Tag Archives: Ticket to Ride: Germany

9th August 2022

Pink, Blue, Orange and Lemon were the first to arrive, very soon followed by Plum and Jade. While they were waiting for food, the group decided to play a couple of quick games. First up was Moneybags, a game we played for the first time a few months ago. This is a very quick social deduction game with a similar premise to Ca$h ‘n Guns: players are a gang of thieves distributing their loot. In Moneybags, the “Godfather” first distributes the loot and players then take it in turns to either steal from another player, pass, or close their money bag and recuse themselves from the rest of the game.

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If a player is robbed, the victim can challenge if they think the thief was too greedy. If the victim has less than the robber, they win their challenge and take all the money for themselves, otherwise the thief wins and they take all the loot. After two rounds, the players that have not been eliminated compare the height of their piles of cash, and the one with the tallest stack is the winner. Pink started sharing out the cash while Blue explained the game. Blue then started, robbing Pink to demonstrate how it is done. It wasn’t long before the first player, Plum was eliminated, and everyone really understood how things worked.

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When she was robbed, Lemon was unlucky to lose her challenge to Orange on a tie leaving only Blue, Pink and Orange left at the end of the round. It was then a matter of comparing the three stacks to find that Orange was once again involved in a tie, but this time he lost to Pink on the tie-breaker (the winner being the player earliest in the turn-order). Pink relinquished his right to being the Godfather though and gave it to Orange who filled the money bags for a second round. Unfortunately, Orange failed to put any coins at all in Plum’s bag and put most of it in Lemon’s and Pink’s. This made Lemon the first target and Pink the second.

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Ill-advised challenges left both Lemon and Blue eliminated in the first round and Orange by the end of the second. Another three way comparison quickly pushed Pink into third leaving a close finish between Plum and Jade with Jade just sneaking in front. Two games were enough, and Jade suggested the group move on to something new: MANTIS, a game from the same people as Exploding Kittens. This is a simple set collecting game where, on their turn, players can choose to “Steal” or “Score”. Players declare their plan (and their victim if they are stealing) before they turn over the top card of the deck. When Stealing, if the colour matches cards belonging to their victim, then they take the cards and add them, face up to their array.

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When Scoring, if the colour matches any of their own cards, they turn over the cards and these become points—the first player to ten points is the winner. While this sounds like pure chance, there is one thing that makes the game less random: the backs of the cards show three colours, one of which is the card colour while the others are red herrings (or herrings of another colour). So whilst the game isn’t challenging, it rocks along nice and quickly. Blue took points on her first turn to take an early lead, but everyone else soon caught up and overtook her.

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Food started to arrive, and everyone tried (and failed) to finish before eating; it took a couple more rounds before Pink scored his tenth point. It was very close for second with almost everyone else on six or seven, but Orange just nicked it with eight. While everyone tucked in to their food, the rest of the group arrived. There was some debate as to who would play the “Feature Game” which was to be Alubari: A Nice Cup of Tea, but in the end, Green and Ivory took themselves and the game to the other side of the room to set up a four player game where they were eventually joined by Black and Purple.

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Alubari is a re-implementation of the popular worker-placement game, Snowdonia. It had been a while since any of the group had played Snowdonia, so they needed a quick refresher of the rules and to learn the new aspects of Alubari. The underlying mechanisms are essentially the same, but it has a slightly smoother feel, and of course, the setting is Darjeeling (in the Indian state of West Bengal). In this version of the game, players harvest Tea Estates and assist in the building of the Darjeeling and Himalayan Railway, from Siliguri Town to the summit at Ghum. In addition, players use Chai (made from from harvested tea leaves) which increases the power of their actions. Like the original game, players take it in turns to place their two workers on the action spaces available on the board.

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Once the workers have been placed, players carry out the actions in action order, that is to say, anyone who has a worker in Action A goes first, with the spaces within each Action numbered and activated in order. The Actions are: take Resources from the Stockyard; dig Rubble from the Tea Plantations; convert resources (Iron Ore into Iron Bars, Rubble into Stone or Stone into Rubble); lay Track; build Stations or buy Equipment; take Contract Cards, and finally, harvest Tea leaves or make Chai. Chai is very powerful because players can use it to to get an additional worker for the duration of one round.

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Chai can also be used to enhance actions. For example, players can normally take three Resources from the Stockyard including one Chai; paying a Chai increases the number of Resources they can take to five with a maximum of two Chai. Some of this mirrors Coal in the original Snowdonia game, but initially, there was a little confusion amongst players over the differences between Tea and Chai. There is a distinction here between Tea and Chai, with Tea being the raw leaf product (represented in the art by a leaf) and Chai being the refined product (represented by a teapot). Tea Harvests are shown by a leaf with an arrow which mean players collect Tea leaves equal to the number of tea estates owned by player multiplied by the current value of the Tea Harvest Track.

