If you are interested in more details around Ticket to Ride, I suggest to visit
This Ticket to Ride wiki contains tournament reports & details (e.g. World Championshiop, National Championships, etc.) as well as a great strategy guide, plus some TtR puzzles and the like.
Days of Wonder has announced the release of Ticket to Ride Nordic Countries. This version of Ticket to Ride is a stand-alone game and will only be available and sold in the Nordic Countries of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. This game will be for 2-3 players and take players through the big nordic cities Oslo, Copenhagen, Helsiniki, Stockholm (and probably some others too).
More information is available here at the Days of Wonder blog.
Ticket to Ride: USA 1910 - A new expansion to Zug um Zug. Ticket to Ride is designed by Alan R. Moon and published by Days of Wonder
The next installation in the Ticket to Ride series is another expansion to the base game: Ticket to Ride: USA 1910. As it is being release at the Spiel 2006 fair in Essen the game production seems to progressing well. Some information on the rules has already been leaked at the excellent Garett's Games & Geekiness #30 podcast.
Ticket to Ride: USA 1910 which will come in a small metal box includes:
With the 1910 expansion, players will be able to play three different variants of the original Ticket to Ride:
1910 Destination Tickets: Play with the 35 new destination tickets
Mega Game: Play with all the tickets (69 in total) from both the original game and 1910
Big Cities: This variant uses only 35 tickets connecting to the biggest US cities (Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle).
The USA 1910, the tickets will be specially marked which should help us in distinguishing them.
That's the facts as they seem to be available right now. Obvisouly, USA: 1910 is a must for me. Since Days of Wonder is selling this expansion into their huge SdJ 2004 market, this expansion will certainly become a financial success. Several people have already complained that we only get new destination tickets. How much fun can this be? Whether it really adds new spice to the USA map remains to be seen. But I hope Alan R. Moon has designed this to take the basic game into a new and fresh direction. If this is all about my 15 (?) Euros or memorizing 35 new cards, then 1910 will be a big disappointment. If all goes well, this expansion will add new strategic options and a couple of interesting new winning strategies. We will see in Essen...
Update: Days of Wonder has now published a dedicated website to the 1910 expansion with additional pictures of some of the cards.
The Ticket to Ride PC game contains a map of Switzerland that is not available as a regular boardgame. While there is an Official please print the switzerland map petition thread on one of the Days of Wonder forums, Malaysian BGG user Sean Chong has created a home-produced version of the official Swiss TtR map. He has uploaded several pictures to BoardGameGeek. Please find the links below:
Scott Nicholson reviews Ticket to Ride - Märklin Edition on his video podcast show Boardgames with Scott. In addition to the Märklin Edition, Scott also reviews TtR Europe and TtR Switzerland.
If you like Ticket to Ride only a little bit, check this show out. There is a very very unique surprise involved...
Excellent show, Scott, thanks!
Here is the link: BGWS 014 - Ticket to Ride Europe, Switzerland and Märklin
The original Ticket to Ride game is also explained by Scott in episode 11: BGWS 011 - Ticket to Ride
Zug um Zug - Märklin Edition
Zug um Zug is coming home to Germany. Ticket to Ride Märklin is the third official installment in the Ticket to Ride series (only counting real board games - the Ticket to Ride PC game contains a fourth official map of Switzerland). This time, designer Alan R. Moon and publisher Days of Wonder give us the option play on a map of Germany. The original Ticket to Ride game won the prestigious 2004 Spiel des Jahres award. So, the expectations are high.
The waggon with Maggi brand
The waggon with DHL brand
The waggon with ARAL brand
While the previous Ticket to Ride editions were set in the early 1900s, the Märklin edition is set in rather current times. The art work reflects this by including a few elements one can find in recent industrial designs. Although I am not a design expert, they reminded me a little bit of recent German car (or train) design elements. This certailny breathes a little bit of fresh air into the game.
