Ticket to Ride

Sam wrote:Weird board. As I mentioned after we played, it does seem that taking "two from the top" — which I tried to avoid, but Karl and Paul must have spend half their turns trying to get lucky — is way more useful than in any other version of the game. I really don't like that because it leaves face up cards unchanging for so much longer, which itself encourages more taking random cards from the top of the deck, which leaves getting the cards you want down to luck. This would be bad enough, but then the locomotives are so valuable for technology and ferries, and getting them is down to luck also, so executing a particular strategy is a tedious process of hoping you'll get lucky locomotives — which is exactly what happened for the middle portion of our game. It seems to take away a lot of what I like about TtR, which is playing efficiently and flexibly. Or maybe I just wasn't playing flexibly enough, and I should hold off committing to any strategy by buying technology until later in the game, hopefully hoarding a couple of locomotives in the meantime.

Karl wrote:I enjoyed both versions of TtR tonight, UK and Pennsylvania; both bring something different to the tried and tested formula. Pennsylvania adds just one new element, allowing you to take shares in railway companies and end game scoring based on how many you collect. It adds enough to freshen it up and give you something else to think about and results in very high scoring games.

The UK map and rules have the biggest deviation from the base game of those I've played (Europe, Europa 1912, Nordic, USA, Asia Maps). It introduces technology which can be bought using locomotives. Any 4 cards can be used as a locomotive (rather than 4 of the same), hence why Paul and I were taking random cards from the deck, they can be much more valuable than usual and it's a good option if the face up cards aren't helpful. The map is much tighter and plays more like the Nordic one, relying more heavily on lots of shorter routes and there's more opportunity to block people. It feels very different and I get why some might see it as moving too far from the original game but I enjoy having an option to mix it up.

Sam wrote:Ticket to Ride Asia, the teams version, feels somehow more co-operative than the more traditional examples (Pandemic etc.), because you aren't allowed to confer, which takes away the opportunity for the stronger player to take control from the weaker, they can only attempt to understand the other player based on their game actions, and attempt to assist, hoping it will pay dividends. Each player has their private ticket cards as well as the shared ones, so your attention is spit between helping them and helping yourself, and even when your team mate takes an action that makes your own turn harder you have to acknowledge they have their own ambitions, that will ultimately benefit the partnership. It's like a marriage between two sociopaths.

The no conferring rules also gives the opportunity to amusingly interpret every grunt and twitch from members of opposing teams as a complex strategic communication and therefore a rules infraction.

PaulC wrote:
I'll bring Switzerland in a couple of weeks, to enable us to compare and contrast...

PaulC wrote:I'm with PaulyG on the US vs Europe debate. Europe never feels as challenging to me, there are always stations to get you out of a fix.