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The Tea Harvest Track works the same way as the Excavation Work (aka Dig) Rate and the Track Work Rate: they depend on the Weather. The back of the contract cards show the weather; at the start of each round the current Weather disk is removed, the other Weather disks shuffled forwards and the empty space filled with a disk that matches the back of the top card in the Contract deck. Thus, players can see what the weather will do for the next few rounds and use that to plan when to take actions. In general, the Excavation and Track Work Rates are increased by sun, decreased by rain and Work stops altogether when it is foggy; in contrast, the Tea Harvest Rate increases with rain, decreases with fog and is unaffected by sun.

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At the start of each round, the Stockyard is refilled with Resources which are drawn blind from a bag. As well as Iron Ore and Stone, the bag also contains a small amount of Chai and five Event Cubes. When one of these is drawn, from the bag, the game plays itself according to a Rondel. This design feature is intended to prevent players from hoarding Resources and thus slowing the game—the fewer Resources there are in the bag, the more likely it is that a white Event Cube will be drawn out. The Events include Excavate, produce Tea, build Stations and lay Track. This last is particularly important because the game ends at the end of the round when the final Track space, on the approach to Darjeeling is completed—this could be by a player or an Event.

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Once the rules had been run through, the game got underway. Right from the outset Black pointed out that it was through Contracts that the big scores were really made. The Contract Cards come in two parts: a Special Action part and an end game bonus. The Action can be used in any round, but its use must be declared before any Actions are resolved. Whether the Action is used or not, players can claim the bonus at the end of the game, and it was these to which Black was referring. Ivory took note of Black’s advice and very early on went for a hefty contract which would give him forty points if he could get five rail tracks.

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Considering that there are only fifteen tracks in the game, with four players and the game itself sometimes building track through the Events, the Contract for five rail segments looked like a tall order. However, as nobody was really paying attention to Ivory’s plans, with the help of a Chai super-boost, it proved easier than it should have been. Aside from that, Ivory, along with Black and Purple began with a fairly typical Snowdonia game approach, collecting building supplies. Green on the other hand, decided to experiment with the new Tea/Chai mechanisms and started clearing the Tea Estates. Although Green did get the first Tea Estate, everyone else also got one soon after.

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Green was able to continue this approach though, and by the first Tea Harvest, he had more estates than any one else. Green was also the first to gain Equipment, going for a simple one, the Chai Boiler, from the Promo Pack, and gained two Chai with it. He was able to use those Chai to boost his later actions. By halfway through the game he had built up quite a pile of Rubble, and only then realised that he could use this to build Stations. This wasn’t the only game blunder made with Stations. It was only towards the end of the game that Black suddenly remembered the first town on the map, where players could use Tea leaves to pay to build the Station. The first space only cost three leaves, but gave a whopping twelve points and Purple make use of that as soon as it was pointed out.

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Green took advantage of the Tea/Chai conversion after a very good Harvest, pushing himself to the top of the Chai track. He was then able to get a third worker and boost many of his actions the following round. Through most of the game Ivory held the start player token, with Green and Black only taking it a couple of times with Ivory taking it back straight away. The game was building nicely when suddenly, almost out of nowhere, it was over. There were eight Tracks built when everyone except Purple chose to lay Tracks in the next round. Green went first. He needed to build two Tracks for his contract—he had the Steel but the Track Work Rate was one and he had run out of Chai so couldn’t increase it.

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Next was Ivory who did have Chai, which allowed him to build two extra Track sections and he had the Steel to do it enabling him to build three in one go. Black also had Chai, but only two steel. Seeing that he may not get another chance, he used the Chai, but still needed to lay one more track for his Contract. So the game had gone from eight Track sections to fourteen in a single turn. Green was primed to get his second Track section to complete his Contract, but unfortunately for him, the game had other ideas. With three white Event Cubes, the second event was Lay Track triggering the end of the game, but no Track left to be built. From there, it was just the usual calculations with players maximising points with the last workers and Chai.

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Adding up the points, it turned out to be an incredibly close game. Purple and Green were within a whisker of Black who was the runner-up with sixty-nine and a half points (yes, this game does indeed give half points!). It was Ivory who was the clear winner, however, with his five track Contract that shot his score to the dizzying heights of ninety-six. In the post game discussion, the group agreed that some of the Chai boosts seemed more powerful than others, and the track laying bonus in particular seemed overly powerful. There also did not seem to be as many Tea Harvests as players expected (only three in the whole game including one from a Contract Card). This was only one game though and it is highly likely that others will play out quite differently.

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Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, after a bit of discussion, Blue swapped seats with Lime and he and Pink introduced Orange and Lemon to one of our favourite games: Ticket to Ride. We play this quite a bit in lots of different guises, so the plan was to start by playing a short game, the Demo edition, and then play a full sized version. The game is very straight-forward and the basic play is the same across all editions: on their turn, players can take train cards, build track by paying train cards, or take tickets which give end-game points. While the basic mechanisms remain though, the map, the number of train pieces change and some editions add extra little rules.

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In the first, Demo game (played on the Europe map), Lemon managed to get lots of matching tickets which meant she gave everyone else a bit of a spanking. Not being a native English speaker, Lemon queried the vernacular at which point Pink tried to explain that it was a sporting term, but everyone else including those on the next table insisted that he should explain it properly with all the meanings. Lemon and Orange opted to spare his blushes by looking it up, only to blush themselves when they found it. Much hilarity ensued and was shared with the neighbouring table.