The game is illustrated by Julien Delval
The design has been adjusted to a modern look
Passengers, not meeples
Once a passenger is in play, the player will typically want to claim a few more routes to maximize the points that a travelling passenger can earn. Having a passenger move, is a new action that can be performed instead of the "regular" actions of drawing two waggons, drawing new destination tickets or claiming a route. The passenger must move from the city he currently occupies along any or all of player's continuous routes, picking up Merchandise tokens in each city he moves through. To make this a little bit more complicated the game offers four types of cities (somewhat depending on their economic weight within Germany). The single most valuable city on the map, Berlin, allows the first passenger passing through to score 7 points. The second passenger scores 6, the third one scores 5 and the fourth one gains 4 points. Passenger #5 scores no points. These rules certainly create another incentive to play and move passengers early during the game. This incentive is also pretty strong for the yellow and red cities, but even stronger for the white cities where only the first passenger passing through scores points at all. Winner takes all.
Passengers moving through Mannheim or Karlsruhe are too late and will get no points from Merchandise Tokens. Saarbrücken still has Merchandise to offer but is not yet connected...
Another passenger-related novelty is the introduction of Passenger Cards. They are drawn like regular waggon cards and basically introduce a stealing mechanism for Merchandising Tokens. Normally, a Passenger may only be moved along your own routes. However, players may use other players' routes by discarding one or more Passenger Cards from their hand. Indeed, a very devious deed is to steal the 7 points located in Berlin by using another player's route. While this mechanism might not be applied as often when playing with friends or family, it will probably be used pretty often in competitive environments. As of now, Days of Wonder has not yet announced whether the Märklin edition will be made available online, but if they do, the passenger cards might be key to winning a competitive onlnie game. In several of our games, the winner had scored more points through passenger movement than by completing destination tickets. Although the player completing the most tickets will score 10 points at the end of the game (replacing the rule for the longest route in previous TtR versions).
Collecting merchandise is at least as important as earning points by completing destination tickets
So far, this review has been generous with space for the passengers. Simply because this is the most influential change and key to the success in gameplay. However, the Märklin Edition also creates new or refines some existing mechanisms.
First, we have several long routes with a length of 6 or 7. Without exception, they are difficult to claim as player's need to collect one particular color. To mitigate those colors becoming too scarce as a resouce, there are also new jokers, the Locomotive +4 cards. These cards are drawn like regular waggons, i.e. it is possible to openly draw two Locomotive +4 cards per turn. They are played pretty much like regular jokers, but may only be used on routes which have a lengths of four or more.
The game does neither include tunnels, ferries nor train stations as with Ticket to Ride Europe.
The game does include refined rules for the destination tickets. These are now available in two stacks, one with short tickets (5-11 victory points) and another one with long routes (12-22 pts). Whenever a player chooses to draw new tickets they have to announce how many they would like to draw from each stack. It is mandatory to draw four tickets but the player is only obliged to keep any two of them.
Several tickets require players to create a city to country route. This mechanism has been previously introduced by the Ticket to Ride PC Game. It also works nicely with the new map, as German economy is highly interconnected with that of France, Nederlands, Switzerland, Austria and Denmark.
However, the map does neither provide connections to Poland nor to the Czech Republic, Germany's neighboring countries to the East. Although this is not a main issue, I think of Ticket to Ride as a family game capable of teaching kids a little bit of geography (for example, the map of the US taught many German players where Duluth is located). While the Czech Republic is even depicted on the board, I can see that there was little physical space to include Poland. But both Germany's historic responsibilities and the current geopolitical and economic situation in the EU would have required such a connection. I will be very forgiving to both Alan R. Moon and Days of Wonder, but a German publisher might not have gotten away with this so easily. I know it is just a board game, but imagine German kids playing this game in geography class. It would have been so great to see this happen... I certainly would have loved to learn my geography through Ticket to Ride.
Midgame situation with Passenger Movement
The game also has some negatives.
1. The uppermost criticism above all else is the fiddly setup of the Merchandise Tokens. This is not fun and here you can learn a new German word: setup is simply "frickelig" (= fiddly, tricky in an unpleasant way). These tokens are certainly designed for kids finger sizes not mine. Hopefully, we will see someone come up with an easier mechanism for this (I mean aside from playing online).
2. The plastic trains come in different colors than in the predecessors. Green and blue have been replaced by purple and white. The reason behind this remains a mystery, as it certainly makes a variant with tunnels (from the TtR Europe) look a bit confusing. I am not sure whether this variant makes sense at all, but it might have been worth a try...
