Ticket to Ride- Europe
Happy day after Christmas! Did you survive? What was your favorite part? The food? The time spent together? I hope all of the above!
We had an enjoyable Christmas this year, spent with family and eating lots of great food. One of my favorite parts was playing our new board game, Ticket to Ride- Europe by Days of Wonder. We’ve often played the original game, Ticket to Ride- USA, and have enjoyed that immensely.
Both games are similar- the premise of the game is that you and the other players are building early 20th century railroads across the continent. The winner being the person with highest score at the end of the game. There are several ways to make points- make longer trains, have the longest continuous route, and create routes assigned by destinations. The game is designed for between 2 and 5 players, and the more players, the more complex the game becomes. It becomes a game of tactics, and though it might not seem, at first, that much strategy is needed, once those cards start flying and routes start getting built, it really gets fun!
Ticket to Ride- Europe is a fun twist on the original game- not only do you build trains, but you can also build tunnels and ferries. At the end, the scoring is the same, but it is more difficult to get those routes built- while you may have the cards to build a route, it doesn’t mean you can! And building a ferry route requires at least one “wild” card, which if you play with my brother-in-law Nathan, can be really hard to get (he is a master at getting and holding on to them!). You can also build train stations, which help you complete your routes, but they will cost you a little in the end.
The biggest difference in the game that I saw is the length of the trains that can be built- the original has many routes that are 5 or 6 cars long, which leads to much higher scores. In the European version, there are only a couple of routes that are 6 cars long, and one that is 8 cars, but the vast majority of the possible train lines are only 2 or 3 cars long. That same brother, Nathan, had one of the longest routes in the game, but it was comprised almost entirely of 2 car routes, and so counted for almost nothing. That, I think, can make the game far more difficult, especially when playing with a lot of players.
Ticket to Ride- Europe game board.
In the end, I really enjoyed the game, and even though I lost (despite my having the longest route AND the 8 car train), I had a great time trying to figure out these new twists. We as a family are excited to play again, and give it a “5 star rating” (maybe we’ll start calling them “Zeros”).
The game can be found for around $35 at Walmart, Target, and other major retailers, and online.
#zerorezboi #thingstodo #cleanhomeactivities #games #familyfun
