Wednesday 17 August, 2005

Train of thought

Work is boring, but at least it's nice in a way that going home feels even better. Laura and Harro had a successful whale watching trip after all, and even Dragon was home so we spent a nice evening before the youngsters go home tomorrow.

Game of the evening was Ticket to Ride Europe which we played for the second time. Boardgamegeek.com rates this game higher than Saint Petersburg (our current firm favourite) so I had high expectations for this game - however it hasn't filled up the expectations at all. It's a nice game, I wouldn't mind playing it more - but some people in our party found it boring. Concept is very simple - you have a map of Europe, tickets with start and end destinations, train cards for different coloured trains to correspond to different colour tracks, and train tokens that you place on the board to indicate your routers. I get lot of satisfaction about the physical aspects of the game, I like building tracks with my little trains, I like the pretty and colourful train cards. In fact I got so involved with building the tracks that big part of the game I forgot to give myself points, which meant that by the end of the game I was probaly missing 20 points or so. Not that it would have mattered that much, the boys take gaming more seriously than me and my sister so they were far ahead of us anyway.

So although I'm a bit disappointed that the game isn't more interesting, I'm happy enough to own it. I think it'll make a good starting or finishing game, very light, easy to learn and fun. I mean, who doesn't like trains?

Posted by kolibri at 17 August 22:37, 2005
Comments
# 1 - woja (on August 18, 2005 06:10 AM):

That sounds a lot like one of our favourite games when I was young :o)

Just made me think about it, it's (modestly) called the Great Game of Britain

Oh... nostalgia, it's not like it used to be!


# 2 - kolibri [TypeKey Profile Page] (on August 18, 2005 07:12 AM):

That actually sounds a bit more interesting as you can actually block your opponents - in this game it's just you building your trains. That's what I was looking for, more interaction with your fellow players... I like the idea that on the other side of the board there's the modern Britain and on the other the old one. Although if the game was re-released today I think they should add in lot of cancellations and train accidents on the modern side, not so much that your opponents need to stop you as traveling by train is an adventure initself ;)


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