Welcome to Replayable, where we go into depth on our favorite tabletop games that keep us coming back again and again. I'm the start player Todd, and today I'm joined by Megan and Paul. For our 17th episode, we are all aboard with Ticket to Ride. It is designed by Alan R. Moon and was originally released in 2004 by Days of Wonder with artwork by Saril Daljan and Julien Delval. It won the Spire des Arts in that same year. How are you two doing today?
I'm great, Todd. Choo-choo. Yeah, I'm ready to play some rummy hands. I mean Ticket to Ride. Nice. So Ticket to Ride is a railway-themed game in which players embark on a cross-country train journey. The objective is to accumulate points by climbing railway routes, completing destination tickets, and building the longest continuous path. The base game board features a map of North America. Other regions are available in different editions and expansions.
What was your first introduction to this game? Because like I said, it's been around for a while now. Megan? I kind of came at TTR backwards, which is to say that for me, I was aware of Catan and Carcassonne, I think, before I really got into strategy gaming. And then my real gateway game was Shadows Over Camelot. And then I started playing that and there's something else that I'm thinking of. Oh, Arkham Horror. I started that way and those were my entry points.
And so it wasn't until I was probably, I don't know, maybe a year or two into really getting into board games that I found out about Ticket to Ride. And by that point, I was a little bit beyond needing a gateway game. So I was like, oh yeah, there's Ticket to Ride. But it wasn't until later that I played it. So my first few experiences playing it were with people kind of expecting me to have already played it and kind of moved through the TTR phase. But instead, I had never even been there.
So it was fun to kind of come at it, I don't know, sideways, backwards, however you want to call that. So yeah, I'm curious about the two of you. Paul, how about you? Well, Megan dropping names like Gateway has me all fired up, but I'll get to that later. Yeah, I had been playing strategic board games for probably 10 years before I was introduced to Ticket to Ride. I played Brass before I ever played Ticket to Ride.
Wow. I want to say that my first play Ticket to Ride was at an Orange County meetup where one of the players coaxed me over saying, hey, I just won some invitational for Ticket to Ride Origins. You need to come try it. And so I sat down at the table think this was going to be some deep and serious game. I ended up just copying what that other player was doing. And I really learned a lot about how to play Ticket to Ride well in that first experience.
I think it kind of soured my experiences when I played it later with everybody else in the local community because I just kept winning over and over. Oh, yeah, that is a problem. Yeah, that's a real kind of Paul problem to have. But you know, Ticket to Ride kept coming to the forefront of everybody's let's play because of all the expansions that were being released over and over year after year. So it felt to me like it was always on the table. Got it.
Yeah. So I created my account on Board Game Geek back in 2004. And Ticket to Ride was getting a lot of publicity, was very popular. And so as I was beginning to create my collection, it was one that I decided to get playing blind. I hadn't played it anywhere before. And I was really amazed by how charming it was, how inviting the artwork was and how easy it was to understand, oh, OK, I'm trying to create links. And if I want to create a red link, I need to collect red cards, right?
An equal number of cards to the spaces in the link. And I just really enjoyed it. And I was enthusiastically sharing it with my friends who weren't as big of gamers as I was, but I thought would easily be able to grasp what needed to be done for Ticket to Ride. Even if that meant in all likelihood, I was going to end up winning the game simply because I had a little more experience with it and knew at least the basic strategy.
So you try not to exploit that too much when teaching it, but sometimes it is what it is. So Paul, let's talk about your getting fired up about the term gateway game. I reject the prevailing notion that a gateway game has to have simple rules and transparent play. To me, game recommendations and gateway games are purely dependent on each individual person. Like if I was talking to an American stockbroker, I would recommend 1830 as their gateway game.
So I really balk at people trying to generalize what games should be gateway and throwing Ticket to Ride in there most of the time, as far as I can see. That said, Ticket to Ride is a great game for kids. Yeah. When I think of gateway game, I usually think of games that you can introduce to your family, your family of perhaps not enthusiastic gamers, but something to spend time with them.
So there's already a potential lowering of the bar as far as complexity just to accommodate, like you say, children. It's easy to teach them as well. Yeah. And even when it comes to family, like when I started talking to my friends about getting Arc Nova to play with my wife, who's not much of a gamer, everybody advised me against it, but it has become her favorite game. You describing your wife as being a non-gamer. I think she falls squarely in the group.
She's one of us if Arc Nova is her favorite game. Move the goalposts. That's fine. Megan, how about you? What do you think of as gateway games and do you consider Ticket to Ride to be one of them? I am not surprised that Paul and I think differently about this. I do think there is an amount of accessibility in games like Catan or Carcassonne or Ticket to Ride.
And I think my biggest concern, my little asterisk that I would put on using the term gateway for these games is that for a lot of people, these games aren't gateways to something more. These games are where they sit. They're where they're comfortable. I know I spoke in a previous episode about looking for board game accessories or items to bling out your board games on Etsy or elsewhere. If you look at Ticket to Ride there, oh my goodness.
You could just create the most blinged out version of Ticket to Ride. There are a million accessories for it. You could have a Christmas tree full of ornaments relating to Ticket to Ride in a way that you could not have for brass or for 18xx or any of those. Now isn't that purely based on popularity? To me that goes hand in hand with it being accessible and a gateway to something.
Just to me that is part of what we mean when we call Catan and Ticket to Ride gateway games in that for a lot of people they are their entrance into gaming beyond monopoly. And so I'm using that term because I think it's appropriate. I'm not using it pejoratively because I think it's fine that there's people that love Catan and that's what they mean when they say I play board games. They mean they play Catan, which wonderful. Right. It's not a gateway. It's the destination.
