Ticket to Ride

Ticket to Ride is a game that's been soaring in popularity over the course of the past couple years. The Settlers of Catan was the gateway to European-style board games, but surely Ticket to Ride is the second-most popular of the bunch.

Up to five players can join in on the fun of Ticket to Ride. The goal is to score the most points by strategically building train routes along the map before the game ends. Points are scored by:

1. Simply placing train routes along the board
2. Completing specific mission routes drawn from the deck
3. Owning the longest continuous route on the board, similar to Catan's 'Longest Road' card

Each player has just 45 train cars to work with over the course of the game, so part of the strategy is figuring out the most efficient way to spend those limited resources. Longer city-to-city routes net you more points per train car placed, so selecting routes (when you have a choice) that allow you to play through the five- and six-car routes along the periphery of the board are generally preferable unless you draw an assortment of route cards that have significant overlap and can be built concurrently.  Here's a look at the board (U.S / Canada map).

Another trick is understanding when to build your routes.  Players can either draw route cards (which are used to build routes), draw new route missions, or build a train route on their turn. Much of the game is spent stockpiling cards, but you need to be careful that someone else doesn't beat you to a route you have your eye on while you're trying to save up for something else.  This is particularly the case when you have to go through the middle of the board -- there's a lot of routes that run through there and the one- and two-car routes make it easy for another player to quickly impede your progress at any time.

The other primary component of the strategy is how to go about drawing cards. Players can choose from a selection of "face-up" cards or random ones from the bank. There are also wild cards that can be used to build routes of any color. If a player chooses a face-up wild card, they are only entitled to draw one on their turn versus the normal two. This leads to debates between taking a card you know you can use versus taking a risk on pulling one or two random face-down cards.

As with many good board games, the key to Ticket to Ride is to have a plan. It's most beneficial if you decide probably about 1/3 of the way into the game how you would ideally "spend" all of the train cars in your bank, then make all of your remaining moves with an eye towards that goal.  The tough part about having a plan is that other players frequently ruin plans, so you need to be cognizant of possible back-up plans as well as the "critical paths", individual routes that you absolutely have to have to stand a chance of being successful. You also need to be aware of how many train cars other players have left; if someone is down to two, one, or zero cars, that could trigger the end of the game before you've completed what you need to do.

All in all, Ticket to Ride has a very approachable complexity and difficulty level. It's easier to understand than both Carcassonne and The Settlers of Catan and it's a great option to introduce people into euro-style gaming. The fact that you'll draw different route cards every game allows for some replayability, but that's limited in part by the fact that after playing a few games, you're aware of which longer route cards exist, so it's hard for players to hide what they're building towards. It doesn't have as much advanced strategy as some other games I'm into, but a luck factor helps newer players have a chance against veterans. Ticket to Ride is plenty of fun and should be a part of any serious board game collection.

Rating: 8.5/10

Carcassonne

I'm a pretty big fan of board games, but I feel like I haven't been exposed to as many of them as I'd like to be. Growing up I used to play a lot of the standard ones like Monopoly, Life, Stratego, and the like, but nothing more involved than that.

About six years ago or so, I got to experience The Settlers of Catan for the first time on a double date and I was completely hooked. Soon after, I appropriately set up an emergency board game night with four of my friends to try it. They were probably a little confused, since I think the last time we'd all played a board game together was a seemingly neverending game of Risk our sophomore year of college, but nonetheless, we set it up. The board was ridiculously crowded because it's meant for just four players and we had five (we used Risk pieces for the fifth person, if you were curious), but nonetheless, everyone was a pretty big fan, and it spread quickly among my larger group of friends.

And so began the era of me being heavily interested in euro-style board games.

Truth be told, I can't exactly call myself a connoisseur here despite how much I enjoy them. I need to not only get more experience with the ones I have, but also expand my bank of games. Since then, I've played Ticket to Ride and Dominion, which were both very good. But, as the title implies, I'd like to talk about a different one in this post -- Carcassonne.

I received Carcassonne as a Christmas gift three years ago and it basically sat in the box for two years. Eventually I got around to playing it a couple times with a friend or two. It seemed fun, but undeserving of the hype. I had just got Ticket to Ride the previous Christmas and that seemed like the far more enjoyable game at the time; others got hooked on that easily as well. That made it difficult to get people to play Carcassonne because board game time is pretty limited at my stage of life and when I can actually get together with others to play, people are typically content to play what they know and enjoy rather than dive into something that might take experience to appreciate.

Fortunately, I had a good opportunity to give the game another go over New Years, which I spent with my wife's family. I brought Carcassonne with to the house we were staying at, pretty unsure of why I was doing so given my own reluctance to push it over the past few years. Surprisingly, my wife's cousins and I wound up giving it a try. Perhaps more surprisingly, it was an instant hit, and I gained a far greater appreciation for it.

Carcassonne is for 2-5 players and while I've given it a go with two and five, I think it plays best with three or four. The game itself is probably simpler to understand than I made it out to be in my mind, because after a few minutes it's pretty easy to figure out what's going on. You don't set up a board at the beginning of Carcassonne.  Rather, you build the board one tile at a time, gradually creating a map of cities, roads, and fields that comes together like a neat puzzle.  Along the way, you claim cities, roads, and fields and then (generally) score points upon their completion.

The concept is extremely simple but the strategy seems like it will take a hundred games to master. The feeling that I've got a lot to learn about correct play is what is really sucking me in. Never have I played a game before where I've so frequently decided I've made a (huge) mistake seconds after making a move (and that's saying something, because I'm a habitual second-guesser). While I used the puzzle analogy above, it doesn't quite work because in a puzzle, there's one piece for one location. In Carcassonne, there's a LOT of possible things you could do with each piece, many of them have their merits, and you have to do a lot of guesswork about how you think the board will build itself by the end of the game. Often times, the obvious move isn't the best one, and being able to adjust your plan on the fly to the ever-developing map is a must.

While that might imply that there's a chess-esque low level of luck in the game and that new players don't have much hope, that's certainly not the case. Drawing the right tile at the right time can make up for blunders in design, so randomness is definitely a factor, and everyone, even those with plenty of experience with the game, will make some errors. The complexity in strategy is necessary because there's no one silver-bullet A-B-C strategy that's going to make you win more than your fair share (unlike, say, Ticket to Ride, which is a great game but I feel like I follow the same basic plan every time with good results). That makes for high replayability, which is an absolute must for a great game.

I feel like I'm going to have to play this a lot more for me to assess whether it's my favorite game I've ever played, but the fact that this is a possibility at all says a lot. I highly recommend this game and hope that others will have as much fun playing it as I have.