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After the introductory game, Pink and “the Citruses” moved onto a “full version”, but in an effort to avoid “special rules” the group played a house ruled version of Ticket to Ride: Germany. This version of the game has its heritage in the Märklin limited edition that was the third game in the series and was published about fifteen years ago. Märklin make model railways, a bit like Hornby, but with German trains. The Märklin version of Ticket to Ride had special art work with a different Märklin train depicted on each individual card in the deck. More importantly, however, it introduced a passenger mechanism which made the game considerably more complex than the original.

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With the Märklin edition sold out, about ten years ago, Days of Wonder (presumably reluctant to renew the license for the Märklin branding) re-released the game for the German and Austrian market as Zug um Zug: Deutschland. This was a simpler version that used the same map, but without the passengers, although the 1902 expansion was released a a couple of years later to reintroduce them with a new, simpler mechanism. A few years after that, about five years ago, the German game was released for the worldwide market including both the Deutschland base game and the 1902 expansion—the only difference was the omission of two tickets.

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It was this newest Germany version of the game that the group played. However, although the variant includes the passenger mechanism and there is no official variant in the rules “as written” to remove them, in order to keep things simple, the group omitted that part of the game, effectively playing Zug um Zug: Deutschland. The game had just begun, when three rounds in, Pine arrived. The others offered to include him, but he declined and, as a result, he didn’t play anything at all, all evening. He did manage to recount the infamous game when he and Pink gave Blue and Burgundy a spanking over the Heart of Africa map as they got stuck in the middle blocking each other.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 3 – The Heart of Africa

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The German version has two types of ticket: long tickets (brown backed) and short tickets (blue backed). At the start of the game, players choose four in any combination of the two types, but must first announce what combination of Tickets they are drawing. Pink went for an almost exclusively long (brown) ticket strategy which he achieved with varied success, while the others went for a mixed ticket approach. There was a little difficulty reading the tickets as the game uses a slightly gothic font which can be a little difficult to read, especially for those who’d forgotten their glasses.

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Both Lemon and Lime claimed the long train line from Berlin to Hamburg which give them eighteen points, the equivalent of a long ticket. And tickets were very important this time. Pink began completing routes from Kiel to Switzerland and France (via Bremen and Köln) before taking more tickets. To fulfill these, he extended his network to Hamburg in the north, but failed to get to Karlsruhe in the south which cost him eighteen points in failed tickets. The game can be played in a relatively friendly way, or aggressively with players trying to shut each other out. We play in the more self-focused, less confrontational way, so failed tickets are normally relatively unusual, as such, this game was remarkable in that it was a bit of a tale of missed tickets.

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In addition to Pink, Orange was particularly unfortunate this time, failing to complete any tickets as he was unintentionally badly blocked. The game was ended somewhat unexpectedly by Lime, partly because he picked up the long route (suddenly depleting his supply of trains), but mostly because people weren’t paying attention to the number of trains he had left. He was more fortunate in his ticket draws as well and that contributed to his hundred and fifty-four points and him giving everyone else a serious trouncing (another word for Orange and Lemon to look up). Lemon was the best of the rest finishing with ninety, over sixty points behind Lime.

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While everyone else was playing with trains, on the next table, Jade introduced Lilac and Blue to his new acquisition that he picked up from UK Games Expo back in June, Old London Bridge. This is a fairly typical Queen Games game, with lots of pieces, but not too challenging—just what everyone wanted on a warm night. The game is set in 1136 after the great wooden bridge across the Thames was been consumed by fire. Players are architects, each responsible for designing and building one section of the new bridge. On their turn, players add one of the available buildings to their bridge section. Each building has three attributes: Location, Colour and Number.

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There are six different types of building, each with a special “power”. Thus, Haberdashers allow players to take money, the Purple Chapel buildings allow players to move along the associated track etc.. The colour is important because if that colour matches other buildings already on their bridge, they get a boost—for example, if a player takes a blue Haberdasher building, and already has two other blue buildings, they get to do that action effectively three times, taking three times as much money. Finally, buildings must be built in descending Number order—to reset, players have to build a park, which has no additional “power”.

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There are six building spaces on a central Rondel, each associated with a different pile of buildings and each with a money bonus that changes as the Rondel rotates at the start of each round. Each Rondel space can only hold one player’s marker, thus each building type can only be built once per round. One space is always deactivated (which one also changes as the Rondel moves), but the seventh space, the centre of the of the Rondel costs money, but allows players to take any building, including one that is currently unavailable (either because it has already been taken or was deactivated at the start of the round).

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Each round, players bid with Character Cards to see who gets to choose a building first. Character Cards which have a numerical value, zero to four. Where there is a tie, it is broken by players’ respective positions on the Purple Chapel track. Players start with a hand of Character Cards, but can add to these by building a Hostelry building—the higher the power, the more powerful the cards they can take. At the end of the game, the players get bonus points depending on the value of the Characters they have left over. In addition to the Haberdasher, the Hostelry and the Parks there are also two types of buildings in the Bridge Gate: Purple Chapel Buildings and Red Gatehouse Buildings.

