Ticket to Ride: The Sade Express

One of my favorite destination tickets in Ticket to Ride is Los Angeles to Chicago, also known as the Sade Express. Ever since I first heard the Sade classic song “Smooth Operator” the lyric “coast to coast/LA to Chicago” has stuck out to me for the simple fact that it makes no sense. LA to Chicago is not going coast to coast. I suppose that Chicago is a coastal city but invoking LA and traveling to the other coast really conjures up an east to west continental journey. While the lyric may be silly, the route is certainly a winner. A favorite of mine, that Sade Express.

What makes it a good ticket? Well, it’s worth sixteen points which makes it one of the more valuable tickets in the game. There are certainly tickets worth more than that, but I think that the Sade Express might be better than all of them because of the fact that you don’t have to enter into the labyrinth of small, time wasting connections that begin once you head east of the Windy City. The only tricky thing about the route can be getting out of Los Angeles, which can frequently get clogged up early in the game. Aside from exiting LA there are a myriad of ways to get from one way to another, and it is also possible to pass very close to many of the other major cities in the game and have a multitude of tickets contained within the Chicago to Los Angeles route. I’d like to think that Sade knew all of this when she penned Smooth Operator.

Zurich is a Trap: More Thoughts on TTR Europe

I’m sure that Zurich is a beautiful city and it’s residents lovely people, but to me it is nothing more than a horrid trap encased by mountains. At least as far as Ticket to Ride Europe is concerned, which is more and more becoming the lens through which I view geography.

At first glance Zurich seems so appealing. It has four routes that run through it and it connects to a bunch of major areas, it has a great location. So why is it such a trap? Well, for starters every one of the routes that run into it is a tunnel which means that you will probably not be getting a real good return on those trains you put down. Plus, they are all real short. Three routes of two and another of one. No thanks. Like I’ve said in the past I think that TTR-Europe is really a game of board control and getting value out of each of your 45 trains. Not to say that tickets are not important, just not as important as in the original version of TTR. Zurich can be part of a winning plan as long as you just dip into it and get out, spending three turns or so placing trains through the mountains definitely puts you at a disadvantage.

The two games (TTR and Europe) are virtually the same, so why the difference in strategy? Well, the map of Europe is sort of a mess and certainly uneven. There are some very strong regions to claim (mainly the upper right section of the board) and others that are not very conducive to winning (such as Zurich and the surrounding mountains), and if you can lay claim to the high value areas it gives a distinct advantage when it comes time to tally those points. More and more my strategy is to get three or four tickets that work well together and end the game. It’s been working well for me lately. Being the player who initiates the end game is more valuable than an extra ticket or two, at least I think so. If I don’t get one of the 20+ point tickets in my initial draw I try to end the game quickly by focusing on routes of four or more trains, anything less than that may not always be worth it. Of course the chance of all of your tickets fitting neatly into four train routes is nonexistent, but I use that as a guideline when trying to figure out where I am going.

Some Thoughts on Ticket to Ride: Europe

Having played Ticket to Ride until the board was literally torn apart we decided to segue into Ticket to Ride: Europe and try our railroad baron skills on the continent. The Europe version is not that different from the US version. Obviously the boards are different, with the European one being slightly more confusing and seemingly possessing an abundance of small routes (the avoidance of which may be a key to victory). The European version also has cards that are meant to be held by actual human adults, unlike the original version which was presumably played by pixies and hobbits. It is shocking what a difference the size of the cards makes, it is a huge improvement. The major differences in the two games are the European inclusion of tunnels, ferries and stations. Tunnels and ferries make it a bit harder to grab a certain route, while stations finally provide a solution for when one of the jerks that you play with gets a route that you really wanted. And there is an eight train route!

