Zug um Zug (english version Ticket to Ride) has been awarded Germany's Game of the Year 2004 (Spiel des Jahres 2004) award. This guarantees very high sales. I was able to buy Days of Wonder's publication at the game fair Spiel 2004 in Essen on Saturday. I bought it at the Days of Wonder booth and got a free copy of Mystery Train (the first expansion containing 10 new mission cards).
Alan R. Moon, the designer of Zug um Zug, signing his game during Game Fair 2004 in Essen
The author of the game, Alan R. Moon, was signing the game at the booth. From the very few moments I saw him, he seems to be a very fun and friendly guy. Since the game contains a map of the United States, he actually signed onto the map and drew a small house labelled Me where he lives. What a great idea!
The signature of Alan R. Moon with a moon and his current whereabouts
When Alan arrived, he held another game called "Zug um Zug" in his hands which had a Deutsche Bahn-logo on it. I am not sure whether it was published by the German railway, but I assume it's a game which Deutsche Bahn created for promotional purposes. [Note: It is not published by Days of Wonder! If you have additional info on this, I'd appreciate a small Comment at the bottom of this blog entry).
Now, let's move our attention to the game itself. I have now played it once with two friends on the same evening. Without being to over-enthusiastic: I really like the game. Basically, it's all about building railroad tracks between US cities. One or more objective cards are used to specify the cities which need to get connected by a player. Each player holds different objectives and connections are not required to be direct (i.e. you could potentially connect New York and Washington via Houston). In order to build tracks you need to collect cards in different colors - the greater the distance between two cities, the more cards of the same card are required. Jokers (aka trains) may be used to replace any color. The longer the track the more points to be scored. The more difficult the missions a player fulfills, the more points to score. The player with the most points wins. These are the rules in short, the rule booklet covers only three pages and explains everything straight forward and in greater detail.
The game is relatively fast paced, people do not need to think all that much. You get to do something every once in a short while and you get some tracks build relatively easy. You see results quickly, although the other players may destroy your strategy every other second. To see the game move forward is important for me in order to think of the game as being fun. And that's what it is. In my first game with Raven and Shelak, I had some very difficult and highly valued missions: connect Seattle to New York and Pittsburgh to Nashville. The others went for some easier objectives and I seemed to be lucky to get these tracks laid out. Shelak and I seemed to be interfering with each other every now and then without giving Raven a too hard time after all. Well, in the end, we got a very tough result: Naturelich 117 points, Shelak 116 points, Raven 115 points. Rather close, don't you think?
To put it in a nutshell: Zug um Zug is a highly addictive, fun game to play. Thanks Alan, thanks Days of Wonder for putting this together.
Oh, and Alan, there is Naturelich a proposal for the 11th (yet blank) Mystery Train card.
Bribery: Connect Boston with both New York and Montreal to allow the game designer to journey onward to Europe again soon to let him introduce his next expansion. ;-)
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