A few years back, I covered the XBLA release of Ticket to Ride, the rail-laying board game
phenomenon that sold me on
its name alone and won me over with its gameplay, making me connect America (and southern Canada)
or get screwed for
points.
Well, there's a new version out on Steam that supports not only the original American game,
but DLC versions
of the alternate versions like Switzerland, Europe, and Legendary Asia.
I apologize that the footage isn't gonna look
like much, but if you're familiar with the game you'll see just how well it plays out
in this digital format...
especially against four computer opponents fortunately immune to analysis paralysis.
The game itself is easy to pick up: By collecting wagon cars in different fruit flavors (and
licorice), you strive to
connect all of the cities on your destination tickets.
Efficiency doesn't count for much of anything; if your strategy
and the state of the game dictate that it's easiest for you to connect Los Angeles to
New Orleans via Seattle and
Montreal, so be it.
Though normally, that'd be the result of you having to ALSO connect Seattle to Chicago
and
Montreal to Little Rock, so just one line can potentially fulfill all those requirements.
On each turn, you can either
pick up two wagon cards (or one, if you take a face-up joker), spend those cards to build
a line by dragging a card of
the appropriate color onto the destination, or take some more destination tickets if you
need more destinations to
build to.
Once a player has three or fewer cars remaining out of their initial stock of 45, everyone
gets one more
turn, and then the tickets are tallied; each completed ticket yields its value in points,
while each failed ticket
subtracts its value.
It seems simple, but the strategic elements in claiming routes, managing resources, and
the risk
involved in taking on new tickets was enough for the game itself to win the prestigious
Spiel des Jahres award in
2004.
This Steam version, which can play cross-platform multiplayer with its browser-based, iPad,
and Android brethren, can
also support local pass-and-play with up to four other players.
That said, if there are too few players in any given
game, the double routes between certain cities can't be utilized so as to maintain more direct
competition.
This
particular version came equipped with the USA 1910 expansion, which introduces a number
of new game modes and
mechanics, like the 15-point Globetrotter bonus which rewards the player with the most
completed tickets.
The map
stays the same for these versions, but the ticket decks change, either diversifying the
possible routes or, in the
case of the Big Cities challenge, forcing every pair of destinations to include a major
hub like Los Angeles, Houston,
or New York City.
And if I may be pedantic and geeky for a moment...
oh, who am I kidding, I'm always pedantic and
geeky... let me call attention to the H-less spelling of Pittsburgh on the 1910 expansion
cards.
In 1891 the United
States Board on Geographic Names changed every Burgh-with-an-H in the country to a Burgh-without-an-H,
a decision that
many area institutions - not the least of which being the Pittsburgh Gazette, Pittsburgh
Stock Exchange, and the
University of Pittsburgh - disregarded.
The change was officially repealed in 1911, a year after both the setting of
this expansion, and the printing of the infamous, $2.8 million T206 Honus Wagner baseball card.
Awright, now that that's out of my system, video game.
The point-and-click, tablet-optimized controls are a breeze to
navigate, and while you're not coming to a game like this for the music, the soft guitar
strumming in the background
helps to offset the speedy shuffling and swiping of cards, but does nothing to drone out my
shouts of frustration when
some jerk claims the New Orleans to Miami line before me.
Oh, well.
Hopefully we can soon look forward to other great
board games coming to steam, like Power Grid, or Agricola, or Eclipse, or Le Havre, or Ora
et Labora (AKA Le Havre 2:
Ecclesiastic Boogaloo).