Tunnels are routes that are marked with a black outline, almost like brackets going around the train cars. Typically they are routes that run through mountain regions, though this is not always the case. When a tunnel route is claimed the top three train cars from the draw pile are flipped over and for each one that matches a train used to claim the route, the player must pay an additional train of that color to make it through the tunnel. Since any flipped locomotives are an automatic match it usually winds up costing an additional train card for the route, though sometimes you get lucky and don’t have to pay anything additional. The other night I got hit hard when all three matched and I didn’t have enough to cover the newly inflated cost. If that happens all the cards go back to your hand and your turn ends. In a game that is so dependent on the economy of actions it is devastating to lose a turn. It also stinks to have to pay four trains to claim a route that is only worth three trains. Personally I try to avoid the tunnels for those reasons, but there are plenty of them on the board and almost impossible to get around without needing to use some of them. Looking around the board many of the tunnel routes are in prime strategic locations, so essentially you are paying for nice real estate.

England has to be connected to the rest of Europe in this game and since there are no trains that run on water it’s time to board a ferry to get there. It’s not just England though, numerous ferries dot the landscape of Europe and, like the tunnels, require a higher price for their services. Rather than requiring trains of a certain color to claim the route, ferries require a certain amount of locomotives (wild cards) in addition to matched colored trains. This certainly puts a new spin on the wild card, which was always great to have but never a necessity. I always hated having to pick a wild from the board since you only get one card instead of two, but with ferries they become much more valuable. My least favorite route is now London to Amsterdam, a measly two train route that requires two wild cards to claim it. Really? I spend two wild cards and all I come away with is two points. Though, like with the tunnels, it’s interesting to see how real world geography is impacting the game. Think of how different the original version would be if Denver (which is about the most popular city in TTR) only had tunnels running out of it. If nothing else it certainly changes things, which is what a board game sequel should do.

Of all the additions in this game the only one that I really don’t like are the stations. Each player begins the game with three stations and they can be placed on any city in the game for a cost in train cards (one for the first, two matching for the second, etc..). Having a station in a city allows that player to use any one route of another player’s coming out of that city for completing a destination ticket. It does not count towards getting the longest train, but it helps a player get a route that they may not otherwise get. To me Ticket to Ride has always been sort of a cutthroat type of game. If you sit on your cards for too long you get screwed out of the routes that you really need. Balancing when to build routes, hoarding cards, and exposing your routes and intentions have always been essential to playing a winning game. The stations provide a way around that. Maybe I’m just mean but I sort of like it the other way better. Unused stations are worth four points each at the end of the game so there is an incentive to not use them up. I do also think that the European map is much more cluttered than the US one, so it is more likely to result in people getting screwed out of a route. Edinburgh and the southern part of Spain are both very limited areas and being denied there can really mess your game up, so I could see why players would use stations. I just don’t like them.

The other interesting aspect of the game is an eight train route, exciting because the original version did not have anything larger than six. The route runs from Petrograd to Stockholm and if eight trains seems too easy it is also a tunnel. Meaning that it could conceivably cost as much as eleven trains. Ouch. It is worth 21 points so on a per train basis it is worth about the same as the six train route. Is it worth it? I think the best thing about it is being able to get eight trains out of your hand at once, that can really end the game in a hurry. Being able to catch your opponents off guard with incomplete routes is a great way to win the game and this helps with that. A lot. Say it is nearing the end of the game and you have 15 trains left to put down. You get that Stockholm to Petrograd tunnel up and running and suddenly the game can be over in two more turns with the right cards. Much sooner than people were expecting I would wager. Strategically it is not the greatest route, mainly because going through Sweden and Denmark is sort of difficult, it is normally prized real estate. If you only need to get to Stockholm it can work out pretty well for you. Eastern Europe has the best routes in the game so Petrograd links up with all sorts of good stuff.

Ticket to Ride:Europe is certainly a worthy sequel to the original. I would still recommend the original to someone who had never played either, but only because it is slightly simpler to learn. Not that either of them are difficult. Plus, it’s nice to brush up on my turn of the century European geography. I also feel that the two have different strategies, what works in one game may not work in the other. I am still learning the nuances of the European board and the destination tickets, which are very different. The original game has an even mix of points on destination tickets, ranging from small to very large. The Euro game has primarily smaller valued tickets with only six routes being worth 20 or more points. Scoring from trains on the board becomes more valuable in the Euro game because of this, which is why those short routes will really slow you down. But, like I said, it’s an excellent game.