To wrap this review up: Each individual game of Ticket to Ride Märklin Edition will force players to make hard decisions each turn. The game requires players to constantly be alert on others, evaluate their own options and adjust the short-term plans with their long time strategy. Ticket to Ride Märklin Edition has not become a brain-burner (and I doubt TtR games ever will), but it's no longer simply a nice hand management game. Strategic options have increased and no single winning strategy is apparent. The flow is still quick and not prone to analysis paralysis. For kids / beginners it might be simpler to apply the original Ticket to Ride rules, first, and add the passenger rules later on. The experienced player will enjoy the passenger movement. If you were asking me, this is a must-play for 2006. Ticket to Ride Märklin Edition has already made it to my personal Five & Dime list and might just make it to number one.
Click the image to enlarge
The Ticket to Ride PC game has recently been published in the United States. While it is on the market in Europe for a while the destination tickets have not yet been published officially. erps has gathered detailed information on the tickets and their distribution. The picture above gives a good impression of the route distribution.
Continue reading "T2R PC: Destination tickets on the Swiss map" »
As I have pointed out several times on this blog, I like little goodies for my favorite games. Maybe it is the collector inside me, the hunter, the gatherer. Who knows? It does not have to be a big thing, I may even want to pay (or donate) a few Euros for it.
For example: During Essen 2004, Kosmos was promoting Candamir in a unique way: People could walk up to their booth and have a picture taken. An hour later, they had used this photo to create a special Candamir character card for you. How cool! You could just take out this card and surprise players who may not have had the chance to be in Essen. Actually, now that I write this the whole topic seems a little bit embarassing, but what the hell. It's probably something which survived from my short phase of playing CCGs.
Now, I just had a similar idea for the upcoming Ticket to Ride Märklin Edition. Apparently, every train card in this TtR edition shows a different image of a special Märklin waggon or train. The game also contains a rather abstract passenger card. And, yes, you might already have guessed it (and I feel even more embarrassed now): why not offer a personalized passenger card as a little goodie at the 2006 Essen booth? Days of Wonder do you read this?
Now, that would be something, wouldn't it? :D
PS: Oh, yeah. Can I ask a favor? Please leave a comment if you think I have totally geeked out. Sometimes it just helps to get feedback from normal people... :-D
PPS: Maybe this post is also just a pretense to use the essen2006-tag for the first time ;)
Alan R. Moon has revealed additional details as a comment to the original Boardgame News post. Click here, to read his full comment. The major highlights are:
1. There are 46 Tickets divided equally into two decks: Long Tickets valued 12-22 and Short Tickets valued 5-11. At the start of the game, each player draws four Tickets in any combination from the two decks or all from one deck. You must keep at least two.2. Most of the Tickets are for north-south connections, especially the Long Tickets.
3. The west side of the map is mostly generic (non-colored) short routes. The east side of the map is mostly colored long routes. There are 7 space routes in the east.
4. At the start of the game, Berlin receives four Tokens valued 7, 6, 5, 4 at the start. Major cities receive three Tokens valued 4, 3, 2, Big cities receive two Tokens value 3, 2, 1, and Small cities receive one Token value 2 woth 18 points.
5. Each player gets three Passengers. When you Claim a Route, you can place one of your Passengers in either city as long as it doesn’t already contain a Passenger. At anytime later in the game, you can spend your whole turn to move one of your Passengers that is already on the board. You can move the Passenger any number of cities along your own routes, and you pick up one Token in each city you enter. You score a number of points equal to the total of all the Tokens taken. The Passenger is removed once scored, so you have a maximum of three Passenger moves per game.
6. There are two new cards in the deck:
1) There is a 4+ Locomotive. You can draw this like a regular card. You can play it as part of a set to Claim any route 4-7 spaces.
2) There is a Passenger Card. You can draw this like a regular card. When moving a Passenger, you can play any number of Passenger Cards and use one route belonging to an opponent for each card played.7. There are two very different basic strategies in the game. One, you can take Long Tickets and build long routes on the eastern half of the board (which should especially appeal to the USA fans). Two, you can take Short Tickets and build short routes on the western half of the board where there are more Tokens, and try to make lots of Passenger points. Of course, the winning strategy will probably combine aspects of both of these strategies in most games.
(via Boardgame News)
This sounds really cool!!