Yeah. I'm so glad they love it.
And I feel the same way about Ticket to Ride and especially because as I know we're going to get into Ticket to Ride, I feel like I'm getting emotional about this and I do not know why, but Ticket to Ride has so many variations, so many expansions, so many different ways of having a Ticket to Ride experience that I think man that's great that if that's the board gaming experience people have, there's still a lot of variety and a lot of things to explore within that experience. And so wonderful.
I think for me, I was sharing that story earlier, it's not that Ticket to Ride was something that kind of primed the board gaming pump for me to make me be like, ah, my eyes have been opened. I want to check out this new world. I know for a lot of people it is a starting point into moving forward or it might just be the point they get to, which again, if anything can get people away from playing Monopoly, what a delight. I'll celebrate that. Right? I totally agree.
So by that definition though, Monopoly is a gateway game as well, right? I would not say that because I don't think Monopoly takes you other places. I mean, I think it used to be now. Monopoly is a dead end. I do think Monopoly is a dead end because I mean, Target has really and like Barnes and Noble have really upped their offerings, but I think it used to be that you could go to, you know, even like Walgreens or whatever at Christmas time might have Monopoly, right?
But they're not necessarily having anything else where it used to be back when Ticket to Ride was originally available in 2004. Where were you going to go to get that? It wasn't going to be broadly available anywhere other than a board game store. And I think something that is pushing people to engage with the hobby to go to a specialty shop I think is, that's another way in which it's a gateway, right? It was something that they were hearing about from their friends.
Now you will see on like the, you know, if a TV show or a movie has a nerd, that nerd sometimes will be playing Catan or Ticket to Ride or whatever. And for them, that's like the board gaming hobby because no one's going to make a reference to 18xx in a sitcom or something like that's never going to fly. That's very true. And that's the fact that nowadays you can go to Walmart or Target or somewhere else, Barnes and Noble and find Ticket to Ride, Catan, all these other board games as well.
It's become a gateway for these big box stores to start stocking more and more games that are even more niche than they are. Yep. There you go. And Megan, I know that I've seen both games, you know, Catan and Ticket to Ride on the shelves in the background in like Big Bang Theory, right? Yep. Yep. And that might have been what you were thinking about specifically with that reference. Oh, I was thinking of Parks and Rec. Oh, there you go.
I don't remember the name of it, but I love the game they all play. Yeah, Cones of Dunshire is the... Yeah. Thank you, Todd. And that's a running gag in my family. The whole line about roll dice to see the number of dice you roll is the one they frequently throw at me. Yes. And at Ben's bachelor party, they play Settlers of Catan. Got it. That's right. That's what he wanted to do. Yes. And they're all disappointed in it. Poor Ben. All right. So getting back to talking about Ticket to Ride.
Paul, you mentioned that first game, you just copied what the fellow next to you was doing and it led to a boring win streak for you. Give us the gouge. What was the secret behind your Insta winning at this game? You know, really it's just thinking strategically, but more than that, it goes to the heart of what makes Ticket to Ride such a good game. And that is to play well and to put yourself in a position to get a top score.
You have to draw a lot of cards and sit with the tension and worry that somebody else is going to claim a route that you want before you're ready. Absolutely. The ideal game of Ticket to Ride is just drawing up to 40 cards and then taking the next eight or nine turns to play all your trains, ending the game and leaving everybody with their pants down. Which, you know, I have a story about that. Let's hear it. So after I moved to California, I felt homesick.
I grew up in Colorado and I went back a few years later to visit a very good friend of mine in Colorado. And when I went back, he was telling all of his friends there that I didn't know how good I was at board games. And so when I went back, he set up a board game night so that they could play against me and the game they wanted to play was Ticket to Ride Europe. And firstly, I think of Ticket to Ride Europe is like with football. It doesn't have any of that tension because of the stations.
And so the first game I sat down and I realized these people were drawing cards, playing track, the way most people start out doing. You know, as soon as you have a set of cards you want, you claim a route. And so I placed some strategic stations early, which everybody was like laughing and scoffing at me for. And then I just started drawing tickets. I must have drawn like 15 tickets. And they were amazed. They were like, there's no way you're going to complete all those.
And by the end of the game, I had completed them. And I cracked, I've lapped one person and he just sat there wide eyed, like what just happened? And he's like bang the table. He's like, we're playing again right now. And so we did. And I kind of had a smirk to myself because this game is a lot like poker in that you can play the other players. And so what I watched them do was copy what I did in the first game and try and draw lots of tickets and set up good stations.
And so I knew that was going to happen. And I just kept the smallest route tickets at the beginning of the game that I could. And I just did what I said I thought was the ideal strategy was I just drew cards turn after turn until I had about 45 cards in my hand. Oh my. I spent the next nine turns playing all my trains. And I think two or three of the people I was playing against ended up with a negative score. And that same guy, he stood up. He didn't even talk to me. He stood up.
He ran downstairs and he said, Gary, you're not going to believe what just happened. Right. And Gary's like, I told you. Yeah. I think that explains why I enjoy the game, especially the game with high tension where it is almost likely you're going to be blocked because you almost have a gun held your head every turn. Are you going to play the route or are you going to take the chance of somebody else taking it away from you? Right. Especially because of the cards that are on the display. Right.
If there are cards that you know that you can use, that's what gets tempting, at least for me is, OK, I really want to pick up some yellow cards and I see that there's one or two that I can grab right now. But I'm doing so, like you say, at the risk of someone claiming another route that I desperately need because it's a link that's within at least two of my tickets. So how did your thoughts evolve about the strategy in the game?
