BOARD GAMES | Ticket to Ride UK & Pennsylvania

For those of you who are into your board games, you might well have heard that the popular game Ticket to Ride has an expansion out in November, the UK edition.  When I first heard about this, many months ago, I got very excited - one of my favourite games, one of the holy trinity of games, is having a UK version - freakin' awesome!

I cannot tell you how excited I am to get a review copy of this game before it launches! Ticket to Ride Europe is one of my top games - I'll be reviewing this on the blog very soon :) #boardgames #boardgamegeek #tickettoride

A photo posted by @twinklinpixi3 on Oct 22, 2015 at 8:00am PDT

Take that and multiply it when I was then offered a copy to review, ahead of the launch! Cue 'ERMERGHERD!' and 'SQUEE!'.  When it finally arrived on my door step, it was a magical day. That very night, we sat down to play our very first game of Ticket to Ride UK, and it didn't disappoint!  So, to save me waffling and waffling, lets have a look at it!

The board has two sides.  A UK map side, and a Pennsylvania side - something for both it's USA and UK fans :)  Both maps play completely differently, and have very different mechanics - both different to the base game.  Oh, it's worth noting, to play this, you'll need the base game as this doesn't include the trains.

UK Edition

The map is absolutely beautiful, like it's been painted with watercolours.  Most routes are much shorter than the main game, and as a result, we did find it could be a little hard to see if you've completed you're route, as they can look a little disconnected.

Even the artwork on the cards is more beautiful

This game is very different from the main game, for starters you have a lot more locomotive cards in play (with this version, if you draw 3 in the deck, you don't re-shuffle them), and you play with fewer trains.  If you pick a route to go from say, London to Glasgow, you can't just set off and progress the route, not all of it at least.  You need to use locomotive cards to buy additions that will allow you to cross the border to Scotland/Wales/Ireland/France.  Similarly, if you have a route that goes over water, you'll need to buy the necessary card to allow that too.

Just to add another dimension, you also have to buy special cards that allow you to place 3 trains, and another card for 4/5/6 trains.

If you happen to have a lot of locomotives there's also a couple of good cards to purchase towards the end of the game - one of them is the Double Heading card.  This card means that at the end of the game, for every completed route you have, you get an extra 2 points (they really add up!). Another must of a card to buy is Boiler Lagging - this card only costs 1 locomotive and gives you 1 extra point every time to lay trains down.  There's a similar card for ferry routes too.

Overall a really beautiful game.  It's more choppy/stop-starty than the main game, but that's not a bad thing - it's just a very different dynamic and mechanics.  I love that they've managed to create such a different game.  We've only played it 2 player, but you can imagine that with such a small map, the more players you have, it'll start getting really chaotic.

Pennsylvania

Unlike the UK game, this one is much more like the main game.  You have clearer, longer routes, but this game also has different mechanics.  With most of the routes, you'll see they have different icons next to them (see the pic below).  These represent different train companies who own these routes, and when you lay a train on them, you can pick (if there's multiple icons there) which you want to collect a share in.

If you're playing 2 player, then when you collect a share, (see the share cards below) you also need to pick one up and give it to a 'ghost player' (so basically just set them to one side).  If it's a route where there's a choice of which to pick, you can also pick which to give the ghost player - you don't have to give them the same one you pick for yourself.

At the end of the game, whoever has the most of each set of shares, gets the most points (the points are written on the front of the cards).  The game can easily be won or lost based on the share card choices you make.

We did find a bit of a... mistake with this game.  It doesn't come with a score card, or one printed on the board (the one you see in the picture is from the main European game).  While that doesn't seem too bad, the main game doesn't have 5 or 7 length routes, but the Pennsylvania game does, so it was hard to know how many points to attribute to those routes - we ended up getting the score for the 5 train route from the UK side of the board (it's printed on there, so make a note of it before you begin - it's 10 points for a 5 route), and for the 7 route we found out on board game geek - the author of the game had said to award 18 points for a 7 train.

Overall I think we preferred the mechanics for the Pennsylvania board, although the UK one is much more beautiful - I think we just prefer the longer train routes.  I love how different they both are from each other, and how easy it was to pick up.  I really enjoyed collecting the shares, it added a really interested dynamic to the game as it made it quite tactical (which one to pick).  Oh and if you're wondering, I lost both games to the hubby ;)

If you want to know where to buy this, you can use this store locator to find a local stockist, and Waterstones will be selling it with an RRP of £25.99 when it's released next month (November).

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BOARD GAMES | Carcassonne

I've been meaning to review this for so long.  We bought it a few years ago, and it's possibly my favourite board game.  It's part of what is known as the Holy Trinity of 'gateway' games in the board gaming world - gateway games are thought of as ones that convert people to these modern types of board game.  The other games are Ticket to Ride (also awesome, will review) and The Settlers of Catan (also awesome, again, will review).

Inside the box are 5 sets of meeples (green, yellow, red, blue and black), a scoring board and a load of tiles.  The version we have comes with 'The Rivers' expansion, which we pretty much always play - it's just an extra set of tiles which make up a river, you start with these and build the game out from there (you'll see in the pics below).

Meeples (I always play black)

The score board - one of everyone's meeples sits on the board as their counter/score marker

Here's an example of what the tiles look like.  The ones that have a shield in the top left coner are worth double points.  You can see they all match up too - all the roads end or start in the middle of a side.  You must make sure that when you lay tiles down, roads/paths match up, as do towns etc.