In addition, Eric Hautemont (from Days of Wonder) has added another comment predicting that 2006 will offer two new DoW games IN ADDITION to the already announced Märklin edition of T2R.
Well, let us please skip Christmas and immediately move forard to 2006. This is such great news. Can you feel the anticipation levels rising? I certainly can... ;-)
Boardgame News is showing information about the Märklin edition of Ticket to Ride. This is a new edition of Ticket to Ride with the fourth official map designed by Alan R. Moon. As was rumored at Essen 2005, this map features Germany and very authentic (model) train cards displaying original Märklin trains. More game details below. A preview of this edition will be shown during the Nuremberg toy fare. Here is a quote from the pubslihers Days of Wonder. Due to the combined forces of Days of Wonder and Märklin I expect this game to become popular not only for boardgamers but also for model train fans. I can immediately think of a few people for whom this might be an excellent birthday present...
The boardmap for the Märklin Edition is based on a map of Germany and introduces Passengers and Merchandise to the Ticket to Ride gameplay.Passengers are used to pick up merchandise worth different numbers of points along the routes that they claim. Varying stacks of merchandise tokens with different point values are placed next to the different cities on the map. Players can place one of their 3 Passenger tokens on any city along a route that they claim. On his game turn, the player can choose to then move one of his passengers from the city it currently occupies along any or all of his continuous routes, picking up Merchandise Tokens from each city he moves through. Of course he’ll always take the highest remaining tokens. The point total of the tokens is then added to his score.
Other game play changes are the vertical orientation of the German map, and instead of a bonus for longest route, the 10 point bonus card goes to the player who completes the most Destination Tickets.
While boardgamers may not be familiar with the Märklin name, train hobbyists consider it the premier name in the model train world. This German company has been around for over 140 years and is the world’s leader in the miniature train hobby. Each train card in this edition will feature a different image (118 in all) of a Märklin model train car or locomotive. To learn more about Märklin we invite you to visit their website at www.marklin.com. To learn of their history as a toy manufacturer visit: http://www.marklin.com/about/.
Visit the Boardgame News page (link above) for some pictures and more details.
The Ticket to Ride PC game is a standalone program that allows players to enjoy Ticket to Ride on the computer. Basically, there's two modes in which this game may be played. The first option is the single-player mode. Here, you compete against as many as four different robots. The second option is to play the game online. Both the original Ticket to Ride as well as Ticket to Ride Europe contain a Web Card which allows the fortunate buyer to play both games online for one year - for free. During that time, one can play as many games as there is spare time but once that year is over, one is required to renew the subscription or buy another Days of Wonder game to get another Web Card. TtR online is probably one of the most popular online installments of a boardgame today. The publishers claim to have counted more than 2,000,000 online games, with a new game starting every 13 seconds. Due to this fact it's very easy to find someone playing Ticket to Ride online. The community that has evolved, includes hardcore players who have played as many as 3,000 games since the initial release of the online game in 2004. But it also includes guest players or casual players who only play the game every now and then.
I guess everyone is wondering:
Why should I pay €24.95 for the computer game if I can buy a webcard for €18.00 and play the game online for free? Well, Days of Wonder's website has prepared a list of arguments why we need this game:
The question is: How valid are these arguments?
Continue reading "Review of Ticket to Ride - The Computer Game" »
Today, Days of Wonder shipped my copy of Ticket to Ride PC game. That's definitely excellent news, isn't it? Well, basically it would be great, but unfortunately I am on a business trip and will not be able to play the game before the weekend.
But anyway: if you are interested in obtaining a copy for yourself you may want to visit the Days of Wonder Online Shop.
On The Game Table blog, ekted recently posted an interesting article about Granularity in boardgames. ekted defines the term granularity as follows:
Granularity is the measurement of the size of scoring increments in a game. It can be constant from start to finish, or change as the game progresses. It is a concept that is not often discussed along with the usual theme/mechanics aspects when critiquing a game.
I have to agree on this issue. Granularity is not widely discussed during reviews and it may - or may not - be a part of frustration for a certain type of player. I hope to be able to avoid a discussion about semantics but I am not sure I can. (Let me see what I end up with). What bothers me is my own strong personal opinion about some of the classification that were made as part of ekted's article [Note: This will obviously create a long (!) blog entry but I shall try to provide a quick "management summary" at the bottom].