So you just took us to end state and came talked about two specific ones to Ticket to Ride Europe. Was it always that involved or did you try to disguise which links you might by seeding them around the board as opposed to building straight from Los Angeles to New York? What are your thoughts there?
Oh, I am maybe the worst person to ask this question to because I am sitting here thinking, oh, Paul is thinking a level beyond how I think about this game because I will say I typically am a just a I build from, you know, I kind of go through, look at what I want to do to connect my destinations and and then I will just kind of build in a line. I'm not very good at hiding my intentions.
It's really only when other players force me to take a meandering route that all of a sudden I'm like, oh, yeah, they forced me to change plans. So I guess now I can start maybe obfuscating a little bit what I'm trying to do. And in that way, they're probably helping me be better than I would be without them. Right. Paul, how about you? Can you talk more about what you mean, Todd, when you say disguise what you're trying to do?
As Megan kind of said, like if you have a long haul route, like if you're looking at going from LA to New York or, you know, what's another one like maybe Seattle to Miami, I'm not sure that's even in the game, but theoretically it could be it would be very tempting to say, OK, I'm going to start coming out of Seattle. I'm going to go to Helena and then just keep buying the next links on your path to get to Miami, which telegraphs everyone where you're headed.
Whereas disguising your intent might be, well, I'm going to pick up this little route that goes into Birmingham and then later coming in saying, OK, well, now I'm going to head to I'm not looking at the maps. I'm just running out of names. Please don't fact check me and come back and say, that's not even an option. You know, I'm going to go to Chattanooga and then I'm going to head down to Miami. Whatever the sequence there is, do you build straight or do you do it piecemeal?
And what are your thoughts about that? So that's what I meant by disguising your intentions. Oh, OK. I see it as a scale where you're weighing two things. You're weighing efficiency and then you're weighing flexibility. And I in most of the games I play tend to wait flexibility a lot more.
And what I mean by that is if if I have a ticket, I will try and start at the two ends first and then slowly build to connect them at the middle, because I think doing that gives me the most flexibility of completing the connection. Right. That makes sense. I'm curious. One of the things I weigh when I'm starting out in a game of ticket to ride, if we're just thinking about the base game, is sometimes there's those destinations that are one link apart like Seattle or Portland.
And I see sometimes people have a strategy of like, they grab those right away because they they know they they want them and they don't want anyone else to get them. And other times people are like, no, I'm not going to worry about that. They do what Paul recommended and they wait and play all their cards at the end. And so I'm curious if you have thoughts on that particular strategy, Paul. I think it's very group dependent.
I'll say again, ticket to ride is quite a bit like poker and you have to read the other players. And yeah, I've played in many groups where they're just claiming the single route to Nashville and the single route to mobile turn one. And then I've played with other groups where they they don't care. But I think the most competitive groups I play with tend to race to the six long routes.
And so probably the first 10 turns, everybody's only drawing cards because they're trying to get six of a kind before anybody else. What about when to purchase more tickets? You mentioned in the game of Europe because of the stations and your ability to not have as much competition for endpoints. You were able to draw a lot of tickets and then construct a network. In the base game, what are your thoughts about when should you purchase more tickets?
I feel like I haven't played enough to know because I have so much anxiety about completing my tickets in the base game that I won't draw more unless I've already completed the ones I started with. And I think we still have about five turns left in the game.
Right. Yeah, for me, I think there is this this calculus of looking at how many train segments do I have left to play and how many turns do we potentially have left in the game and how confident am I that I can complete what I have if I haven't already done so. And I will say I am a little risk averse in this. And so I do typically wait until I've completed my original tickets before I start drawing more.
And I was a little bit expecting Paul to be next level and say, oh, I always am just, you know, drawing tickets. No, not yet. I have thrown some Hail Marys though, you know, in the final two turns, you realize you're not going to win unless you get lucky and then you dig for tickets. Right. Because I think like base strategy here is as you're building your network, you need some north south route, right?
You need some east west route and it doesn't have to be the sequence of ones that follows the Mississippi River on the base game North American map. You just have to be able to get north to south and east to west. And then once you have branched and connected to your starting destination tickets, or at least you can see that you have a path to it, then you start rating that ticket deck. Right.
And you're hoping to draw one that fits within the network you've already established, maybe one or two railway segments. And I literally mean if I play a two segment here and maybe a one segment there, it's connected. That would be ideal. Doesn't matter how long it is. Those are free points. Yeah, 100% spot. And I actually do that in Ticket to Ride London. You know, the ply analysis in that game is much simpler. So it's easier to foresee when you can draw some tickets early. Right.
That's a great segue then because there are these small box versions of the game. Originally, you know, I thought for this podcast, we would just stick to the base game. But then there's just so many variations out there. I don't think we can ignore the city versions. Like you mentioned, Ticket to Ride London. There's also New York, Amsterdam, San Francisco. They just released Berlin and they are the Ticket to Ride experience in 20 minutes. Talk to me a little bit about London there, Paul.
My family and I love to play London. We've got it down to under 15 minutes. And I think it has all the decisions of the base game. I think it has a lot of the tension and fear. And there are times when I just get completely surprised by my wife or my kids. Like you're already out of trains. How did you end the game so fast? It's really a lot of fun, especially given the duration. That's my favorite part. Yeah. Megan, have you played any of the small box versions? I haven't.
I don't know that I realized that there even were like shorter, smaller versions of TTR. And now I'm like, maybe I need to give those a try. So what's really interesting about them is that in the base game, and we're going to talk about some of the things that have aged well, not aged well. But in the base game, you start out with 45 trains, right? You're potentially going to play down to 0, 1 or 2 to signal the last round.
