a second face-down deck of cards called “Tickets”. Each Ticket defines a path between two cities on the map, and a point value for completing the path. A longer path gets upwards of 20 points, a short path may get you four points. If you choose to draw tickets, you pull three from the deck, and have the option of discarding up to two. (You _must_ keep at least one of the tickets.) The risk is, if you can’t complete the route by the end of the game, the value of the route is subtracted from your score in the final tally.
Since there are entire sets of turns devoted to collecting cards, the game moves fairly quickly, only slowing down when a player decides to pull tickets, and must look over the board to decide which cards to keep. (By this time though, players may be grateful to have a minute to plan their strategy!)
By the end of the game, the wife had won (as usual) and I think I came in second. Father-in-law was itching for a re-match, since I screwed him with a few mid-game rules corrections. (Innocent thought they were.)
More than anything though, I came away impressed with how “full” the game felt, yet being very lean on actions. (I will expound upon some of the strategy in later posts.) Although there are only three things to do, they all feel momentous when you play them.
I have since read the descriptions to the expansions, and am convinced that they can only needlessly clutter a very tight, almost perfect game.
In fact, the only complaint I have is that the person at the top of board has a disadvantage, at least for an inexperienced player.
So… don’t be surprised if you find yourself huggermuggered into a game of Ticket to Ride. (This week’s D&D session got hijacked for a good 30 minutes pre-campaign.) Give it a try, you’ll have a great time.