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Each of the Bridge Gate buildings have a track associated with them. During the game, passing milestones on these tracks give money and break ties (Chapel Track) or give special tokens that allow players to bend the rules (Gatehouse Track). Additionally, players get bonus points at the end of the game depending on their final position on these tracks. The final building type is the Guild House. These have no action associated with them, but are “Colour wild”, featuring all four colours, and as such, they boost every other building type. At the end of the game, players add their residual money to bonus points for their finishing position on the Bridge Gate tracks, for unused Characters, and for having the fullest bridge (if a player can’t obey the Number rules, they may have been unable to build a building).

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Jade had only just started explaining the rules, when Plum announced that she had a “new religion”—Kittens, and shared photos. From this point forward, every pause in the game became a “Kitty Paws” and was punctuated by more increasing levels of cuteness—definitely an improvement on the stuffed Pandas from last time. Despite the undeniable distractions, everyone was still able to focus on the game and proceedings weren’t slowed at all. Plum seemed to amass a vast amount of money in no time at all and after making a mess of her first turn, Blue got lots of orange buildings and lots of cards but was very slow to make any progress on the Purple Chapel track and lost every tie-breaker she was involved in as a result.

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Lilac was the first to run out of Character Cards and therefore ended up relying on her position on the Chapel track to ensure she didn’t get left with Hobson’s Choice every time. In this she was helped by Jade who also ran out of cards. Although Blue’s forest of Orange buildings meant she could get a lot each turn, her choice was often to do something she wanted but not get much of it, or take yet another orange building and to do something she didn’t really want and rely on probability to even things out in the end. Things didn’t really even out, and as a result, Blue ended up with a lot of Character Cards. Everyone else went for a much more balanced strategy focusing on one or two or maybe three Colours. And Plum’s pile of loot grew ever larger.

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Towards the end of the game, Jade put on a massive spurt along the Red Gatehouse track and collected some Character Cards, while Blue finally made a move along the Purple Chapel track. As a result, Jade who had led the Purple Chapel track for most of the game was pipped by Blue, and Blue who’d held a massive lead on the Red Gatehouse track was edged out by Jade. Plum finished with the most cash with thirty, but in the end was only slightly ahead of Lilac and Jade. Lilac who had just quietly got on with her game was the only player to fill all the spaces on her Bridge, despite running out of cards. In the ranking for players with the most buildings, there was a tie for second place.

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Initially, the tie was resolved as a friendly tie with both Plum and Jade getting three points for their second place and Blue taking one. On reading the rules later, it turned out that end-game ties are also broken by position on the Purple Chapel track, giving Jade three points and Plum one. In general, bonus points are actually much less significant than money. This is because money is absolute and turned directly into points, but the bonuses only reflect placings (not how successful someone is); the bonuses therefore have a maximum of five points in each case whereas players can finish with as much money as they can.

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In this case, however, it was very close for second place and the tie break for that bonus turned out to be critical: Plum beat Jade on the friendly ties, but positions were reversed with the tie breaker from the rules as written. Old London Bridge also includes alternate bonus conditions and had even one of these been in use, then the scores could have been quite different. There was no question about the winner though: throughout, Lilac had just quietly got on with her own game doing everything well. She was the only one to finish with all twelve buildings, finished with almost as much money as Plum, and had made good progress on both the Bridge Gate tracks. With a final score of thirty-eight points, she was four points clear of whoever took second. With time for just a few more “kitty pictures”, people started heading home.

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Learning Outcome: Everyone Likes Train Games, and Kittens.

12th August 2021 (Post-Covid Test Event)

After some discussion, we had decided to have a “test visit” to The Jockey. As they are not doing food on Tuesdays at the moment, this was a Thursday and we decided to make it a fairly light event filled with some of our favourite games. Those that arrived early started with food and Burgundy was able to order Ham, Egg and Chips for the first time in over a year. There was a boisterous atmosphere amongst the gamers who were all clearly over the moon to be back, bolstered by the wake on the other side of the room which had been going full-swing since lunchtime.

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While we waited for food to arrive, the group revelled in the delight of face-to-face meeting discussing the meaning of the word “MILF” and whether or not there was such a thing as a “DILF”. Poor Ivory had been waiting well over a year to play the Japanese map for Ticket to Ride and it had been scheduled at least three times since and had been postponed thanks to “events”. As it was starting to become a bit of a harbinger, we decided to make the “Feature Game” the generic Ticket to Ride to ensure that the evening wasn’t jinxed again, but there was plenty of opportunity to give it an outing as two copies arrived.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 7 – Japan & Italy

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There were lots of other map choices and while we discussed the real options, lots of new variants were invented. The pick of these were perhaps the Beeching Variant (loads of the routes get ripped up halfway through the game leaving people with tickets they can’t make) and “Ticket to Row”, the “Climate Change Edition” (as the game progresses, coastal routes disappear due to erosion and flooding). Ivory was obviously keen to play the Japanese map and was joined by Green, Lilac and Burgundy. The other map ended up being the Heart of Africa and after some discussion about the best number of players for this map (which has reputation of being brutal), Burgundy moved over to join Blue, Pink and Pine.