In the small box versions, you have anywhere from 15 to 19, and that's it. The maps are smaller. It's much more hotly contested, but it's also just faster by the fact that you are playing a third to half of the number of trains in a big box game for want of a better term. Megan, you are our digital game enthusiast. Have you played this one on a digital platform?
Yeah. I've played on board game arena, and I will say in the last few years became more active on board game arena and realized, oh, they have Ticket to Ride. I guess I'll try that and was kind of surprised by how much fun I had with it. It was kind of a reminder to me of why people enjoy this game, because it's not something that we get to the table a ton at game night. I used to have a version of it on my iPad that I played, and that was how I experienced some of the expansions.
I had 1910 with the big cities expansion and really enjoyed playing those, but I think that's gone from the app store. I couldn't find that last time I was looking. Oh, really? Okay. I don't know. I don't know if maybe that's been changed or if maybe I'm just such an old lady now that I don't know how to navigate the app store, which is entirely possible. But really, really enjoyed both of those.
Playing on the iPad is nice because then it really goes at your own pace, and that's something I really enjoy. Nice. Yeah. I had that iPad version as well, or I still have it. I mean, I looked, it's still there, but I didn't think to check to see if it was still available in the app store. It is or was, whichever way it turns out to be, a really fun implementation of it, and they had started to release some of the expansion maps as well as DLC.
Another thing that I find interesting is that there was a progression of games. It felt like Ellen Moon was developing, refining the format to get to Ticket to Ride, which ultimately wins the Spiele des Jahres, which started with Airlines in 1990 and then Union Pacific in 1999, which was nominated for the Spiele des Jahres and had the same building a railway network by playing sets of cards and placing trains on those links. Have either of you played either Airlines or Union Pacific? I have not.
Yeah. I've played quite a few games of Union Pacific before I ever played Ticket to Ride. I think it's the better game, but it's also because it's got even more competition and the idea that you are helping a company improve its value and then there's a stock component to it. How do you feel moving between Union Pacific to Ticket to Ride? I didn't really move. I put them in completely different buckets and primarily I feel like Ticket to Ride plays at about half the time of Union Pacific.
That's true. Okay. I'm curious. I'm jumping in here even though I haven't played Union Pacific. Just to say, I was out with some friends last weekend and we were discussing Christina Aguilera versus Britney Spears. We were saying Christina clearly incredibly talented, probably the more talented vocalist of the two of them. However, Britney just has it. She has some sort of watchable, some sort of quality that made her more popular, just a bigger star than Christina.
Yeah. I'm certainly in that moment and I'm curious then having played both Union Pacific and Ticket to Ride where there is such commonality, what has made Ticket to Ride the Britney to Union Pacific's Christina? Is it just the shorter playing time or is there some- I think it's also the charm to go back to what Todd was saying at the beginning. Ticket to Ride is just charming and I never felt Union Pacific was charming. Well, that's fair. I don't think it is charming either.
It's got a level of meanness to it that is not anywhere near as present in Ticket to Ride. As I was saying, in Union Pacific, when you take a turn, you are either playing trains to add a link to a company's network, which is increasing the value of that company. When you place that link, you draw a stock into your hand or a share of that stock into your hand. The only thing you can do is you can play a share from your hand to the table in front of you.
That is now actually a share that you are going to be paid a dividend on. You're increasing your ownership of it. Before it's just potential in your hand. The brutal piece of it is you could be deciding that you are going to build out a particular railways network, but then I play more shares because maybe I threw a link in here to get a share of it. While you've been building, you've not been playing shares. Suddenly, all of your effort benefits me more than it does yourself.
Ticket to Ride eliminated that piece of it. All you were left with was the anxiety over how far do I push my electronic cards to prepare for future building versus playing my link now before someone else can take it away from me. I think that's what turned on the it factor is it took away a little bit of meanness, made it more accessible, and then the graphics are far better in Ticket to Ride. Let's move on to the prompts.
Weighting complexity on board game geek scale of one to five, no decimals. How would you rate the complexity of Ticket to Ride? Megan? For the base game, it's a two. I think there are other versions that maybe get up to a three, but I think for people starting out, this is a noticeable step up from Monopoly, but at the same time compared to other games we've talked about on this podcast or whatever, it is not a complicated or complex game. Right. How about you? The same. I rated a two.
Frankly, I also rate Monopoly a two, but yeah, this is a game you can teach and play in an hour. It's great that way. Right. And so while I don't want to turn this into the Monopoly pod, I really, really don't. I would say that Monopoly is a more complex game with this.
We just think of it as roll and move, and so it's simple, but all the thing about building Monopolies and paying rent and all the other stuff that goes along with it, if you look beyond roll and move, it's a more complex game than this. This is just collect cards, connect routes to complete your tickets and draw more tickets if you want. I mean, it's a one in my book. Oh, one. Yeah. What would you think Rummy is?
I think what Paul brought up earlier is what ticks it up to a two for me, which is you have that decision point of when am I going to start playing my cards and giving other people insight into my objectives. And I think we've talked before, I don't remember which game we talked about it in.
One of the games where you have that tension point of, you can either take points as money to help continue building your engine, but there's a point at which you want to take what you've earned and make it points. Do we remember what game I'm talking about? I don't. But there's other games we really enjoy that have that kind of decision point. And we talked about how exciting and engaging that was for us as a group.
And I think Ticket to Ride has that in a way that Monopoly and other street candy land certainly does not. So I agree. But I think that falls more into our second question, which is strategy. If we're differentiating between complexity, how difficult is it to learn this game? I think Ticket to Ride is easy. I think strategy does get a higher score. So what were your thoughts on the score for strategy for Ticket to Ride? I put Ticket to Ride right in the center and give it a three, four strategy.
