Ticket to Ride Marklin arrives - I win first game!

I got an email from Andy at Battlequest letting me know Ticket to Ride Marklin was in and we picked it up on Saturday. That means we own all of them except the extremely hard to find Switzerland map - which is used in conjunction with another Ticket to Ride anyway. Anita and I had our first game over our per-functionary glass of white wine, the TV off and the kids in bed. The map is based on Germany, but also has a few destinations marked in Austria, Switzerland, France, Holland and Denmark (Simply marked with the German names of these countries.). There also some new Train wild cards - most are normal but some are marked +4 which means they can only be used as wild cards on lines between cities which are 4 or more.

Also a major addition is the Passengers. Each player gets 3 passenger figures to put on the map whenever they want at the end of placing a line. On each city there is now 3 cardboard counters - descending in amount, for example 3, 2, 1 or in the case of Berlin 7, 6, 5. To claim the uppermost of these counters in your turn, your can forfeit your go and simply move your passenger figure through one of your routes passing over each city you have linked in turn, collecting the top most counter. Remembering other players can connect through the same cities, it is a balance when to make your move; wait for your longest route to be established or risk your opponent(s) snapping up the best passenger amounts.

It's a nice little add on and makes the game a little more strategic. The cards are great too - photodrawings of model trains are cool, although a tad confusing if you've ever relied on the image in the past for other Ticket games to tell you what card you have just picked up as they are different for the same colours now, eg orange could be a car transporter, then a passenger car etc.

In our first game I won, although Anita declared it void as she didn't understand the Passenger rules properly. :) A rematch is promised then.

Back to work, but gaming news...!

Well, it's back to work - like all good things, Christmas holidays have to come to an end and the drive in was dire with an hour delay due to malfunctioning temporary lights around a tiny hole in the road. Anyhoo - whilst at work I found out that Richard and Patryk have been bitten by the gaming bug - Richard got "Backpacker" a neat little card game to do with travelling around the world, and Patryk got the entire Carcassonne playset - around £56 I believe - after playing a test game with me before Christmas - result!

Introduce friends to Apples to Apples! Not laughed so much in ages!

After dropping mum back home and staying over night, we set off, but not before paying a visit with everyone to my friends Matt's place, with his partner Sarah and children Hannah and Amy. It was a nice time reacquainting with everyone and in some cases meeting new faces. after a while, we asked if they wanted a game of Apples to Apples and we gave a brief introduction to the rules. Then the fun started... Within minutes the laughter had started - the game appealed to perfectly to Matts and Sarahs ways of thinking and after the first game, Kavita joined in, with Roshni helping Hannah and Amy playing alongside Matt. There were tears of laughter all the way through - with Jack the Ripper being responsible and Berlin 1945 being courageous...

Happy New Year - Another game of 7 Wonders - 6 players makes a long game!

With my mum visiting for a few days over New Year, we decided to play a game of 7 Wonders because she enjoys 'our sort of games'. Now with 6 players, the Age cards had to be edited again to include the 6+ cards - the reason for this is that the Age cards have to be equally divisible by the number players so that everyone gets 7 each. Obviously this means that the number of cards in each Age pack has to be adjusted to the number of players. There is no card holder in the box like Dominion which means a bit of handiwork to find the right number of cards for each Age at the start of the game, but it's not too much trouble.

Being a 6 player game meant that the table was chock full of cards and counters at the end of the game, which means a bit of thought about which cards go where for each player, but this isn't a major game distraction - sometimes its nice to see a table covered in components rather than a few bits and pieces in my opinion; it gives the game some meat I feel.

Although mum found it bit Whats going on at times, in all it was another great game.