Who Goes First?

Going first in a game usually affords an advantage to that player, though it is not substantial and most likely normalizes over the course of the game. But still, an advantage is an advantage and most games recommend that for the sake of fairness the players roll a die and the highest roller will kick things off. This is fine, and usually the preferred method in the games I play in. However, some games do recommend alternate methods of deciding the first player. Here are some of my favorites, with suggestions to improve them as well.

It makes sense that the starting player of Pandemic is connected to illness, that is after all what the game is about. In this cooperative game the rules state that the player who has been sick most recently goes first. I like this one a lot and in our games we always stick to it. The reason why? It’s always different every time that you play, essentially making it random. I don’t think that this one needs fixing.

One of the stranger methods of choosing a starting player is employed by Smallworld. The player with the pointiest ears gets to go first. Certainly an odd way of picking things, I do like that it rewards such a bizarre personal trait that really may have never come up before in the person’s life. However, like a lot of these methods it winds up being redundant in a group of players that frequently game together. Unless someone is so committed to victory in Smallworld that they alter their ears the same person will continue to go first. Here is my suggestion for an alternate method. Once the initial races are all out on the table the player who most resembles the race in the first spot goes first. Sure, it could cause some hard feelings when trying to figure out who among you most resembles an orc or a ghoul, but really it’s just setting the tone for a game that is all about slaughtering your friends. And if an elf pops up you can still fall back on the pointy ears.

Ticket to Ride rewards the most well traveled of a group of gamers. The initial player is determined by the player who has visited the most places. Like Smallworld this gets old fast, though it does at least have the possibility of changing if you have a long term gaming group. People travel, usually for the reason of improving their chances of going first in Ticket to Ride. Not really, but this game is not really about traveling. It’s about trains. How about the first player is the one who has most recently been on a train? Done.

It’s fun to pick on old people, and clearly the designers of Bohnanza agree with me. In everyone’s favorite game about bean farming, the first player is the player to the left of the dealer. Which is pretty standard fare, however the rules state that the dealer is the oldest player. Ouch. Not only does the elder gamer have to do all of the setup, but then they ultimately wind up going last as well. Not sure what any of that has to do with beans or farming and it also suffers from the redundancy problem, though in a different way (the first player is always changing, but the last player stays the same). My fix is rather simple. Prior to shuffling all the players flip over a single card, the player with the most common bean then has to do all of the shuffling and be the last player. Come on, growing old sucks as it is. Does Bohnanza really need to be against you too?

For a game that is all about being an evil overlord it seems like an odd choice that Dungeon Lords chose to reward the nicest player by having them go first. But I think it is a brilliant way of deciding. There is nothing quite like watching several people argue over who is the nicest among them. It is also the type of thing that is subject to rapid changes based on recent actions. I think that this method is pretty solid, and since in Dungeon Lords players are not really getting a chance to actually kill one another it’s nice to be able to get some animosity out with a healthy argument to start the game.

There is nothing wrong with the random roll of the dice to determine who has the minor advantage of going first, but sometimes a game deserves a little better. Plus, these games all have one thing in common. They don’t use any dice so something else needed to be implemented. (The exception is Smallworld which has the reinforcement die, but it is not a traditional die and could result in a bunch of ties. So we will forget about that one.) I applaud the game designers for coming up with a solution that has some personality to it, even if they are a bit redundant at times.

East Coast? West Coast? Which is the best coast?

We have been playing a lot of Ticket to Ride lately, it’s really a great game. However, a clear strategy has begun to emerge to me as to how the game should be played. Unlike some games (Puerto Rico and Starfarers of Catan come to mind right away) in which there are multiple winning strategies, Ticket to Ride seems to greatly favor a certain approach. And by this I mean to dominate the Western part of the board and take advantage of the long routes out that way. In our games whoever controls the West Coast usually rides their trains to victory.

