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.