There's not really an optimal strategy, but you have to know the preferred strategies and then play them off of your opponents. Right. That's fair. Megan, what did you have? I had a one. I don't think... What? I don't think there's a ton of room for strategy. I think it's small choices. And maybe that is a condemnation of myself in that I am not thinking about the game strategically enough. But for me, it's a one. Okay. Well, I'm going to split the gold posts.
I had it down as a two because knowing when to focus on contested areas. And this was something that we didn't really talk about when we were talking about disguising your path. But one of the things you also need to look at is where you think the other players are focusing their efforts. And if you need to get into Los Angeles, you may need to get into Las Vegas. And there's only one route in and out of Las Vegas. I mean, there's one coming in from the East and one that goes out West to LA.
And so there is some additional evaluation that's required to see how far you're going to push your luck before you start laying track. And so for me, that's a two. I think there is more strategy involved than there is complexity in the game. And that's just the way that I score it. Speaking of that, Todd, do the new additions of the basic ticket to ride game change the size of the city dots on the board? Oh, that's a good question. I don't know. I don't know.
But in new releases of ticket to ride, at least the new maps for the last 10 or so years, the size of the dot for the city on the map is equivalent to the number of tickets that have it as their destination. That's interesting. OK. So this would have been a good topic to discuss. Is there a level of familiarity that you need to know about what tickets are possible?
I would equate this to Carcassonne and knowing how many tiles have three road entries or how many tiles have the various attributes for them to know if you're already drawing dead trying to complete something. Yeah, for the basic game, that might be true because I don't think it has that shorthand on it. I didn't know that. That is really good to know. They also settled on going with the larger cards, right? My older version of ticket to ride from 2004 has the mini euro sized cards.
I bought one two years ago and it still had the mini cards. Oh, it did? I don't know what version it is. Interesting. That's why I bought the 1910 expansion just to get the big cards. I do like the big cards better. All right. So, luck and Megan, this probably dovetails with your thoughts on strategy. How much do you think luck plays a factor? So I said luck was a three. I think that those tickets that you get determine a lot, especially in the base game.
I know I've had times where I was excited to have destinations all over the map because it felt like, ooh, I have some routes that are going to be high scoring and that feels good. But at the same time, it thought, oh, these are really long and there's a lot of opportunity for them to get messed up. And depending on the player count, depends on how much competition you'll potentially have for completing those routes. Yeah, I think those tickets can have a huge impact on your game. Right.
I think it's a two. Personally, I don't think the tickets, at least the starting tickets are a big factor. But when you draw late game tickets and you have already completed a ticket that you just drew, that is a big luck bonus. Or if you just need two orange cards to complete your longest route, but for whatever reason, all of the orange cards were shuffled to be at the bottom of the draw deck, then that's some bad luck in your favor. So for those reasons, I give it a two.
Other than that, I don't think there's really a lot of luck to it. Wow. I think the game is long enough that most of the luck is mitigated. Okay, that's fair. I could see it because I had it down as a four. This is the pod where we are all having different opinions and I'm loving it. I mean, you draw some cards and you keep drawing and you draw some more and you draw some more after that. Maybe you draft a locomotive to use as a wild card, but isn't it better when you top deck one of those?
I mean, there's so many opportunities for luck to really make your turns more efficient or like you said, Paul, maybe everything you need is at the bottom of the deck. And then yes, that wonderful feeling when you are drawing destination tickets and you realize that it's already completed within your network. So for me, I don't think four is a bad score.
I just think that there is a fair amount of luck here, but I do agree that especially in the big box games, the longer duration of the game helps mitigate that somewhat. Or to put it a different way, everyone's going to be equally as affected. Theme, how much do we think the theme has been integrated? And I'll just jump in and say this one is another four for me. I love the little plastic trains. I love seeing a visible network in my color spreading across the map.
And the map itself looks like it's in era appropriate colors. And even the different colors on the cards and the pictures of the carriages on the cards look like they're era appropriate. So for me, I really enjoy it. I think the art is great, but I really didn't know how to rate this because I don't know if I get the story from it or I put myself in a position. I mean, that was my introductory comment to the podcast. Sometimes it just feels like from me, but I scored a three.
Okay. For me, I agree with Paul and I say this is a three. I know that I can kind of drive you guys bonkers because I'll say, oh, we're playing a train game and it's ticket to ride, but you guys think of a train game as, you know, 18XX or something. But I think the mechanics certainly connect with the theme. However, I also think that any sort of network building theme could work with the mechanics of this game.
It is not something that is a clear four or five in the way that say wingspan would be for me. Right. So you could just say, oh, we're going to get a ticket to power grid and it would still work. Yeah. Don't you think? Probably. You could do a holiday theme of this and it's just like stringing up the Christmas lights around your house and it would totally work. Yeah, probably so. All right. So favorite player count. What is the best number of players for ticket to ride?
There's so many different maps and expansions and variants that I'm just going to say the maximum printed on the box is my favorite player account because that gives you maximum anxiety. Interesting. Okay. Megan? Yeah, I think whatever pushes the competition level so that it doesn't just feel like, hey, I'm over here building my network. You're over there building your network. Let's see who gets the higher score. That is the least fun version of this game for me. Right. I agree.
You know, one thing we haven't talked about and it applies here is that a lot of the maps made for five players have a special rule when you're playing three or two and that is once somebody claims a route, the parallel route is no longer claimable. Right. I just wanted to put that out there because sometimes three is just as good as five.