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Ticket to Ride is a relatively simple game, often referred to as a “Gateway Game” because it has a reputation of drawing people into playing modern board games. The decision space on each turn is relatively small, but still meaningful and although a lot of the group like more challenging fare too, we all have a soft-spot for this one. The idea is that players are building track, by playing coloured cards that match the colour and number of the line shown on the map. So on their turn, they can draw cards, or place trains by playing cards. Points are scored for placing trains with longer the routes, giving more points.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 6 – France & Old West

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Things are not quite as simple as that though, because players also have tickets: if they can fulfil their tickets using routes they have claimed, they score points. If, on the other hand, they have unfulfilled tickets at the end of the game, these score negative points. Thus, instead of picking up cards or placing trains, players can also collect tickets to try to increase their score that way. The game end is triggered when one player has only two of their little plastic train pieces left. One of the things that gives Ticket to Ride its remarkable continuing appeal is the incredible variety in expansions available, each of which add interest with a different layout and slight variations to the rules.

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For example, the Japan expansion has routes reserved for Bullet Trains, which are marked by a single Bullet Train miniature. When a route is claimed, it can be used by all players to complete destination tickets. Instead of scoring points for such a route, players progress on the separate Bullet Train track with players receiving a bonus at the end of the game: whoever has contributed the most to this shared project receives the largest bonus, with the player who contributes least being penalized.

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In contrast, the Heart of Africa expansion adds new terrain cards which can be picked up instead of train cards which can be used to score extra points when placing trains. The terrain cards come in three different colour sets representing Desert/Savanna, Jungle/Forests, and Mountains/Cliffs. When a player places trains of the corresponding colours, if they have at least as many of that terrain card as every other player, they may additionally spend terrain cards to double the points value of their route. One of the consequences of the different terrain types having fixed colours is that routes of one colour tend to be clumped together.

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This means that players need lots of cards of the same colour to connect routes together. This, combined with the fact that there are no “double routes” in the centre of the map, mean the Heart of Africa expansion has a reputation of being particularly savage and unforgiving. It was also much slower to get going, indeed, the Japan expansion players were well into their game before the Africa players had really started, and they had nearly finished before the others had got halfway through. In Japan, Ivory went for the Bullet Trains to get the bonus, but also in order to help complete his tickets. Although nobody really engaged in the building of the Tokyo subway, Kyushu Island was well catered for by Lilac who built a very fine connection from Kokura to Miyazaki.

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In the dying moves of the game, Lilac effectively gave Green fifteen points and with it, the game. Things were rather different on the next table, however. Blue and Burgundy got stuck with tickets that meant they had little choice but to go through the jungly centre of Africa. With Pine having accidentally picked up a large pile of jungle terrain cards, there was no chance of either of them getting double points. Worse, as Blue struggled she could see there was one single train route that she simply had to take and Burgundy was heading straight for it.

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When Blue took the critical route from under Burgundy’s nose, it started a cascading chain reaction of events where they continually messed up each other’s plans. Meanwhile, Pine sniggered from the sidelines as he built his routes round the south coast largely unopposed—even on the odd occasion that someone else managed to get in his way, it was on a double route. Pink was getting it largely his own way too, as he was going round the west and north edges of the map.

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Pine picked up handfuls of tickets most of which seemed to lie on the routes he’d already connected, and then Pink suddenly moved to end the game leaving Burgundy with no other choice but to take tickets and hope for a miracle (to no avail). As the last trains were placed, Pine had a substantial lead which only increased when he added his ticket scores and Globetrotter bonus for having the most complete tickets. Although it was all built on extreme good fortune in his starting tickets, Pine had put together a fantastic game finishing with a massive one hundred and seventy-five points, forty points ahead of Pink in second.

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As the depths of deepest darkest Africa were being slowly explored, the other three decided to take advantage of Burgundy’s preoccupation to play Splendor without him to guarantee one of them a rare victory in a game that we haven’t played for over a year. The game is very simple: on their turn, players either collect gems, or use the gems to buy cards. The cards then act as permanent gems, while the more expensive cards also give victory points as well. A player reaching fifteen points triggers the end of the game, and the player with the most points wins. Although we have played it a lot, this time was with Green’s brand new copy, with the wrapper still on.

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Once the cellophane had been removed and cards well shuffled, the group settled down to play. Maybe it was poor shuffling or perhaps just luck, but diamond cards (whites) were slow to come out at the start. In addition to points on cards, players can also get points for collecting Noble tiles. This time, Ivory suddenly claimed two Nobles in quick succession which, together with a high-scoring card pushed him over the line. Green was able to claim a third Noble, but it wasn’t enough and he finished one point behind Ivory in what had been a close game.

