Truckin' with a Ticket to Ride

A bit of excitement came howling through on Tuesday night. The tornado sirens started wailing around eleven. Dana snapped her book shut and said, “Do we have to take Wendy into the basement?”

“No,” I assured her, “the sirens could be for Roca. Let’s just let it go.”

No tornadoes whipped through, if that’s what you’re worrying about. And it would have been far more dangerous to go to the basement. The detritus of many generations of our landlady’s kin molder in our basement, feeding an untold multitude of insects, spiders, and more unsettling vermin best not imagined. The air is like something you’d imagine smelling in a horror movie when you’re happy that it’s just popcorn and syrup that’s actually oozing on the floor.

On Wednesday, Marianne and Dave came over again. She carried a bowl of homemade baba ganoush and he carried a bag of pita chips. A very game-friendly choice of snack.

I was sorting out the pieces to Ticket to Ride when they came in, unfolding the large board on the dining room table. I had picked up the 1910 expansion, so we were able to sit down with cards that looked and felt like regular playing cards. The mini cards that come with the game are fun, and they work really well on small tabletops, but the larger cards feel more substantial. 

My guess is that you probably know the game, or have at least heard of it by now. It’s Alan Moon’s big title, and SdJ winner, and a breakout success that reaches beyond the hobby niche about which I’m mostly writing (photo here by firepigeon). But if you don’t know the game, it goes something like this: you’re collecting sets (see what I mean about mechanisms in games working in many ways?) of colored railroad car cards in order to claim routes between cities. On a turn you can pick up two cards (though only one wild card), lay down your color of rail car as markers, or draw a new route card. And it’s these route cards that determine what cities you’ll connect—the route cards give you extra points at the end, or they chip away at your total if you fail to connect the cities.

 It’s not a long game, and not very complicated. Dave and Marianne braved the first couple of turns in spite of a bit of confusion, but the strategy and structure made sense pretty quickly, it seemed (photo by kilroy_locke). I didn’t restate the game ending conditions as we were getting toward the end, and in so doing kinda screwed Dave out of his last ticket—and extra points. But he took the situation in good humor.

And then we pushed back, talked about the game, and found ourselves talking about gambling (I had hoped to talk about the concept of “gateway games” but what the hell). We ranged from the history of gambling and lotteries (“a tax on people who can’t do math”) and onto observations of our parents and mentors behaving in revealing and disturbing ways when they made their way to gambling meccas. While the little group of us is pretty ambitious and competitive, we’re also fairly risk-averse. Or, rather, we’re devoted to cost-benefit analysis, and straight-up gambling lands squarely on wrong side of any analysis.

We also took some time to talk about being Southerners and how that marks us, what assumptions people make about who we are. And we talked a bit about the nature of competition, how to keep it healthy, how the notion of play works in the competitive setting. That topic keeps coming up, and I wonder how hard it is to find the balance between sociality and the drive to win. Of course, that’s a balance that I’m looking for, but others might not care and be very happy at either end of the spectrum.

I’m sad to report that Dave came in last. But in the caboose? Pandas.

Comments

[Lorien]

I love Ticket to Ride, and I think it's just as strong a gateway game as Catan, maybe moreso because the board sets up faster. I also like the additional mechanics that Ticket to Ride Europe adds. Have you played that version?

Great read, great pictures! :)

[James]

Lorien,
I have played the Europe version--and I like it, too. I need to find someone around here who has it so I can play more often.

I'm glad you like the writing, and I've had a good time crowd-sourcing (after a fashion) the pictures. BoardGameGeek is such a great resource!