For me, it is four on the base game and it is for the opposite reason, which is at four those double routes open up and they're both available, but they're not as hotly contested. So the game doesn't get as congested. And for me, that's more fun for this particular game. You two are both saying you like the congestion and I totally get it. There's more anxiety and more competition in that scenario. So if that's your favorite player count, then your least favorite player count?
Yeah, even number player counts. Even number player counts. Okay. Yeah, I'd agree with Paul. I think what is coming out here, I don't know if this is true for Paul, but for me, if we're talking about another gateway game, Carcazone, for me, if you don't like kind of hate the people you're playing with by the end of a game of Carcazone, you've played it wrong. Like it's meant to be cruel and cutthroat and you should be making them share or you should be stealing everyone else's farms.
And that's the same experience I kind of want. And TTR, maybe not quite as cruel as Carcazone, but I like the fight of it. That's what makes it fun. Got it. Awesome. Yeah, I had for the base game two players, it's two open. And even though you only have one side of the double rail links that is available in a two player game, that's not enough competition to be interesting. So I like four, but I'm not a fan of two. So actual playing time. So boxes can lie.
The box here says 30 to 60 minutes on the base game. But I guess this question can go all over the map depending on what we're which version we're talking about. What are your thoughts on playing time? Yeah, it's really out there. I've had some games of Europe that have been two hours long. What? I think it's largely because of the way people play and how they just meander and try to get the perfect routes that draw lots of tickets. But for the base game, I agree.
It's always less than an hour for me. All right, Megan. I will say that often if this game doesn't actually run long, it feels like it runs long for me. Interesting. Well, I'm not someone who records the time that we play, but I will say I wish this went a little faster in practice when I've played it. Got it. For my recorded times, they've been 45 to 60 minutes, which is within what the box says. And I think at 45 minutes, it's just about right.
But I understand what you mean about sometimes it can feel like it outstays its welcome. So which edition is the best? And here, I'm going to open it up. If you prefer to get to ride Europe or if you prefer one of the smaller box games, sky's the limit. Which edition of the game do you like the best? And I'll throw it to Paul because I think he may have answered it already. Yeah. So for me, the clear winner by a mile is Nordic countries.
Okay. It does only go to three players, but I think it really ramps up the tension. It has a nine long route to Mermansk, so a player could choose to just ignore tickets, kind of like I said in my story. The routes are very claustrophobic, which makes the game pretty cutthroat. And the theme, it's very Christmassy. So sometimes I just want to play Nordic countries with some old Christmas music in the background and an eggnog at my side. I like it. Or a Nagatini.
Megan, which edition do you like the best? Probably the, other than the base game, what I have the most experience with is 19, USA 1910 and big cities. And I really enjoy that. I don't know if this exists because I'm originally from Cleveland, Ohio. I always like what, if there's ever a version that can have me actually connecting in Cleveland, that would be exciting to me. There might be.
I'll get back to you on that because there was an anniversary edition of the game that was released that had a larger map and on it, there were additional cities than were present on the base map. And I don't know if Cleveland was added to that off the top of my head. I'm going to pick one of the small city boxes for this. And my favorite edition of the game is now Ticket to Ride London. It scratches the edge for playing Ticket to Ride.
It has cute little plastic double-decker buses that you use as your track markers. And it includes popular landmarks. And London is my favorite city on the planet. So part of the fun of these city versions is remembering things that you've been to and seen more so than just, oh, this is a city on a map. So I really enjoyed playing Ticket to Ride London. And the shorter playing time is also a bonus. Yeah. London is my second as well. Good choice, Todd. All right.
So, Megan, what are your favorite expansions? And there are a ton of them. I will say Sky's the Limit again here, but just pick your favorite. We're not going to try to address all of them. Megan, do you have a favorite expansion? I think 1910 and Big Cities is an expansion. So sorry that I said the wrong thing. But anyway, yes, that's my answer for both. Okay, fair enough. And Paul, I left this one open for you because I think I know where you're headed.
Really, I honestly have had the most fun with the France and Old West expansion. I think you're probably thinking of Team Asia, which I like a lot as well. That is where I thought you were going. Yeah, I don't know how to explain it. There's something about France and Old West that really hooks me in. It increases the theme and I think there's more decisions to make. I love it.
What's interesting about, especially the Old West side, is that you get to select your starting city and then after you've created that first link, everything else needs to connect to your network, which is different than other ticket to ride games. So I had this one as an option, but because you unexpectedly took it, which is awesome, I dig it. By the way, Asia does get honorable mention because it's a great option for six players.
I went with the fifth map collection, which was United Kingdom in Pennsylvania. The reason why I like that one a lot is it starts to make ticket to ride feel a little bit like an 18xx game, at least on the UK side, because you can start out only being able to build one and two train routes. But by spending wild cards, you're investing in the technology. You're moving to the 3T, the 4T abilities and able to play longer routes.
And then on the flip side, if you flip it over and you play Pennsylvania instead, it turns ticket to ride more into Union Pacific because it adds a stock mechanism. So each time a player completes a route, she claims a share of the company depicted on the route. But you don't have to take a step to play them in front of you like Union Pacific. Just at the end of the game, each player who owns the most shares in each company earns a bonus.
So I really like those two rule tweaks that are available in the fifth map collection. First recognizable comparison. What's the highest ranking game that reminds you the most of ticket to ride? Go ahead, Megan. I maybe have a strange response for this one, but I'm going to go with Next Station London. Okay. And, you know, it's about creating those connected routes, building that network. You don't necessarily have specific connections you have to make.