Basically, the discussion identified games with a fairly constant granularity (e.g. Carcassonne and St. Petersburg as examples) as compared to games with "uncontrolled granularity", "where many games fall apart".
I am not so sure whether it's fair to name Ticket to Ride in this latter category. It may just be "a popular pretend-train-game" but I don't think the granularity (or "size of scoring increments") is uncontrolled. Let me try to explain why.
Alan R. Moon, the designer of Ticket to Ride has been interview recently: He pointed out that several new maps are in production for Ticket to Ride. Unfortunately, Days of Wonder has requested him not disclosing any information. The only rumor we've heared about is Switzerland for the upcoming PC game.
Click here to read the full interview on boardgames.about.com.
Rumor has it: Days of Wonder is said to publish Ticket to Ride as a PC game in October. This game will probably be introduced during games fair in Essen 2005. The computer version is said to include the original Ticket to Ride board (USA), Ticket to Ride Europe and a brandnew map.
Continue reading "Essen 2005 rumors: Ticket to Ride PC game" »
I am not sure whether this belongs into the Ticket to Ride: Extension category but it is probably the best fit. The long routes in Ticket to Europe are very crucial to winning. Beginners may not know where the route endpoints are. Suppose a beginner-level player first places waggons on Edinburgh-London. An experienced opponent will almost immediately assume that this player is running for Edinburgh-Athens. Which makes unfriendly moves much easier.
Jonathan Degann has recently posted endpoint markers for the long routes on BoardGameGeek. I believe, his idea is to cut and paste the markers to denote the endpoints. This will instantaneously create more transparency for all players - even beginners.
Click here to download the image file.
A lot of confusion is going on with regard to the plain English / or German titles of the cities displayed on the Ticket to Ride Europe map. Some people may think what a useless blog entry, but perhaps someone might find it helpful. Click below to get the list both in English and in German.
As reported in Mikko Saari's Gameblog, the Finnish game site voitta.net offers an online-game called Wanderer, which is basically a turn-based clone of Ticket to Ride and Ticket to Ride Europe. The graphics are not yet what I would call beautiful but the FAQ announces them to be improved once testing is finished.
In addition, the site offers a version of Risk, called Fisk (Swedish for Fish).
Anael Orlinski has created a free LAN version of Ticket to Ride. Having it's origins in a university project the game has been continuously developed as free software. Since there is no artifical intelligence the game has to be played via LAN or Internet with 2-5 players. A package has been compiled for Windows and is available if you click here on Anael's homepage.
The game can be translated and is currently available in English and French. In addition - and this is a great feature - it is (theoretically) possible to create your own maps. Anael points out that this may be a bit tricky, but nonetheless - perhaps someone can figure this out...
Since the number of unofficial maps for Ticket to Ride keeps expanding and expanding I found it necessary to add a summary entry here which links to all the articles I have written about these fan-made maps:
Cities
Countries
Regions
Continents
Expansion sets
Variants
Digital versions
If you have created your own map for Ticket to Ride please leave a comment - I really like the original game and enjoy tinkering these expansions which keeps the game fresh and enjoyable. Since I am thinking about creating my own map I would like to see other examples to help me in the endeavour.
Note
I am not responsible for creating any of these expansions. The copyright lies with the corresponding copyright holders but not with me. This overview is only intended to give a means of quick access to the relevant pages of the authors.
Ticket to Ride is an excellent board game published and copyrighted by Days of Wonder. I recommend you buy it! Also visit www.zugumzug.com directly.
Days of Wonder has published news about the German Ticket to Ride championship tournament series. Days of Wonder is looking for the first German champion of Zug um Zug (the German title of Ticket to Ride). The first of 50 qualifying tournaments are hosted in May in Schweinfurt, Kassel and Limburg-Eschhofen. Cologne, Gaggenau and Übach-Palenberg will follow in June -- many other locations follow until November 2005. Click here to see the current list of tournaments. These events are naturelich not to be missed!
Naturelich's suggestion for the grand-prize (next to fame and glory): a one-on-one game against Alan R. Moon. :D
If you want to go to Cologne, please leave a comment here and we can play some online-games. After that, I can decide whether I still want to go there or not. :D
The official tournament rules are available here.
