I was remembering how, long ago and far away, I used to play with a group that played Power Grid almost every week. Enough that, even though I think it is a profoundly brilliant game, I got burnt out on it. However, the other game that you could pretty much count on always being played was Ticket to Ride Europe and I never got burnt out on that.
When I first started really playing board games, which was back around 2002, it felt like Catan and Carcassonne and Puerto Rico were the three pillars of board gaming. Almost everyone in the hobby knew and play those games. You could just count on it. And Ticket to Ride ended up becoming like one of those pillars, a position that I think it still holds to this day, better than Carcassonne and Puerto Rico in fact.
I haven’t played a lot of the new boards yet but I feel that if you are only going to buy one Ticket to Ride Product and call it quits after that, Ticket to Ride Europe is that one box.
There’s really two reasons I feel that way. I feel that only distributing the super long routes at the beginning and the stations help flatten the randomness of the game and make it a little more forgiving for new players without dumbing the game down. It’s still tense game that I’ve seen lots of adult language used during.
Mind you, I didn’t stop at one box so I don’t own the Europe board :P In fact, with the 1912 expansion, I like the US map better. Although I still think the Europe board is the best for easing new players in before the knives come out.
For a game described as a family game, Ticket to Ride can be a vicious game :D
And, it has been a long runner for me.
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