And it doesn't have that same set building mechanic, but it's a little bit like if ticket to ride and a fake artist goes to Paris, had a baby. And that would create the next station London. And it's just a game that I've been enjoying lately. And it's what came to mind here. I like it. Yeah, me too. I never played Next Station London until somebody invited me to a game on board game arenas. So that's awesome. I tried to limit my comparisons to things that my family likes to play.
And so the closest thing to ticket to ride that my family likes to play is Azul. You have set collection. Instead of building a route, you're building that pattern on your board, but it also plays in under an hour and everybody has a lot of fun. Although there's often quite a bit of consternation when you take the tiles that somebody else wanted. Yes, absolutely. For me, I actually have been holding on to this game for specifically a reference on this pod.
And that is the 2006 Speel the Arts winner turn in taxis, which is very similar to ticket to ride. But it's different in that everybody can build along certain routes. So it's more of a race to see if you can get the four or five or six link bonus for a particular color of the route. And you have to keep adding to the route or otherwise you're going to be forced to claim it early.
So it has a few different nuances, but I think it is a fantastic game and is deserving of a reprint because it's been out of print for a while now. So less recognizable comparison, a game that is less well known. I'll jump in and lead this off and just say that I've talked about mine already and that is Union Pacific. And I felt like it was on the development spectrum on route to ticket to ride, but I definitely think it's deserving of a reprint.
Union Pacific was a distillation of airlines and then subsequently there was Airlines Europe. So you can get close to the same experience with Airlines Europe. I'll say maybe I'm taking the expected route here, but I'm going to say Transamerica. You know, this game has my heart. I love TA. The fact that it's outside of the top 750 BGG blows my mind. What are people thinking?
I feel like it and Trans Europa, the other version of it, I think it does exactly what I'm looking for in a train game in that you have the destinations you're trying to hit, but it's not just your own little network. There's that you're building your network, but that connects to other people's networks. And is that to your benefit or not? It plays very quickly and everyone has the opportunity to potentially win a round, which is really nice.
It's not just did I win the whole game or not, which obviously you want to win the whole game, but there are those opportunities to triumph at least in one round. So I like that aspect for playing with a group as well. And yeah, for me, Transamerica all day, every day, would I rather play that than TTR, which I mean, TTR is fun, but Transamerica. All right, Paul. I really couldn't think of anything. So I'm just going to throw Rummy out there. You know, if you haven't played Rummy, give it a try.
And for some people, it might fill in everything that TTR does. Nice. Absolutely. So house rules. How would you improve this game or would you? I guess design and expansion. A lot of people have done that and made their own expansion maps. Yeah, there's like a website out there now that you just say what the country is and it like generates a TTR map for you. It's pretty amazing. Oh my God. I've never seen that.
So I checked it out and I did a ticket to ride Ireland and it created a very viable map although it does include cities near the endpoints of the routes. And so some of those cities I just didn't recognize. I was expecting to see Killarney on there or Cork or something like that. And they were much smaller cities that wound up fitting into the map, but it's pretty amazing. Megan, did you have any house rules?
So I don't necessarily have a house rule, but I do have a thought on what I want the experience to be in that I feel like I don't necessarily know all clearly from this podcast all of the expansions and variants that are available out there. So I need someone to be like my ticket to ride Somalia, a train alie, so to speak, to tell me what I should be playing and what your conductor. There it is. Yes, I need a conductor to maybe open my eyes to more of what's available in the TTR world.
All right. You know, one house rule I have seen a lot of groups use is just not scoring points until the very end. Oh, right. So not even doing the link scoring. And the thought there is who's ahead is somewhat camouflaged. Well, I think it's just laziness. We're going to recount everything at the end anyway, so why bother while we're playing? Okay. If this game is being played at game night, then what do you want to play afterwards? What's the best double feature game that goes along with it?
Megan, do you have a different answer? I think I want something not a train game. I think I want something that feels a little newer because you know, I think both of you know, do I love like early 2000s games? Of course I do. Something that you could have played on Bret Spielwald or love those chefs kiss, but sometimes it's nice to have some variety. So something newer and feel. All right. Paul, what did you have?
Yeah. So for my family, it is Alhambra or in our case, New York reskin of Alhambra. Okay. And what is it that you like about that one? Is it the different currencies that you have? You know, honestly, my youngest son often gets to control what we play when we play as a family. And yeah, I think these are two of his favorite games and he just always wants to come back to them again and again. And so when we are able to play two games in an evening, it's ticket to ride and Alhambra.
Nice. Okay. I like it here. I actually even wrote down that I was going to be saying a game that Megan had already mentioned. So I had trans America down as the double feature game, but just to be a little different, I'll throw in played with the vexation expansion. And if you are not familiar with what that is, it adds three links in the individual player colors and you can play them at any time, just like you were laying down a link. But the difference is only you are able to use that.
So while you're building out your network, you can create basically a choke point and say, okay, I'm the only one who's going to cross the river here. And everybody else who wants to use the rest of your network is going to have to build around it to continue along that way. It adds a little more meanness to it. And I need all the help I can get because I'm absolutely terrible at trans America. What feature of the game still stands out to you?
So talking about ticket to ride, what do you still like about it? I think we've already talked about this, but I think it's the charm of it. It's just compelling the graphics, the look of it. I see why people want to get it to the table and why it's engaging for people, especially who are new. I tease you guys for liking games where you're pushing around gray cubes. And TTR is not a gray cube game. And that's part of what makes it exciting. And people want to play it. Right?
