A Game of the Same Name

I spent a weekend playing Magic in a way that was far more enjoyable than I ever remember it being during the years I played it in high school and immediately after. I didn’t worry about mint conditions and relative card values, I didn’t fret over losing cards in ante (which actually makes the game a lot more fun) and I spent less than $30 total on a relative boatload of cards that I can continue to use as long as I like just as long as I find other players with compatible decks.

Viva Type-P.

Anyway, aside from a lot of Magic we also played the new version of Ticket to Ride, Märklin. If you’ve never played TTR, it’s a great European-style game with pretty simple but elegant gameplay that works well for all types of gamers. It’s basically non-competitive since for the most part you aren’t really given much opportunity to mess with other player’s strategies although you do keep score and there is a winner, during the game it’s mostly a series of strategic moves against luck, opportunity and your own gameplan.

Märklin introduces a few new twists from the previous games. For one it fixes the Ticket mechanic from TTR and TTR:Europe where once you completed your initial Ticket requirements, the relative risk versus reward for choosing new Ticket goals to complete was pretty minimal. You were usually much better off trying to get the longest track which kind of defeated the point of the game in a way. Märklin eliminates the longest track bonus and instead gives extra points to the player who completes the most Tickets, which I think is as it should be.

Märklin also adds a twist on the wild Loco cards by introducing Locos that can only be used to assist with long tracks (four or more spaces) and country-specific destinations that can be met as Ticket conditions with more than one completely separate track. But the most obvious new twist is the Passengers.

Each city on the map (Germany in this case) has anywhere from one to several numbered tokens which stack in order from highest on top to lowest on bottom. As you place your tracks you can choose to park one of your three passenger pieces on one of the connected cities and at any point in the game you can move them along your track (or hitch a ride on other players’ tracks with the help of special Passenger cards), collecting the topmost token on every city stop along the way. You can only use each Passenger once and the challenge is to get your Passengers into positions where they can collect the most points on their journey without waiting too long for some other player to come by and swoop on your high-point tokens.

I liked everything about the game except the Passengers which I felt were more of an annoyance than really anything else and didn’t add nearly as much to the game as the stations from Europe did. The fact that the Passenger cards are mixed in with the color-coded track cards also frustrated since at times (especially near the end of the game) you can be desperately searching for a specific card color and drawing a stupid Passenger card (of practically zero value near the end of the game when all the good routes have been well traveled) can mean the difference between a big points jump and no jump at all. Still, overall the Ticket to Ride games continue to be well executed and fun to play. I fully expect an Ultimate Ticket to Ride game eventually which incorporates all the best mechanics from previous editions on a truly massive map. Maybe TTR: Russia or something.

I want to make special mention of the Catan card game which was my favorite new game of the con by far, despite being only two player. It truly captures the essence of Settlers and, I think, in some ways surpasses the original board game in terms of strategic opportunity since a lot of success in Settlers stems from fortunate die rolls to collect the resources you need and starting locations play a big role in how well you have the opportunity to play throughout the rest of the game. Since those factors are eliminated in the card game (every turn yeilds some resource for all players in the card game and each player starts off on exactly even ground) it makes your execution completely paramount.

The Catan card game rules are a bit dense and after two games Nik and I are still finding new little gotchas and allowances we didn’t know about before but it’s worth the effort and completely engrossing, especially if you’re a fan of the original Settlers board game.

Finally I need to discuss DungeonQuest, the out-of-print favorite that I have played before but was only able to truly appreciate this time around since I didn’t have to spend the first forty minutes of the game trying to wrap my head around the various scenarios and rules lookup phases. This is in my top ten games of all time, easily. It is the ultimate “You Got Moded” game. Any board game where you can literally lose (as one of our players can readily attest to) on the first turn has got to be awesome. Our hapless compadre even started a new character because he died so quickly and a mere three turns after the first trap claimed his life he lost yet again on a freak Ruth-pointing-to-the-fence style call of his forthcoming die roll. That he didn’t know he was trying to roll anything other than the number he called only made it that much funnier.

I decided that I must own this game, but the fact that it is no longer in print, is pretty popular to begin with and was pricey even when it was sold in stores makes it an expensive proposition. I’m not quite sure I’m ready to drop $65 minimum on a game at this time. Still, if you want to get me something for my Birthday (in six months…), there you go. Perfect idea. Good luck finding it, though.

I’m serious. Good luck.

What Might Have Been

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