Now I'm more confused and also more eager to play.

Oregon Trail coming for the iPhone: [link]

Oh, speaking of which, has anyone here ever played Fury of Dracula? I find that it intrigues me more and more of late.

I have. And it's eh. I love the wrapper, and spent more than a little effort painting the figures that come with it. But after a couple times playing it I think it's broken. Not in the way Ticket to Ride is broken, but more like the old bookcase War of the Ring. There appears to be a no-fail strategy for the hunters to employ that will always catch Dracula.

How is Ticket to Ride broken?

There's no limit to the number of cards you can hold. So you simply draw cards on every turn, until you hold all your routes. By that time, you will probably hold several of your opponents' routes also, and may have cornered the market on one or two colors.

There's no limit to the number of cards you can hold. So you simply draw cards on every turn, until you hold all your routes. By that time, you will probably hold several of your opponents' routes also, and may have cornered the market on one or two colors.

I'm not sure I'm following this. You're saying that you leave your opponents to take any routes they want, including ones you need, while you build up your hand?

I can see it being an almost viable strategy in 4-player, but in 3- and 5- the board gets too crowded too quickly. By the time you're ready to let loose, you'll find you're shut out of cities you need. In 2-player it might work with a relatively sedate opponent, but I'm not sure what would happen with a cutthroat game.

When I play, I tend to go for short bottlenecks I need first (Atlanta-Nashville, Houston-NO, Portland-Seattle-Vancouver, those kinds of places), then I sit on the card draw as long as my lines aren't threatened, but if any opponent comes sniffing around the tracks I need, I'm going to have to jump in first. (Indeed, that's what I like about it, the sustained tension between greed and fear.)

I have heard suggestions that the original game has a somewhat broken strategy in sorting out your routes first, then going hardcore after the six-train lines. I believe the 1910 expansion addresses this; more tickets especially in the East, and the 15-point bonus for most tickets completed. (It's still possibly a viable strategy, but not a broken one.)

I don't know...in 2-, 3-, and 4-player it's been a solid win strategy. The other players can't get their routes built fast enough because you are controlling the deck. Maybe that says more about who I play against.

There's no limit to the number of cards you can hold. So you simply draw cards on every turn, until you hold all your routes. By that time, you will probably hold several of your opponents' routes also, and may have cornered the market on one or two colors.

I only have Ticket to Ride Europe, but this makes no sense to me as a strategy.

Are you saying you use all your initial turns to collect extra route cards, and then later turns to build on those routes? Or, in the original game, do you not have to decide between drawing color cards, drawing route cards, and building (as in the Europe version)?

Are you saying you use all your initial turns to collect extra route cards, and then later turns to build on those routes? Or, in the original game, do you not have to decide between drawing color cards, drawing route cards, and building (as in the Europe version)?

No, you only get one action per turn in the original game too. (I've found the primary incentive to card hoarding is to avoid telegraphing your intentions too soon. Taking tracks piecemeal lets your opponents try to block you, either deliberately or because they realise the routes they want are under threat from you. But if they start taking your routes anyway, you need to get in there fast. Doesn't matter how many cards are in your hand if you have 30 points in routes leaving L.A. and it's become completely blocked.)

ETA: I think the strategy actually makes more sense in TtR:E. You can place stations too, so you can leapfrog the odd blockade (for a modest fee). Plus, the tunnels encourage more card hoarding, as does the chance of claiming the Stockholm-St Petersburg line. (If you throw out your long route at the start of the game, then maybe you can afford to be more opportunistic in the tracks you claim too, though at the expense of route points.)

Not sure how it would work in practice, though. The extra incentives to hoarding cards may just ensure your opponents keep a sizeable hand too. In that case, you can't really starve them as easily.

We only have TtR:E, so that may be part of it.

On another note, I have a vague description of a half-remembered game from like 30 years ago. Anyone up for helping me figure out what it was?

It was a board game about time travel. The board was a series of concentric rings, and each player's goal was to get colored dots on the rings to line up, thereby making the history of the universe the way they wanted it.