So what it is that makes that part of the board so much more valuable that it practically guarantees victory? Well, I think that there are a couple of things going on here. For one it is perfectly feasible to also branch off into the Midwest and pick up some routes out that way. You can branch off from the West. Denver and Duluth, in particular, are excellent cities to go into because they have so many outlets to the rest of the board. This is especially nice towards the end of the game when you may be tempted to try and pick up another Destination ticket, those cities give you a lot of options. However, the West Coast is just loaded with points waiting to be had for the patient train operator. As a proud Philadelphian it kills me to say this, but the East Coast is far inferior to the West. Ugh.

Like just about every board game ever made, the efficiency of actions is paramount to victory. Games come to an end so it is essential to make every move that you take count as much as it can. In Ticket to Ride each player has a total of 45 trains that they can lay down over the course of the game, the longer a single route is the more each train winds up being worth. Obviously, the thing to do here is to place as many long routes as possible to maximize the value of your trains. Looking at the board it is very apparent that the West Coast has the majority of the big (5 or 6 train) routes. Let’s break it down and see just how big of a discrepancy it is. Roughly dividing the board into three sections (west, central, and east) and making some approximations yields this: East has five such routes, the Central has five, and the West seven (Note: this could be interpreted as nine as well. Portland to San Fran and San Fran to Salt Lake City are both five train routes, but they are double routes. So there are actually nine such routes, but a player can’t double up so there are really seven available to them.) It doesn’t seem like such a huge discrepancy, but if you look a little deeper it’s obvious that not only is the West possessing of the majority of big routes, but the East is loaded with small routes. The kind that really devalue one’s trains in the long run. Plus the West boasts four routes of six trains, while the East has only two.

Not only are the long routes more point efficient, they are also much more turn efficient. As an example take two players. Both players have spent the last 4 turns taking in cards and are ready to place some routes. Player A lays down a route from Phoenix to Denver (5 trains), Player B then places two trains between New York and Boston. Player A resumes picking up trains for his collection the following turn, while Player B spends the next two turns extending his route to Washington and Montreal. It has taken him three turns to place six trains (for six points), while his opponent has spent the same amount of turns and received ten points and also spent the last two rounds putting four more cards into his hand. There really is not much of a comparison.

The problem with all of this is that due to the luck of draw a player may wind up with Destination tickets that run through the East, thereby forcing them into that section of the world. That’s a problem, though it can be dealt with. Since you have to keep two tickets in the beginning of the game the best thing to do is look for some horizontal moving ones and try to get the trains out West. If that it not possible keep the lowest valued ones and hope that they do not hurt you much in the end. After that spend a couple of turns picking up Destination tickets and try to get some better routes.

Ticket to Ride review

The premise of Ticket to Ride is certainly an excellent, exciting one. A group of friends make a wager about who can visit the most cities in the United States by train over the course of seven days. They were inspired by Around the World in 80 Days. In actuality the game has very little to do with this premise, it’s really just about laying down tracks of trains all over the board. But it’s a great game. Seriously. Three to five players can get mixed up in it. Like most of the games from Days of Wonder it is easy to grasp the basic rules, but continues to grow in strategy with multiple plays.

The board is a map of the United States with cities listed all over it. There are routes that connect cities to one another, in most cases these routes are colored but in some instances they are a devoid of color shade of grey. Each player keeps a hand of train cards, essentially colored trains that match the colors on the board. In order to connect a route the player must put down the appropriate number of the correctly colored cards. For example the route running from San Francisco to Los Angeles requires either three yellow or three purple cards. If a player puts down either of those they can then place their trains along that route. (Note: there is no correlation between the color of a player’s trains and the color of a route.) The grey routes can be claimed by any colored cards, as long as they match.

The board is very nice, if somewhat bland. It does what it is supposed to do. It’s high quality and seems durable and also doubles as the scorekeeper with the ring of numbers moving along the edge of the board. My only real complaint is that Philadelphia is once again left off of a game board. Just like with Pandemic it suffers from being squeezed in between New York and Washington DC. Duluth? Really? No Philadelphia, but Duluth? The train pieces are very generic little plastic things. They do the job and not a thing else. I can live with them.

