This is only my second contribution to BGG and my first review which is why it may be confusing please stick with it too the end.
This is part game review part session report

The Background
I am soooo tired of trying to convince my friends and even worse my wife to play my games. My wife refuses time after time to play stating she is always to tired to think and my games are to long and to complicated. Week after week I beg, I plead, I bribe for little success. For a board game junky like me this is unacceptable, I needed help. So I sat down and turned to Boardgamegeek for spiritual guidance.

I typed in “gateway game” as a search and behold the gurus of gaming offered me the path to enlightenment. A list of games that could lead any heathen to board game heaven. I chose to purchase Ticket to Ride Europe, I felt that the Origonal TTR might lack the depth for me where as the extra elements of TTR Europe would stop me becoming bored without overloading my Noob friends.

After five days of waiting the game arrived on Thursday ready to be launched on Friday night. Sadly the plague hit town and 2 of my friends and their better halves cancelled. Not wanting to give in I gave my wife the saddest puppy dog eyes and asked if she’d like to play. I had been prepping her in advance telling her how simple and quick the game ran, this I think worked in my favor and she agreed to give it a try.

Opening the Box
My wife immediately began to toy with the pieces and examine the board, this is a good sign. The game is bright clear and easy on the eye. No jumble of information no complex tables of numbers. Just colorful routes and a scoring track bordering the map

The Rules
I just basically read the rules from the book editing slightly. The rules are clear and precise with examples. For those unfamilar with the game, these are the rules

The game is simple there are tracks of different colors connecting the cities of Europe your goal is to connect the cities on your destination cards by claiming routes. This is done by revealing sets of cards matching the required route. A route 3 red blocks long would need you to play three red carriage cards, simple. Grey routes can be claimed by a set of any one color. Locomotives are wild and can be used as any color you wish.

There are two special kinds of routes Ferries and Tunnels.
Ferries require a set number of Locomotive cards (shown on the map) so a grey ferry route with four block one a locomotive requires a set of 3 matching colors and a locomotive.

Tunnels require the regular number and color of cards as per a regular route, plus you must turn over the top three cards from the carriage deck and any matching cards or locomotive cards require that many more of the original color. So a route 3 red block in length would require the three red to be played then the top 3 cards turned over and if one red card and a loco card were showing it would require the current player to reveal 2 more red cards.

I did not explain stations to my wife I wanted to keep it simple the first time out.

There are a choice of 4 actions you may choose one per turn

1 Take carriage cards take two or one locomotive
2 Claim a Route
3 Take destination cards draw three and keep at least one
4 Build a station (not in our first game).

Scoring as you play you score for claiming routes ( the longer the route the more points you get). At the end of the game the player with the longest route gains 10 points. Then all destination cards are revealed any cards completed gain you the points on the card any not completed you subtract that many points.

Easy Peasy

How the Game Played

We set up with our long route and 3 short route cards, plus four carriage cards. As this was our first game knowlege and strategy were thin on the ground. Basically we looked at our longest route cards and planned for that. The first few rounds were take up with collecting carriage cards followed by some furious building until or carriage cards were depleted and a new cycle began. I build most of my main route, once I felt secure that I would complete my long route I took more destination cards kept those that were close to my route and discarded the others. My wife never collected extra destination cards ( this would become important during scoring) The game whizzed by with my wife only complaining that I had not explained tunnel building well enough.

The End or just the beginning?
At the end we saw that my wife was ahead on the track by just 3 points and her route was clearly the longest as mine had many branches. She won the longest route card bagging her another 10 points but I revealed 3 more destination cards than her in the final count I had 10 more points than she and although she was disappointed in defeat she was still prepared to play again another day. This was my the biggest victory of all. Thank you TTR Europe!!!!!!

The hype about TTR bringing new players to board games is true. Every BGG member should buy TTR or another gateway game and convert as many new people to our hobby. We need to take over invasion of the body snatchers style, this will ensure the survival of our hobby and more importantly that we can always find others to play our games.

Pats on the Back
This is not just a review of TTR Europe as a Gateway game but of BGG as a resource. BGG and its members support each other, the geek lists and forums give us valued insight into which games we should buy and which ones we should pass on. In a hobby which can be so expensive mistakes can be costly. Those of you who review and post so much I thank you! and the rest of us lets try and do our part to warn and share our experiences good and bad.