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The Explorers of Africa finished at around the same time as the gem dealers. So, as Ivory headed off to get ready for his weekend away, Pink suggested a game of our old favourite, Bohnanza. Everyone had played it a lot except Lilac, so as Blue explained the rules, Pine and Burgundy prepared and shuffled the deck. The game is a simple enough trading game, but depends on the vital rule that players must not change the order of the cards in their hand. On their turn, the active player must play the first card in their hand, and may play the second if they choose.

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Then, the player turns over the top two cards from the central deck. They can plant these in their two been fields if there is space, but fields can only hold beans of one type, and beans on the table must be planted, so most often these are traded to other players. Once the two cards on the table have been dealt with, the active player can finally trade cards from their hand, but again, all cards traded must be planted. When they are done, they draw cards to go into their hand. The aim of the game, once again is to collect sets. At any point, players can trade in their planted beans, getting coins at the rate indicated by the “Bean-o-meter”.

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And this is one of the clever parts of the game—when a player sells their beans, they take the relevant number of cards and turn them over, turning them into money. One side effect of this is that rare cards become increasingly rare, while the more common cards become increasingly common. The deck also gets progressively smaller as fewer cards are recycled making the rounds shorter as the game goes on. The game lasts three rounds, but as a result of this, the last round is usually very short indeed. There are a lot of other nuances, which Green and Blue tried to explain so Lilac wasn’t too disadvantaged.

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The others expressed their disapproval by referring to them all as “Team Trio”. However, while Lilac was getting the hang of it and everyone was doing what they could to be nice to her, Blue lost the plot and sold several fields of beans without taking her reward. It seemed to be contagious, because in the final round Burgundy’s pile of coins somehow became the draw pile. Chaos reigned and hilarity ensued as Blue, Pine, Pink and Burgundy tried to work out what had happened and variously blamed each other. Burgundy probably got most of his coins back, but there wasn’t really much doubt that the winner was Lilac with fifteen coins.

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Although it was late there was still much chatter, about how it wasn’t the same without Black, Purple and Lime, and what we were going to do going forwards. It got quite a lot later too, because as we headed out someone pointed out the clear skies and how it should be possible to see the Perseid Meteor Shower. As we stood in the car park, someone spotted a “shooting star”, but everyone else missed it. So we waited for another, and another, and another. Eventually, everyone had a crick in their neck and rather than spend the whole night there, we decided it was time to go.

– Image from wikimedia.org

Learning outcome: It’s great to be back.

21st January 2020

Over the last three years we’ve spent a lot of Tuesday evenings discussing Brexit and following events in the House of Commons as they occured. Since this was going to be the last games night with the UK in the EU, and as a predominantly pro-EU group, we wanted to mark the occasion and show our support for our European friends and all those who have campaigned against Brexit so valiantly. For this reason, we decided to make the “Feature Game” “European Ticket to Ride“, in other words, European editions of one of our favourite games, i.e. the Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Netherlands and of course, Europe games/expansions. Unfortunately, Blue (and therefore most of the maps) was late arriving, and then, nobody could decide what they wanted to play; the only one who expressed any strong opinion was Lime who wanted to play the France map.

– Image by boardGOATS

With nine players, three groups of three looked good, but the debate as to who would play what rivaled the Brexit negotiations, not helped by the number of people who were enticed by the Japan map on the reverse of the Italy map. In the end, Ivory and Green took themselves off to play the new Poland map, and, after a lot of discussion, Lime, the only one who had a strong opinion ended up forgoing his choice of France and joined the Poles to even up the numbers. With Black, Purple and Pine starting on France, that just left Blue, Burgundy and Mulberry to decide, and eventually they decided to play the Italy map using the Germany base game components.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ticket to Ride is a very well-known, well-loved game that has now become something of a “gateway game”, that is, a game that starts people unfamiliar with modern boardgames along the slippery slope. The game is popular with casual gamers because it is simple to play, with few options and a little bit of luck, but not too much. The game is played on a map with cities connected by train routes each made up of anything from one to nine spaces (depending on the map). On their turn, the active player can do one of a small handful of things: firstly, they can take train cards from the market or use the train cards to place plastic trains on the map and score points. To place trains on the map, players spend coloured cards to match the route they are claiming. As well as coloured train cards, there are also multi-coloured locomotive cards which are wild; a face up Locomotive can only be drawn as the first card and ends the turn, making them more expensive as well as useful.

– Image by boardGOATS

Most cities have only a single route between them, but some are double or even triple, though these can only be used with higher player counts. Instead of taking train cards or placing trains on the map, players can also draw tickets. These are a sort of personal objective that give players points for connecting two cities—the further apart, the more points the ticket is worth, but the larger the risk, as failure gives negative points. Players start the game with a handful of these and can choose which ones to keep. They can also draw more during the game, keeping some and discarding others, but the specific conditions depend on the map used.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is the basics of the original 2004, Spiel des Jahres winning game, with a USA map, Ticket to Ride, but each variant provides a different map and some slight modifications to the rules. For example, Ticket to Ride: Europe adds Ferry routes which require a certain number of locomotive cards to be played in addition to the coloured train cards. It also adds Stations, which can used to help players complete tickets where a route has been blocked. For some different maps players get different numbers of trains, Poland is one of the smaller maps, with only thirty-five trains, compared with the forty-five in the Europe and US versions or the three German editions (Germany, Deutschland and Märklin).

