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Amoena aka a girl likes games
Finland
Espoo
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I always get really excited about new games but after a while the excitement simply fades away. And I’ve always wondered how many times I can actually play a game before I actually get bored with it. I have found my answer, at least regarding one particular game: Ticket to Ride Europe.
I gave Ticket to Ride Europe to my mother as a mother’s day gift. It instantly became her favorite game, overtaking Trivial Pursuit’s previous place as the number one. She wants to play it every time we visit my parents. She wants to play it on Friday. She wants to play it on Saturday. Sometimes she wants to play it twice. Sometimes she wants to play it on Sunday too. We have played Ticket to Ride with my mom and with my parents thirteen times now.
It looks so innocent, so innocent...
Thirteen times doesn’t sound much. And I guess it’s not much for some games, but it’s too many times for Ticket to Ride Europe. The thirteenth time was painful. I felt that I had already built each and every route like thousand times. There was no surprises left in the pile of ticket cards. My boyfriend starts to guess my routes, probably to lessen his own boredom. My mom, on the other hand, is oblivious. She still plays the game happily. I think she’s probably even more happy now when she knows the routes better. She really can play the game and she would win easily if she took more risks in the end.
But yeah, we are bored with Ticket to Ride. Royally bored. I would prefer not to play it for a year, though I think it would take even longer to forget the routes. I am not bored with the game per se just with the routes. Though there’s an app for that.. I mean, there’s an expansion for that. Apparently Ticket to Ride Europe 1912 has some new ticket cards. I’m just not sure if couple new ticket cards are enough to get me interested again. And it’s definitely not a long term solution. I would eventually get too familiar with the new cards too.
I have also considered giving her the original Ticket to Ride, though I have to admit that I’m not exactly excited about that. As a Finn and as an European I find the American map a little too... American? I believe that my mom would also find uninteresting. There’s some new maps coming out, Indian and Asian, but I’m not sure about those either. Got to wait for the reviews first.
Now, I am aware that there are plenty of fan maps for Ticket to Ride. We have even played one with my boyfriend. It was a map of Finland and I think he printed it somehow wrong and the trains didn’t exactly fit the routes and it looked very unprofessional... Maybe because we colored it with coloured pencils instead of printing it in color. Anyway. I am not willing to try that again! Unless someone is able to point me to a map of Russia. My mom loves Russia.
Basically there’s only one option left, one real mission impossible: to find another game my mom likes and agrees to play. Preferably something even better than Ticket to Ride.The problem is that my mom doesn’t really like board games. When I was a kid she never ever played board games with me even though we had nice board games like A-maze-ing Labyrinth. For 24 years the only two games she agreed to play were Trivial Pursuit, and for some rare occasions Ubongo. I am still flabbergasted by the fact that she wants to play Ticket to Ride and actually enjoys it too.
My boyfriend has researched some popular gateway games, but frankly, I have hard time imagining my mom liking any of them. Too simple, too much text (I’ve got the feeling that she doesn’t really enjoy wearing her reading glasses plus she only understands Finnish), too complicated, stupid theme... And so on and so on. I feel like I am looking for a game that doesn’t even exist, and at the same time I’m not even sure what I am looking for.The basic idea of the game needs to be easy to understand. Like in Ticket to Ride: "Get ticket cards, build routes, win the game by completing most ticket cards". She would get lost with games like Le Havre: "get cattle, make meat..." The game itself doesn’t have to be overly simple though. It just need to be very easily explained. Basically I am looking for a game that is about as simple or complicated as Ticket to Ride, with the same play duration, with the same number of players (at least 4 players but 5 would be nice too), engaging theme and some luck involved... and without elements I can get extremely bored with. Any recommendations?
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. The above suggestions are good, you might look too at:
