Flashback Friday - Ticket to Ride
Love it or hate it? Do you still play it?
Ticket to Ride is celebrating it's 15th anniversary this year.
Ticket to Ride, by Alan Moon, was published by Days of Wonder in 2004. It won both the Spiel des Jahres and the Origins Award for Best Board Game of 2004. It went on to win numerous other awards, and by 2014 had sold over 3 million copies. Over the past 15 years, Days of Wonder has released six additional stand-alone Ticket to Ride variants (Europe, Marklin, Nordic Countries, Germany, 10th Anniversary, Rails & Sails) as well as seven map collection expansions. Its seventh version, the 15th Anniversary Edition, was just released this month.
For many board gamers, Ticket to Ride was their first introduction to modern board games. Was it yours? Do you have a favorite version, or a favorite map? Love it or hate it? Do you still play it?
That being said, the timing here is funny because I just sold my copy this week. It sat on my shelf played only one time in the past 7 years. I was waiting until my daughter was older but recently picked up TTR: First Journey, which my wife actually enjoyed more than base TTR (due to it being faster). We will probably graduate to the new and quicker NY version eventually and I'll probably never see the standard game again.
It’s a great game, a great design...and I really like the variant maps. Europe is still my favorite. I really like the little NYC Edition a lot- 20 minutes and you have seen the whole TTR experience, really.
I have played "Ticket to Ride: First Journey" with my spawn. It's a pretty good distillation of what TTR is. It's even shorter and lighter. The only difference is that you don't get a choice of tickets to draw. A good little game.
We own Ticket to Ride Europe, but probably haven't played our own copy in years. Not because we don't like it, but because we have a friend that owns Ticket to Ride EVERYTHING. So we play fairly often with her. In fact, back in April she hosted a Ticket to Ride marathon party - 12 hours of Ticket to Ride gaming. We stopped by and got a few games in, including my first game on the Pennsylvania map which adds a stock aspect to the game, NY, and Team Ticket to Ride. But I think my favorite is still the original version.
The kids like it though, so what I have now done is cobbled together stuff that keeps me interested - stations, passsengers, a few house rules - and I don't mind it these days.
I loathe it and will only play it to spend time with my girls. What a boring, dull game. I'd rather play a host of set collection card games with a standard deck.
quozl wrote: That's cool. Splendor puts me to sleep.
Splendor, a game you can play at a funeral.
We had a good time, it plays pretty quick and it typically over before family bickering starts. We used the Big Cities cards so there was some pushing and shoving at the center of the board. My 16 year old typically wins and goes with the tried and true build as many 6 train routes as you can strategy. I always try for the tickets and more often than not move backwards on the points. But this time I had it, 6 routes completed- everyone else only had 2 at that most! Well right up to the point where my family pointed out that I never played a one route into Houston (this was one of those tickets you pull and are all confident that you already completed it when completing a different route)for a 8 point ticket. Putting me back to 1 point behind the 16 year old.
IT was a pleasant why to hang out with the family on a holiday Monday.