– Image by boardGOATS

The other thing that makes the Poland expansion map stand out (aside from the fact that it is Map Collection Volume “6½” and goes by the name of “Wsiąść do Pociągu: Polska”) is that routes that connect to the countries bordering Poland give points directly. Unusually, the routes that cross the border include some triple routes and even a quadruple route, all of which can be used regardless of the number of players. Each country then also has a small deck of three or four cards, each card giving a different number of points. The first player to connect to two countries through Poland takes the cards with the highest value, the next takes the next most lucrative and so on. Adding more countries to a player’s network adds more cards and more points for that player.

– Image by boardGOATS

Green was particularly keen to play the Polish expansion because of the “Czech connection”, and Ivory also wanted to try it as it was a new map for him; Lime went along to make up the numbers. They were quick to get going and started off laying out routes without interfering with each other very much at all. Ivory was first to link two countries (Czechia and Slovakia), which was annoying to Green as he joined the the same countries on the very next turn. However, Green got his own back by getting in Ivory’s way and linking Germany into his network first. Lime was late to join the country network party, but concentrated on the Poland’s eastern borders. Ivory and Lime started taking new tickets about midway through the game, but Green instead continued to concentrate on linking more countries into his network.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was only in the last couple of turns that Green finally turned to tickets when it looked difficult to add any more countries to his already substantial, four country network. While Ivory and Green had been fighting over routes, Lime had quietly travelled the entire width of Poland and also linked several countries into his network, rivalling Green. In the final scoring it was Lime who had charged ahead, scoring well with tickets and country cards, finishing with ninety-six points—deserved since he gave up his preferred choice of the France map. It was very close for second though, with Green just three points ahead of Ivory with seventy-nine. Meanwhile, on the next table, Black, Purple and Pine were setting up the game Lime had missed; a much longer game, that had barely started as the Poles were finishing.

– Image by boardGOATS

France is one of the more complex expansions as the map mostly only depicts the track-bed, and players choose what colour a line will be. So, every time a player takes carriage cards, they also take a coloured tile of their choice and place it somewhere on the board. Thereafter, any player can claim that route by spending the appropriately coloured cards and placing the correct number of train pieces. Some of these track-beds overlap, but once a tile has placed any track-beds under it are no-longer available.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the start, nobody really knew how to play with the track-bed tiles: placing them somewhere near one’s own route telegraphed probable plans, potentially giving others an opportunity to obstruct. On the other hand, progress could not be made at all until tiles had been placed. The map is very, very large so to begin with everyone could get on with their own thing. Purple monopolised the Loire, Auvergne and Burgundy regions while Pine occupied the north coast and eastern borders. Pine had competition from Black in the Normandy, Picardy and Champagne regions, but other than that, Black took himself off to the west and south and everyone got on with their own thing.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ultimately, the game was very lopsided. Pine kept drawing tickets and kept getting lucky; he repeatedly got tickets along similar routes so needed minimal addition to his already substantial network. As a result, he not only took the longest route bonus, but also the Globetrotter points for the player with the most successful tickets, with eight. Had Black been successful with all his, things would have been closer, but failing two meant it was a tie for second place with both Black and Purple finishing with eighty, exactly half Pine’s massive victory.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, further down the table Burgundy eschewed Netherlands, so the group went instead for Italy, played with the Germany base game, in which the pieces have an unusual colour set. This gave Blue a slight quandary as to which she should play with, as blue wasn’t available. Instead Blue opted for purple, only for Purple on the next table to offer to swap pieces as she had chosen blue because purple wasn’t available. Sadly there was already enough confusion of pieces with Pine, Black and Purple playing with Burgundy’s base game and Blue’s France expansion so swapping pieces just seemed likely to make the chances of all the bits going back into the right boxes that bit smaller. So in the end, both suffered with the “wrong colour”.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Italy map is a more conventional expansion than France, with the only significant differences being a tweak to the Ferry rules and a new bonus scoring opportunity. Instead of needing Locomotive cards, these Ferry routes include some carriages with a round wave-icon on them. These can be satisfied either using special Ferry cards, or Locomotive cards. The special Ferry cards are in a separate deck and one of these can be taken instead of drawing train cards, up to a limit of two at any one time. Each of these special Ferry cards then count as two “wave” cards. This makes them better value than Locomotive cards drawn face up from the market, but less versatile.

