Getting into board gaming
A question I get asked frequently is, “How did you get into board gaming?”
It only took one game to get me hooked into a world of serious board gaming. The game was called Ticket to Ride.
It was the first eurogame that I had ever encountered. I received it as a gift for my 30th birthday, and board gaming for me has never been the same since.
First off, what is a eurogame? In simplest terms, a eurogame is a game all based on strategy and not luck. There is also no player elimination or player-to-player combat. I enjoyed the mechanics of Ticket to Ride, and having never played a game like it before, wanted to know more about games that used a similar mechanic. Thus, the addiction began.
Ticket to Ride is a 2 to 5 player hand-management game that requires laying down train cars across various cities in the U.S. The rules are simple to learn but requires a player to make strategic decisions with each turn.
In the beginning, players are given destination tickets that they must complete or else they will lose victory points. On each turn, a player may choose one of the following actions:
- Draw 2 train cards, either from five face up in the middle or from the deck. Each card has a specific color train on it. There are also wild cards. If a wild card is selected from the face-up cards, the turn ends.
- Turn in cards to complete a city-to-city route. On the board, there are colored rectangles that show which cards are needed to complete a route. Cards of that color (or a combination of wild cards) must be turned in to complete that route.
- Draw more destination tickets. If any of these destination tickets are not completed at the end, these points will be subtracted from the player’s total.
When players turn in cards to complete a city-to-city route, they place their trains on the board. Each player has his or her own set of trains. Each city-to-city route is worth various points. The longer the train, the more the points. For example, laying down 2 trains will give you 2 points, whereas laying down 6 trains will give you 15 points.
The game ends when a player has 0, 1 or 2 trains left, which triggers the last round. Players calculate their final scores from destination tickets, plus the player with the longest continuous route gets 10 bonus points. The player with the most points wins the game.
Each serious board gamer has a similar story like this one. Ticket to Ride is what gamers call a “gateway” game. It’s accessible to learn for non-gamers, and if non-gamers enjoy it, it opens the floodgates to more eurogames. Eurogame mechanics are all fundamentally similar but as games get more difficult, so do the options for gathering resources, making decisions and optimizing moves for long-term play.
Who out there has played Ticket to Ride?