[Update April 18th: Click here to view the official entry in the forum.]
How do you know you are a boardgame geek?
How did I find out, I was one?
Well, I am a Tori Amos fan. This passion is shared with millions of people -- not all of them geeks. Why do I mention this? Well, Tori has a song Happy Phantom which contains the following line in the chorus:And if I die today, I'll be a happy phantom.
Now, it is pretty easy:
IF
THEN
you are a board game geek.
... So here is what's happened today. I return from home after a whole long day of work and find a package on the stairs. Sender: from Paris, company name: Days of Wonder (and particularly true for to-day). Ups? What is this? Already March 29th?
YEEEESS!! It IS Ticket to Ride Europe! Today, before Easter! Not on March 29th.
And the first thing that comes to mind:
And if I die today, I'll be a happy phantom
So, here we go for some pics of what's new and my first impressions of the game design. Let me just mention: I have not played it yet, but this is just my excitement going nuts...
Now, from Mr. over-enthusiastic, back to a bit more analytic, please.
If you are a regular reader you have certainly noticed my late affection for Ticket to Ride. The new Ticket to Ride EUrope [aka Zug um Zug Europa] has been announced to be released on March 29th, 2005. The suggested retail price is € 34.95. The online shop of Days of Wonder has announced to ship the game on March 28th, depending on when they receive your order.
The unfortunate news: this is after Easter!! :-((
The map of the soon to be released Ticket to Ride - Europe was published on Boardgame Geek. Now, this looks so very cool. And please note the hommage the author Alan R. Moon has paid to Essen, the game capital of the world! Next to Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt, this is the only German city which has made it onto the map!! Thank you Alan, for your humor, your wit and this great new game. I can't wait to travel from Stockholm to Petrograd! Days of Wonder can't you publish this a bit earlier and faster????
PS: Edited a day later: another preview is available on Gamefest.
The Boardgame Geek Forum contains some rumors on the new expansion to Ticket to Ride. Compared to the basic game, here are the highlights:
The game is scheduled to premiere on the Nuremberg and New York Toy Fairs hitting stores in late March or April (2005 we hope...)!
Days of Wonder has released the first expansion to Ticket to Ride (German: Zug um Zug): Mystery Train. Coming as a limited edition, this expansion was available at the games fair Spiel 2004 in Essen, Germany. If one bought the game at the Days of Wonder booth (or had bought the game already, elsewhere), one was entitled to receive the expansion. Atfer the exhibition, Mystery Train is available via the Days of Wonder website.
Why Mystery Train?
Well, it was created by Alan R. Moon, game designer of Ticket to Ride, to celebrate the game being awarded the Spiel des Jahres 2004 prize and to thank customers and retailers for making TIcket to Ride such a success (to the gaming industry, the Spiel des Jahres award is what the Academy Award is to movie makers).
What are the contents of Mystery Train?
The expansion contains ten new cards bringing additional variety to the gameplay through special bonuses and action cards. Additionally, some new destination routes are introduced. Here are the details:
What are the implications for gameplay?
First of all, let me stress that the Mystery Train cards are shuffled into the destination tickets. Unfortunately, they have a different back color, than the original set and can be spotted easily.
This is a major drawback, as it interferes with a crucial game mechanism. In the original game, drawing additional destination tickets is risky business. You may be lucky and draw destinations which can be reached easily, but you may have bad luck and draw tickets which are way out of route. Thus, one would have to score minus points. Now what does the Mystery Train expansion add to that mechanism? Keep in mind, the Mystery Train destination routes are short and easy to score (if you draw them at the start of the game). And even if you can't reach those destinations one can be certain to score a maximum of 7 minus points.
In addition the positive effects of the character cards are great. The most valuable destination routes run from east coast to west coast. If you go for one of those, the Tycoon really supports this strategy well. The Engineer is worth a lot, as you can pick a destination ticket of your choice and you get to look through the entire stack of tickets. The station master is wonderful for those east-cost or mid-west routes where one has to connect cities lying rather closely together. To me, the least powerful card is the Train Condcutor, but it can have a surprising effect, if you use it as the last card to be scored and you are only 5 points behind the leading player... ;-)
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. ;-)