– Image by boardGOATS

The bonus is potentially extremely lucrative, giving points for having a network that connects different regions of Italy. This starts with one point for five connected regions and increments according to the “Lazy Caterer’s Sequence” to give a massive fifty-six points for a network connecting fifteen or more regions. The layout of the map itself has a lot in common with the Nordic map in that it is quite long and thin with what feel like a lot of north/south routes running the length of the country, in the middle of the board and a lot of short, east/west routes available in the north and the south.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue kept all her starting tickets and Burgundy jettisoned just the one, but in contrast, Mulberry kept the minimum she could. As a result, it wasn’t long before Mulberry was picking up more tickets, and then more and then even more, much to Burgundy’s and Blue’s horror. When questioned, Mulberry said, “Just Nickels and Dimes, Nickels and Dimes…” This didn’t calm Burgundy and Blue in the slightest, as they were still struggling to complete their starting tickets. Eventually though, they also took more tickets, with Burgundy keeping a lot of his, while Blue was less fortunate. Burgundy supplemented his tickets with a couple of very long Ferry routes netting him eighteen points each.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the game came to an end, Blue was still struggling to get the yellow carriage cards she needed to complete her final ticket. So when Burgundy brutally ended the game it cost Blue some forty points, though in truth she was a couple of turns away from getting them even if she had somehow managed to get that one final yellow card. It was clear that unless Burgundy had a lot of incomplete tickets, he would probably be able to defend his already substantial lead. Mulberry’s tickets may have been “Nickels and Dimes”, but she had an awful lot of them; as the phrase goes, “Take care of the pennies and the pounds take care of themselves.” With just regional bonus to add, Burgundy was out of sight and although Blue and Mulberry made a dent in the gap it wasn’t enough. It was close for second place though, but in the end a couple of extra regions gave it to Blue.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Poland game was finished first and with France only just started and Italy only halfway through the Poles toyed with the idea of trying another European Ticket to Ride Map, but instead opted for a quick game of the 2017 Spiel des Jares Winner Kingdomino. This is a light little game with a very clever market mechanic. The idea is that players take it in turns to take a tile from the market and add it to their kingdom. Each tile comprises two “squares” (like a domino), each showing a terrain. At the end of the game, players score points for each area of terrain in their kingdom gaining points equal to the number of “squares” multiplied by the number of crowns in that region.

– Image by boardGOATS

The clever part of the game is the market which consists of two columns of tiles, each tile having a rank reflecting their value based on scarcity of the terrain(s) it depicts and the number of crowns. The tiles in each row are placed, and taken, in descending order. When a player takes their tile from the current column, they choose which tile they want from the next column, thus a player taking a less valuable tile gets a wider choice on the next round. Unfortunately, as each column has to have the same number of tiles as players, the game can be a bit unbalanced with three, because some of the tiles are removed at random.

– Image by boardGOATS

As well as scoring for terrain, players also score bonus points for placing all their tiles in a five-by-five array with their castle in the centre. This time, Ivory managed a full kingdom with his castle in the centre, and a large wheat field with a healthy number of crowns. His score was also assisted by a not inconsiderable lake (although with only a couple of crowns) and a small but valuable mountain. Lime, fresh from his stunning Polska victory, realised too late that his castle was not central in his kingdom and his last couple of tiles were unplaceable. Green managed a complete kingdom with his castle in the middle, though his was made up largely of forest. Pasture, wheat and sand also featured and gave what was a winning score of sixty-three, some ten points ahead of Ivory in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the Italian map players just finishing, the group decided to join them and see what else was on offer. There were three options: For Sale (best with it’s a maximum of six), Century: Spice Road (plays a maximum of five) and World’s Fair 1893 (maximum of four). Mulberry decided to get an early night, leaving five players and Century: Spice Road. This is a resource management game with deck building at it’s core. Neither Lime nor Green had played it before so there was a quick run down of the rules first. These are simple enough though. The central area consists of two markets: one for action cards and one for contracts.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn, the active player can take an action card from the market, if they take the card at the end of the row (the one that has been there longest), it is free, otherwise they have to pay resources dependent on the card’s position. This card goes into the player’s hand where, on a later turn, they can use it to get spices, upgrade spices or convert spices into other spices. When used, a card is placed on the player’s personal discard pile, and they can also spend a turn picking up all their discarded cards. The spices, turmeric, saffron, cardamom and cinnamon are then used to fulfill contracts, giving points.

– Image by boardGOATS

The contract cards that have been around for longest get a bonus, in this case a coin is worth one or three points at the end of the game. The challenge, or at least part of the challenge is storing the spices: each player has a caravan card which will hold a maximum of ten spice cubes, so converting cubes into other cubes and buying contracts has to be done efficiently otherwise spices are wasted. The game end is triggered when one player has five contract cards. There are a couple of minor details, like the number of cards in the markets and the values of the coins, but Burgundy clearly knew these without needing to check the rules.

– Image by boardGOATS

The engine-building nature of this game has a lot in common with Splendor and as Burgundy is invincible at that the writing was on the wall before the group even started. It was no surprise therefore that when Ivory picked up the first contract, Burgundy was immediately behind him. Green, new to the game, wasn’t far behind either. Blue had a complete nightmare, but Lime, after a slow start suddenly seemed to get the hang of it and then made rapid progress. It wasn’t long before Ivory took his final card though. Taking the maximum number of cards is always key, and when he said he had sixty-seven points it looked like he might have been successful, however, Burgundy, managed to take one last card in that final round as he was the last to play, and ultimately, he managed to take first place by just three points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Europe has a very extensive (and exciting) rail network.