John Mellby
United States
Plano
Texas
-
Ticket to Ride - Marklin Edition
Days of Wonder; 2006
Desgined by Alan R. Moon
2-5 Players, 45 minutes
Our friend Liz (Zillie) has clients in the UK, and last week
they brought a present - the German version of Ticket to Ride
Marklin. Liz, Roy, and I tried the game out today.
Alan Moon has come out with another winner, and to my
surprise, I like this better then the original!
Besides the obvious map change there are several simple changes
which result in a game that has more options and more
strategy than the earlier versions.
Changes include:
* Destination Ticket selection
* Other countries as destinations
* +4 Locomotive
* Passenger tickets
* Merchandise
* Most destination scoring
The components are still the same high quality Days of Wonder
is famous for, but in Marklin, the components are
even better!!! All the train cards have clearer color,
large type indicators in the corner (for people who are
color blind). Even better, ever card is unique. On other editions
all the red cards are the same. In Marklin ever card has
a unique picture of a train car. There are passenger, logger,
coal, chemical, car transport, wrecker, and many other
car images. Even for someone who isn't a train enthusiast
will love these pictures!
The big changes are passengers and merchandise. Initially,
sets of merchandise tickets are placed on the board. There
are four levels of merchandise cities:
1) White - a single '2' token (16 cities)
2) Yellow - 3 tokens valued 3, 2, 1 (12 cities)
3) Red - 3 tokens valued 4, 3, 2 (6 cities)
4) Black - 4 tokens valued 7, 6, 5, 4 (Berlin)
Now, the four options on your turn are:
1. Draw cards
2. Claim a route
3. Draw destination tickets
4. Move Passenger
Card changes: There are two new cards - a Passenger card, and
a +4 Locomotive. (See below for passenger description.)
The +4 Locomotive is a wild card that only works on routes
length 4 or more. Also, when picking up face-up cards,
if you pick up a +4 Locomotive, you can continue and pick
up two face-up cards (unlike the regular locomotive).
Claiming a route is the same (except for the +4 locomotives)
Destination tickets are divided into two piles: short and long.
The short pile is destinations 11 or less, and the long is 12 or
more spaces. A player draws four cards, but must state ahead of
time which piles they are drawing from.
In the initial draw a player must keep two tickets. In later
destionation draws, the player still draws four tickets, and
must keep at least one.
Moving a passenger is the big new option. When you claim a route,
you can place a passenger (each player has 3 in the game) on
one of the route ends (except that the passenger must NOT be
in another country, only German cities).
On their turn, the player moves one passenger, generally along
routes they control. At each city (except the STARTING city)
they pick up a mechandise counter (obviously they will take
the largest) if any are available. A move segment can be made
over another player's line. To do this, for each non-owned segment
the player must play a Passenger card. The passenger can be
moved as far as the player wants, as long as they own the
segments, or can play Passenger cards.
These points are immediately scored (and the tokens kept to
verify the score later).
Final scoring is the same as normal, except there is no score
for longest route. The player claiming the most destination
cards gets +10 points.
Game Play
The ability to choose between long and short routes seems to
give players significant choices. More short routes means you
can claim for tickets, and more cities. This gives them changes
for the +10 routes score, plus they should score more
Passenger/merchandise tokens.
These tokens can quickly add up. Liz used two passenger cards to
claim 37 points in merchandise for her first passenger.
Additionally most of the short segments are in the West, with long
segments down the center or in the East.
Sample game:
Liz and Roy choose to keep several short and one long Destination
tickets each. I kept three tickets that went right down the
center, worth 65 points total.
Roy played a lot of short routes in the West, eventually
reaching Austria. Liz moved down the East with several
large segments (6-7 cards each).
I was forced to collect tickets because I had segments between
4-5 all the way down the center. Eventually I connected
Denmark to Austria.
Liz and I moved our first Passengers almost simultaneously.
I was happy getting 22 points, but Liz' score of 37 overshadowed
several Destination Tickets. Eventually Liz and Roy fought
over East-West segments in the South of Germany, but both
completed most of their routes. Liz scored several good sized
Passengers, as well as long city segments.
In the end, I believed that I had won, scoring three Destination
Tickets of 20+ points. Sadly, in examination, I discovered one
of the tickets went to Switzerland instead of Austria.
While I was only a single two-link route away from Switzerland,
I misread the ticket. This caused a 42 point drop in my score,
and Liz won the game.
John R. Mellby
3/19/2006
-
Samuel Hinz
Australia
Brisbane
Queensland
-
this does sound cool.
i have heard good and bad things about ttr:e would you say this is better then ttr:e
and is this game (as the last person said) a progression from standard ttr??
-
Jules Vautour
Canada
Montreal
Quebec
-
I had the opportunity to play Marklin and I must say I enjoyed it.
However I don't think it's as good as the original TTR. Because of the new cards there is a lot of waste. I found it very frustrating Drawing passenger cards Once I've used up All my passengers.Unlike the original where you can calculate how many cards you'll need to finish,I found it virtually impossible in the new version.Drawing the new joker at the end of the game was also annoying.
-
Brent Mair
United States
Roy
Utah
I won this badge from Daniel Karp in a poker game.
-
tornadog wrote: would this game be a natural progression for a non-gaming group that enjoyed the original TTR?
After one play I believe so. I wouldn't start with TTR:E or TTR:M (unless the players were more familiar with those maps than they are with the US map) but I think Marklin follows the original.
-
John Mellby
United States
Plano
Texas
-
I haven't played Marklin enough to say definitely
this was better and a progress for beginning gamers.
My first is impression is that this is true, and
everyone who has played it so far (two playings yet)
agrees, but I think we need a couple more trials
to be sure.
-
d peruzzini
United States
cheektowaga
New York
-
funny we havent played the original ttr since picking up europe, we play with the tunnel variant found under the ttr e section, to us a MUCH better game
-
|
|
