Ha, I win at Ticket to Ride Germany....oh, then again!

Anita asked for another game from our favourite series Ticket to Ride - so I grabbed a copy that we'd not played for a while, the Marklin or Germany edition. We used the basic game ie without the Passenger rules for simplicity and I put in a good lead ahead of Anita. At game end, I went to count up my tickets, and although one was failed to be completed because Anita had blocked the route from Düsseldorf, I found myself on 120 points compared to Anita on 65. It was then that Anita counted up her tickets and as she had take two Long distance tickets against my one (perfectly legal just that I didn't want the risk), her final count up put her at....121!!! Then as she had one completed the most amount of tickets (because I was blocked) she got an extra 10. And although strictly not in the rules, we counted up the longest route, which Anita won as well! I think that is called a Full House!

Game end - I have a comfortable lead over Anita
prior to counting up tickets - looks like I'll win this one!

No!! Anita first beats me by 1 point over tickets and then she wins
with most tickets complete and longest train route!

17th Century farming amongst friends - that'll be Agricola

The first get together of the group of us that game at Brians - that's a pretty poor name, but we don't have one so far - the Horsham Gaming Group?? Anyhow, what matters is that we get together and game, so Steve, Nigel W, Nigel H, Brian and myself got together for a game - Nigel W brought round several games he got for Christmas, including an add-on for Agricola. Since Steve and Nigel H hadn't played Agricola before, we thought we'd give it a go. This time we played with the Minor Improvements and Occupations cards which did have a big effect on the game play as they combined with the Round cards - for example Nigel W had a card that meant every time he collected wood, he also got a food token.

It was a good, but long game - totalling about 3hrs from talking about the rules and explaining game play to finishing and score; the game was won by Nigel W; with Brian, Nigel H, Steve then Me - I use illness as my excuse as I had a head and chest cold coming! :-)

Agricola is a great game - although I am used to the Family Rules and found that the Occupations and Minor Improvements cards made a fairly complex game slightly harder to play, but that is probably down to inexperience on the cards - although the cards do introduce a further element of chance to the game because the cards are dealt randomly.

Look forward to the next game!

Mid game - I place a mid board pasture for my sheep!
Brian is top and Nigel H is to the right

Kerpow! Anita takes a massive thumping at Ticket to Ride : Europe

We've had a spate of Ticket to Ride games over this holiday period; either older versions or the new map packs. Today we had a go at Ticket to Ride Europe, a version we'd not played for a while because of the tunnels rule. The tickets were dealt out and we set off - making tracks around Europe; both of us had links with Edinburgh on a ticket which meant that when Anita made her play, I was stumped and lost the ticket! Knowing I would get negative points for this, I made a play for the long route across Scandinavia and Russia to get 21 points which I knew would be eaten into by my Ticket which was minus 8.

Then it came to counting out the tickets - and I accelerated ahead well past 100, eventually to 123 whilst Anita was far back on 89.

Ready for the final count up!

I win! 128 to Anitas 89!