Yeah. Paul, how about you? Yeah, for me, it's the competition and the double thing of how long can I wait before I claim this route? Right. I feel like that's going to make it still be getting to the table for years to come. Absolutely. And I had the the rummy style action of trying to build the sets while drafting cards from the display or top decking. That mechanism works really well for me, whether it's taking from a display or drawing blind and hoping that I draw something better.
What feature of the game now disappoints or maybe hasn't aged as well? Definitely those tiny cards. That's valid. Absolutely. Megan, I see you thinking. Yeah, for me, I think there's just games that are more engaging to me to play. And I'm so glad that there are people that love this game and are happy to play it over and over. And that's wonderful. For me, this just isn't that game. It's just it's not engaging enough on replays for me. It does start feeling like rummy.
Yeah. But I do understand for me, it was the unlimited hand size in the base game. Having 45 trains means that the games will be long enough that you can draw and draw and draw. In fact, when Paul was saying that, you know, getting a hand of 40 cards, I was just like, what? That's like having your own private deck. I think the smaller train pools in the city based games makes hoarding cards much less viable and helps improve my overall experience with the game. Yeah, that's true.
Did Ticket to Ride replace a previous game for you? No, not for me. Me neither. Me neither. Well, that was nice and quick. Has it since been replaced by something else? I'll say for me, while Transamerica came out before TTR, I played TTR before I played Transamerica and Transamerica has replaced TTR as my quick train game of choice. Right. And Paul? Yeah, TTR replaces itself every year.
I agree with that because I had Ticket to Ride London and had replaced the original TTR, but otherwise, no, no other game has completely removed Ticket to Ride from my lineup. Soundtrack, what music would you want to listen to while playing Ticket to Ride? So I had an economics professor in college who played a Beatles album before class every day and we would hear the same two songs before class started every time and Ticket to Ride was one of them and I hated that economics class.
I hated it and so it's just associated that song with that economics class and so I cannot with that song anymore.
So going a totally different route, I will say there is a – no, I wouldn't want to listen to this song on repeat, but I think there are songs out there that have that like we're moving, we're like on a train kind of rhythm to them that could be fun and one in specific that I'll mention here is called The L by Rhett Miller and it's about the elevated train in Chicago, but it has this really wonderful rhythm to it that just makes
you feel like you're in motion, like you're sitting on the train watching the city go by through the window and so things with that kind of feel to them would be fun to listen to. Right? I like it. Paul, how about you?
Yeah, so my soundtrack or music I would pick is based on how I feel about the game and this is one of the very few games that our group plays that is low concentration and low computation and so I actually like to listen to music with words when I'm playing Ticket to Ride and especially because Ticket to Ride makes me feel like I'm kind of back in time in some olden card hall. I want to listen to vocal jazz like Eartha Kitt or maybe easy listening like Andy Williams. Nice. Okay. That's awesome.
I like that. When I think about this era in particular, I get this old west idea, right? So there's going to be some wild west music kind of going in the background. There might be a banjo. There might be a harmonica or something like that and I mentioned on the pod for Age of Steam that Spotify has a feature that for every song you can click on it and select go to song radio.
To come up with a playlist, really what you need is a good starting point and for me that starting point was the main title theme by the TV show Hell on Wheels if any of you ever watched that and the music is by Kevin Kleiner and Gustavo Santaolalla and then going from that one song and going to the song radio, it generated an awesome list of music that could be playing in the background. Rating on BGD scale of one to ten, how would you rate Ticket to Ride?
Yeah, I actually like Ticket to Ride a lot and when it comes to the base game, Nordic Countries and London, I rate all of those an eight. And that is my highest rating for any Ticket to Rides. Okay, wow. For me, it's a five and it's fine. If people want to play it, I'll play it but it's never going to be something I suggest and I'm like, okay, we've played Ticket to Ride. There's something there. I'm aware that this is a game that is meaningful to a lot of people and that's great.
I'm glad that it brings some joy. I'm not here to yuck someone's yum but it's not my thing. It's not something I'm going to be like, let's play anything else but I'm never going to be like, yay, it's fine. All right, so just out of curiosity because now we can quantitatively compare them, what would you rate Transamerica? That's a great question. I don't know what I haven't rated on BGD but somewhere in the eight or nine phase, I think. Okay. Probably a nine.
I would give Ticket to Ride down as a nine even though in my mind, it feels solved as far as the gameplay. So it's going back and revisiting that sentimental game that you remember that experience and reliving it. I love the feeling of pushing my luck one more turn before finally deciding to buy a segment and my wife and her friends still like to play. This is one I can suggest and we can get it easily to the table. It's a nine also in part due to its mass appeal.
Last question, is it replayable and how soon would you want to visit this game? For me, it's replayable online but not on the table. I'm just not, yeah, unless someone has something that they, you know, a Ticket to Ride variant that they think would click with me, it's not something, there's always things I would rather play on the table but online, it's fine. Now to be fair, you have played Ticket to Ride Asia though at game night on the table. And my opinion stays the same.
All right, and Paul? For me, it is replayable. I don't know how replayable it is with our group, especially with Megan. But with my family, it's very replayable and as I've said, I just want to play Nordic countries every Christmas time and I'm happy if London hits the table once a week or so because it only takes us 15 minutes. Right, and I also think it's replayable and I could play it every couple of months. I mean, it's not the game that I'm scrambling to get to the table all the time.
It has a great theme to it and I agree with London, the time investment is very approachable. And with that, the final train has been placed on the board. For our next episode, we'll exchange our conductor's caps for fedoras and be adventuring archaeologists. So thank you both for being available today. I really enjoyed our discussion. I had a lot of fun. I hope other people find their tickets and reach their destination. Good one. Thank you, Todd. Thank you for listening to Replayable.
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