I recently received the newest expansion for Ticket to Ride, Switzerland. This is designed for two or three players, which is really just the ticket (pun intended -- though I also considered "just what the Doctor ordered").I've often played the various incarnations of Ticket to Ride with three players, and we've been on a search to find ways to tweak it just a bit. We've found the board feels a little too restrictive with the "players can only use one side of a double track" rule that comes in for three players, though clearly something needs to change from the game that's usually meant to take four or five players.
The creator's solution? A new board with a new map. And we found it to be a big improvement on the usual three player experience. Things felt just "congested" enough for the competition between players to be at the right level. There was a real pressure to start placing trains and not wait around, but you weren't conpletely screwed if someone got a crucial length of track before you -- there were alternate ways around, if you put a little effort into it.
The tickets also showed improvement. I've long felt the best strategy in the original game is simply to do your starting tickets, then do nothing but claim as many random six length train routes as you can until the game ends; taking tickets never seemed to be worth it. As the 1910 expansion successfully fixed this flaw from the original game (by changing the number of tickets players draw; and creating lots of tickets with common cities, thus increasing the chance you'll have part of a new route you draw already built), these Switzerland tickets were created in such a way that they felt worth the effort.
A new type of ticket was also introduced in this set -- tickets with a single origin point, but a player's choice of four destination points. This allows some flexibility in strategy, and further increases the likelihood of getting usable tickets.
The game also seemed to play much more quickly. In part, this was the rule telling us to play with 5 fewer trains than the standard game, but it also had to do with the greater pressure to compete on the board for prime tracks, and the average shorter lengths of routes on the map -- less time was needed to gather the cards to claim them. It's not like I felt Ticket to Ride was a long board game before, but I found it more enjoyable at this quicker pace.
In all, I thought it a very successful expansion, and I look forward to trying it out some more. I can imagine all the other versions of Ticket to Ride hanging out on the game shelf in favor of this version -- at least, whenever there's only two or three players on hand.
3 comments:
Yep, it's an excellent addition to the line. There are often a ton of us for game night, but with my girlfriend (or the occasional bum who knocks on doors at random in the neighborhood), it's a good two- or three-player game.
The production quality is not as good as it usually is with Days of Wonder games, though. The cards are much flimsier, they are cut somewhat irregularly, and there are some typos on the cards. Also, the scoring ladder is not printed on the board (why the hell not??), which is a bit of a bother for new players.
Welcome to China.
FKL
You're quite right about the scoring ladder. I remember the first time someone played a train, and we all had a moment of, "where's the scoring table?" Followed of course by: "well, it's 1 for 1, 2 for 2, 4 for 3, 7 for 4, 10 for 5, and 15 for 6." But if it wasn't embedded in your mind, you'd definitely have an issue.
We noticed the same thing too about the lack of scoring table. As my girlfriend doesn't have the table embedded in her mind, I had to take out the scoring card from the original game, which was slightly annoying.
JL
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