This is how a game might start - as you lay a tile (you take turns to lay 1 tile) you'll have the choice of laying down a meeple - you can only lay a meeple on the tile you have just placed.  You could place them on the grass (laying down) to be a farmer, or on a road to be a robber, or in a city/town to own that.  But beware, these can be hijacked by other players!

To score, each length of continuous road your meeple is on is worth 1 point, a complete city is worth 2 points for every tile unless there is a shield on it, in that case that tile is worth 4, a monastary (that's what the green meeple is on) is worth up to 9 points (one point for every tile touching it in a square) and lastly, farmers - this is where it gets complicated.  If you're the only farmer in that field, you get 3 points for every completed city/town in your field.  If you have one meeple in a field and someone else has 2 in the same one, you get nothing, they get the points.  And if you both have the same amount of meeples in a field, you both get the same points.

It's a pretty strategic game, but it's still down to the luck of the tiles you draw.

Here's a game of ours in progress.  You can see the river tiles running down through the middle of the game and our meeples places stratecially on the board.  You'll see there's also a complete city/town without a meeple, that's because once a town/city is complete, you score it up and get your meeple back.

This really is a great game, we must have played it over 100 times since we've had it, which is saying a lot as we must have well over 20/30 board games.

We buy all our board games from a local shop here in Cardiff called Rules of Play - you can buy from them online too - thought I'd give them a little plug as they're super duper helpful and just awesome in general :)  This game will cost you about £28 and in my opinion, it's worth every penny.

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BOARD GAMES | Dobble

If you follow me on Instagram, you'll probably know I love playing board games, and not your every day games like Monopoly, but what I call 'proper' games :)  That could be a big meaty game like Agricola or the LOTR Card game, or something more light and fun and quick, like Dobble.

The best way to describe Dobble, is that it's like snap, but WAY more fun and manic!  The game comes in a solid metal tin (great for chucking in your bag) filled with round cards.  Each card has 8 symbols on it, and one symbol from each card will match any other card in the deck.  Your job is to find that symbol quicker than every one else - not as easy as it sounds!  

Here's a test - in the next 2 pictures, can you spot the matching symbols?

There's lots of different mini-games you can play too which gives it much more life and replayability. My two favs are The Towering Inferno - this is where you have a draw pile in the middle of the table and at the same time you all turn over a card - you then have to match a symbol from your card to the draw pile and if you match it, you take the card from the draw pile and add it to your pile and keep going until the draw pile is gone.  Whoever has the most cards, wins!  I also really like the mini-game 'The Well' it's basically the opposite, all the cards get dealt, and only one card is in the middle, you turn it over and you need to match your hand to the pile in the middle, and the first to get rid of their cards wins. 

The set up for 'The Towering Inferno'

The more people you play this with, the more manic (and better) it gets, it really is a lot of fun :) It's available at Waterstones for £12.99*, or online at Argos and WH Smith - if you're having a games night, this is a brilliant one to either kick off with, or end on :)

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BOARD GAMES | Timeline - Historical Events

One thing I want to incorporate with my blog's new direction is board game reviews.  If you follow me on Instagram, you might well already know I'm a board game geek.  Over the years the hubby and I have accumulated quite a collection.  I'm not talking about games like Monopoly and Cludo, I'm talking *real* games.  Games like Pandemic, Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride (Europe) etc.  I'm hoping to bring you at least one board game review a month, preferably more :)

I'm kicking off this series with a short, fun and educational game called Timeline. It's a fun and simple game that's really easy to learn.  It's a great introduction into slightly different games if you're looking to try something a little different.  There are 5 different versions of the game, the one I have is the 'Historical Events' version, don't worry, you don't need to be 'good' at history to play this, after playing a couple of times you'll soon learn when lots of these historical events happened :)

Close up of the cards in the game

The game is made up of a series of small cards.  On the front there is an image depicting the event (I like to use these as clues - often you can look at elements of the drawing to give things away, so look at the weapons being used, the clothing people are wearing or the buildings etc), and the name of the event.  You then have to decide if the card you chose from your hand, occurs before or after the starting card in the timeline (in my pic the starting card is 'The End of World War II' - 1945 - it's the card from the top of the pile, you simply place it down and turn it over to reveal the date to kick off the timeline).

Each player is dealt 4 cards which are date-down.  You have a draw pile which you will draw a card from if you place a card down incorrectly (if you put a card down and turn it over to reveal the date, and you've placed it in the wrong place).  If that happens, you discard the card and draw a new one. The winner of the game is the first person to get rid of all their cards (successfully placing them in the timeline).

The suggested game duration is 15 mins which is pretty accurate, depending on how many rounds you want to play.  The more people you have, the more complicated it gets, as when you have lots of cards in the timeline, it's easier to make a mistake, unless you really *know* the date of the event you're placing down.

It's a fun game to kick off an evening of board games, or just to have a quick couple/few rounds if you have a spare half hour or so.  I'll be taking this one into work to play during a lunchtime (yes, there's lots of geeks where I work and we regularly meet up to play board games at lunch) :)  If you're looking to buy this, it costs £12.99* and you can pick it up from Waterstones, and online at WH Smith and Argos.

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