We had a very billytea game night with megan. We played Settlers (with Knights and Cities explansion for six people), Zombie Fluxx, and Acquire (this cool old game megan brought). So much fun!
Excellent. Incidentally, Acquire is an Avalon Hill game, which means that the website I linked to before with online RoboRally also has online Acquire.
How do you find the Cities and Knights expansion? I've heard it's well worthwhile, but I've never actually played it.
My latest gaming news (aside from hunting down and destroying seven robots in RoboRally) was a couple of nights ago. Wallybee couldn't sleep, we had a game of Lost Cities to pass the time. She utterly annihilated me, 140 to -11. For those who know the game, we've two cards left in the draw pile, she's played three handshakes on the green expedition and
nothing
else. In her last two turns she plays 9 and 10, reducing her -80 penalty to a measly -4, and closed out the game, leaving me with large deficits all over the place. It's easily the largest defeat she's ever inflicted on me, in any game.
For some reason, she slept just fine after that.
Don't forget "What's It to Ya?"!
Ha! How could I have forgotten? That game was so much fun and so very bizarre.
Coffee is more important that grandparents. I'm just saying.
Case in point: it caused that statement.
How do you find the Cities and Knights expansion? I've heard it's well worthwhile, but I've never actually played it.
It took forever to figure out (an hour of instruction-wrangling), but I really liked it.
For some reason, she slept just fine after that.
I love Wallybee.
How do you find the Cities and Knights expansion? I've heard it's well worthwhile, but I've never actually played it.
I liked it, esp. that you could build when it wasn't your turn. It took forever to set up though since we were sort of re-learning the main game at the same time.
ETA: ND, Kristin, and I also played Ticket to Ride Europe the night before.
I liked it, esp. that you could build when it wasn't your turn.
The 5-6 player expansion of Settlers allows that too. I agree, I find it preferable.
ND, Kristin, and I also played Ticket to Ride Europe the night before.
I've introduced Wallybee to the original TtR (with the 1910 expansion, which I thoroughly recommend, both for larger train cards and a greater variety of routes). Haven't really tried TtRE with her yet. I'm not sure why, but I don't enjoy it as much. TtR Marklin I played once, it seemed interesting, but as yet not interesting enough for me to buy it for myself.
I just checked that out and a new version of Acquire is due out next month. Very cool.
Post Toasties.
I think we might have to pick up Ticket to Ride. That was really fun.
I think we might have to pick up Ticket to Ride. That was really fun.
It's a great game for people with different levels of gaming interest. I like the struggle between greed and fear it geenrates.
A piece of advice: if you get the original version, get the 1910 expansion too. The original version has a problem with the balance, in that it's quite easy for one person to get more high-scoring cross-country tickets and basically get a big boost on winning the game. The 1910 expansion mitigates the effect, by:
1. Adding more tickets to the game
2. Allowing you to take more tickets each time, improving your odds of getting good ones
3. Introducing a 15-point bonus for completing the most tickets (which also occurs in TtR Europe).
It also contains full-size train cards, like TtRE; original TtR has dinky little train cards.
If you don't get the 1910 expansion, then try this variant for the tickets:
Split the tickets into two group, 13+ (ten tickets) and 12- (twenty tickets). Whenever you draw tickets, take one from the former pile and two from the latter pile. It better balances the route value that players get during the game. (You'll note this mechanism is somewhat similar to the way TtRE works.)
I really liked TtRE so I'm kinda leaning towards that one.
Introducing a 15-point bonus for completing the most tickets (which also occurs in TtR Europe).
Europe has a 10-point bonus for longest line. There's no bonus for most tickets.
I haven't played it enough to see any imbalance in the tickets. But in Europe you are dealt one long and three short routes straight off (and you choose if you want to keep them) and the other long routes are discarded for the rest of the game. So maybe that's a fix for the imbalance problem.
I really liked TtRE so I'm kinda leaning towards that one.
That's cool. It has less of a balance issue, and the stations are an interesting mechanism (I find TtR suffers with 3 or 5 players from being too crowded, the stations help with that).
Europe has a 10-point bonus for longest line. There's no bonus for most tickets.
I must be thinking of Marklin. It appears in one of the versions. TtR 1910 still has the longest line bonus too (strictly, you can play with either or both, I recommend both).
I haven't played it enough to see any imbalance in the tickets. But in Europe you are dealt one long and three short routes straight off (and you choose if you want to keep them) and the other long routes are discarded for the rest of the game. So maybe that's a fix for the imbalance problem.
The problem is basically if, say, someone gets both Vancouver-Montreal and Seattle-New York. Ok, that's 40+ points in tickets, and connecting those routes is likely going to mean they're going after 15-point connections (which are both a faster way to use up your trains and more efficient pointwise). Then, as they pick up more tickets, they have an existing cross-country network to leverage off, so they're more likely to keep subsequent high-scoring tickets. Finally, they have a great headstart on the longest line bonus.
If the other players pick up, say, a couple of 8's and a 13, they'll be hard pressed to reel in the advantage. It's not unfair, as it could happen to anyone, but it can lead to the occasional game feeling like it's no contest.
The 1910 expansion helps a lot. It makes completing lots of smaller tickets a more viable strategy, it pushes more tickets through people's hands so differences in ticket quality are less extreme, and it uses all the cities on the board (routes connecting to Vegas or Washington).
The way TtRE gives out the tickets does indeed mitigate the effect. There are also fewer 6-carriage connections on the board, which also acts to balance things out. And fewer bottlenecks, like Nashville-Atlanta or Houston-New Orleans in the original. (Still some, esp. getting to Edinburgh in a 2-player game.) I think for me, they've made it
too
balanced compared to the original - I get fewer A-Team "I love it when a plan comes together moments", progress feels more incremental.
With the exception of Stockholm-St Petersburg, of course.