The object of the game is to accumulate the most points by constructing railroad routes all around the country and also by fulfilling the routes listed on the destination tickets that each player receives. The longer the route the more they are worth, not just in total but also on a per train ratio. A route of two trains is worth two points, so each train is worth a single point. A six train route (the largest) is worth 15 points, meaning each train is worth two a half points. Players only have a finite number of trains to use over the course of the game, everyone starts with 45, so one of the keys to victory is maximizing the value of each train with longer routes. Over the length of the game it catches up to the player who has built a series of short routes, they are just not going to have enough points at the end. Sometimes it’s necessary to get the shorter routes for the sake of a destination ticket, but too many of them will drag down your score.

The destination tickets are a tricky bunch, but sort of the key to Ticket to Ride. At the beginning of the game each player is dealt three of the tickets, they have to keep two but may keep all three if they are feeling daring. On each card are listed two cities, for example New York and Miami. There is also a number on each card which is the point bonus at the end of the game if those two cities have been connected by a route. However, if those cities have not been connected then the same amount of points is deducted from the end of game total. Some of the routes are relatively simple and only worth a few points, such as New Orleans to Chicago. Other longer routes are worth much more, Miami to Seattle being a good example. Over the course of the game a player can also choose, as an action, to get more destination tickets. They take three cards but must keep one, though they can keep up to three if they want to. So why are they so tricky? Well, if you choose to keep a card you are sort of locked into pursuing that route for the game. If it is a high point route and you don’t get it, your future as a railroad baron is not looking so hot. In the beginning it is tough to decide what to keep and what to ditch, the temptation to keep all three is always there but it’s tough to complete depending on what they are. I would not recommend trying to complete more than one 20+ point destination. Once a card is chosen you can not get rid of it, and all cards are kept hidden until the end of the game.

Gameplay is pretty straightforward, it was one of those games that I felt I understood after having read the rules through once and not even played it. Also nice is that there is very little interpretation that goes into the game. I’m not sure that a single question has come up in the half dozen times that we have played it that was not answered immediately with a quick look to the rule book. Ticket to Ride also plays pretty quickly, a usual game clocks in at around an hour making it a great weeknight game. One problem is that on each player’s turn they are really only doing one thing, so most of the time a turn comes and goes very quickly and all that has happened is that you have picked up a couple of new cards to go into your hand. At first this was odd to me, but after some time I just realized that it is the nature of the game and have embraced the fast paced style of gallivanting across the country on trains.

At first the game seems to naturally lend itself to playing defense against the other players, blocking a route that they are taking makes perfect sense. Or does it? With only 45 trains to use for building routes the trains are actually a rather limited commodity, and oftentimes it is tough to get the right color to build the path that you want. To go out of your way to mess up another player may be as damaging to you as it is to them. It is sort of a pyrrhic victory that no one comes away happy from. It is also not in the best interest of a player to break up their trains from one another. There is a ten point bonus to the player who has the most connected trains at the end of the game, a ten point bonus that often means the difference between winning and losing.

One gripe I do have with the game is the size of the cards.  The train cards wind up being shuffled several times over the course of the game and they are very small.  The result is that they frequently get shuffled poorly since they are hard to hold.  The second and third time around in the deck usually produces runs on colors that were discarded together.  Since they were discarded together and poorly shuffled they usually pop back up in the same order.  Oh look, five white trains in a row.  What an odd thing to happen.  It takes the randomness out of it and somewhat cheapens the experience.  The cards should be larger. 

I don’t have any kids, but if I did I think I would play Ticket to Ride with them. I suppose that there is something beneficial about learning geography and looking at a map, but really it’s just because it would be an excuse to play this game more. It’s fun, you can pour a ton of strategy into it if you would, and you can also play by the seat of your pants and see where it takes you.