1895: Crisis in New California





Ticket to Ride is (and has always been) a game of risks. Do you keep all your routes? Completing them all could pay off big or it could be disastrous. Picking new routes halfway through the game could pay off big or be disastrous. And, AND... playing it safe could be the wrong move as well.

And that's why Ticket to Ride can sometimes be a very stressful game and not-at-all the casual introductory Eurogame it is often purported to be.

I knew I couldn't play it safe this round. Cathy had beaten me by too many points last time and I needed to catch up. I did have the advantage of the Caboose card, so I was guaranteed an extra move at the end.

I kept my four original tickets. I used the Gambler card on my most valuable route. And I even picked three new tickets (a risky move that proved dangerous).

I kept a large supply of engine cards for emergencies. When the "I Found Dead Man's Gulch" card came up, I chose to let Cathy claim the large pot for herself rather than give up my rainbow cards, because I was sure I would need them later. (I absolutely did need them later)

Near the end of the game I found myself in a bind. Cathy had used her last trains. I had only two moves left. I needed to get into Bangor, but I couldn't do it in two moves without Piggybacking. I had been cursed (twice) and so I wasn't allowed to Piggyback without giving up cards. I would also owed cards to both Cathy and Mama O'Connell if I wanted to complete my final two routes.

In the end I was able to pay out the wazoo to complete my final short routes into Bangor. I did have one rainbow card left over at the end, and I never ended up needing any Rainbow cards to fix bridges.

And in the end all my risk taking seemed to pay off. I outpaced Cathy on coins and tickets and won the round (handily). I'm crossing my fingers it was enough to offset my big loss last game.

And so... we have played through 11 rounds of Ticket to Ride: Legends of the West. Only one play through remains. We have filed away bank slips, postcards, circus slips, shares, and probably a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting about and somehow it will all add up in the end. There can only be one winner... unless we tie.

Next Time: "The Great Race of 1898" or "The Last Train to Clarksville"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dorfromantik: A Breakthrough

Image
After our fourth playthrough of Dorfromantik I realized that something was off. When we first played the game it was too easy. I hadn't read the rules closely enough. I missed a constraint in the rulebook. Our next three play-throughs the game still didn't feel right. We couldn't get more than 100 points, it felt too difficult. So I scoured the internet for answers. I found a lot of videos of people playing Dorfromantik online but they were all playing it wrong. They were making the same mistake that I made the first time. Their final scores were way over-powered because of this mistake. It took me a while to find a video of someone who was actually playing the game correctly, but when I did, the game finally clicked into place. Of course! It's all right there in the rulebook. Why didn't I just read it more carefully? Misinterpreting rules and missing rules is one of the toughest aspect of board games. And when this happens it can really throw off the balance of the...
Read more

Dorfromantik Expanded

Image
With the purchase of an expansion pack, the world of Dorfromantik become more wonderful, more whimsical and more... romantic. Two new types of tasks have entered our sessions, a photographer now wanders our landscapes. Over the past seven sessions we have unlocked 4 new tiles, pushing our maximum tiles to 112 up from the 73 we started with in Game Numeral Uno. Will we ever play a session where all 112 tiles are laid out on the table at the end? That is TBD. One thing I have noticed in the last few games is how inconsistent our scores have been. We have had swings of over 100 points from game to game. This corroborates what I have been reading online- there is a lot of luck in Dorfromantik. But that's part of the blue-print of board games. A game has to be a mix of skill and luck (order and chaos) in order to be fun. Without the elements of luck, you end up with games like chess and little clocks that you punch every time you finish a move. With that said, Dorfromantik is not the re...
Read more

I Heart Dorfromantik

Image
  I've been pretty obsessed with Dorf Romantik recently. Cathy and I are still unlocking items and still trying to understand the best strategies. In a game that depends on luck, our scores are really fluctuating, but the more we are unlocking items, the more chances we have to score big. In video games the unlocking of items tends to be supplementary to the main story mode- almost like an easter egg hunt- something to be done later. Of course unlocking items is a core concept to legacy games. At the end of our 12th game we unlocked the "Golden Heart" alongside our final red heart. This doubles our heart power for future games. We also recently unlocked "The Warehouse". This piece is probably a game-changer, although we have yet to really utilized it to its fullest potential yet or even yet understood what that potential might be. Strategy, strategy, strategy. Every hex laid in this game is a potential game changer (usually the game-changer being a roadblock tha...
Read more