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This new expansion comes in a small box like U.S.A. 1910. The box is made from cardboard unlike the first release of U.S.A.1910 which had a metal box.
Actually there are 2 different expansions in this box:
- Warehouses & Depots, which works with all boardgames in the TtR series.
- New Tickets, which is dedicated to the TtR Europe Boardgame
Warehouses & Depots:
Components:
5 Large Warehouse cards (1 per color).
25 wooden train depots (5 per color).
As I’ve said this expansion works with all TtR Map.
Rules summary:
Each player takes 1 warehouse and 5 depots of his color.
Each player places his warehouse card in front of him and his 5depots with his supply.
After looking at their starting train cards and selecting their tickets, each player in counterclockwise order put one of his depots in any empty city on the map. So player will start the game with one depot on map and 4 in his supply.
Every time a player choose the Draw train cards action he must first pick the first card from the draw pile and put it in any player warehouse, without looking at it. He then draws his cards as usual.
When a player choose the Claim a route action and reach a city with a depot with his train car, he may pick all the train cards in the warehouse matching the depot he just reached. If he chooses to take those cards he must discard one depot from his supply and put it back in the game box.
At any time during his turn a player can as a free action place one or more depots from his supply and put them on map. He will have more depots on map but less in his supply to pay for taking cards in a warehouse.
Note that you can place only one building (depot or station) per city.
At the end of the game the player(s) with the more unused depots in his supply score 10 points.
There are a few special cases clarified in the rules.
How it plays:
As the Draw train cards action is one of the most chosen actions in the game the warehouses tend to be quickly filled with cards. This lead to an increase in the flow of cards giving a more dynamic game.
As a side effect the draw pile his reshuffled more often especially in a 4 or 5 player’s game. In several games the draw pile was small enough that I was able to note that some color were not present in it which was useful information, for tunnel for example. I also had the impression that they tend to be more locomotives as usual in the draw pile as the game progressed.
It also makes it harder to follow which colors are collected by each player as the cards on the warehouse are secrets.
As there can be only 1 building per city there is less empty city to put your stations, if you are playing on the Europe map. So you have to put your stations earlier.
There are interesting choices in placing your initial depot, will you place it on your expected road to try to get more cards as you are making progress toward your tickets or will you place it off your road to divert your opponents.
Also one of the more interesting aspect of the depot is the "press your luck effect" obviously you want to get as more cards as you want from a warehouse but the more you wait the more your opponents could take them before you, which increase the tension of the game.
Once all links connecting to your initial depot have been claimed, you can start stacking card on your warehouse freely as no one can take them, then at the start of your turn you can place a depot from your supply on map at the start of your turn and immediately claim a route to this depot to pick a large number of cards at once. This can encourage you to put your starting depot in a city with few links(did someone say Edimburgh in a 2-3 players game  ).
The way you spend your 4 extra depots is critical, will you try to spend them early for a hot start and try to claim the more contested routes before the others or will you try to wait until you can reap a lot of cards at once. Also don’t forget that there’s a ten point bonus for the player who kept the most depots unused.
You can also use your extra depots just to spoil your opponent the opportunities to place a station on a critical city.
Conclusion:
This expansion change the gameplay significantly, it adds tension and choices to the game, which his always a good thing,the cost in rules complexities is so small compared to the new options gained that for me it’s a clear winner. I think it’s very good with every map but it works especially well with the Europe map because depots come into conflict with the stations.
New Tickets:
Components:
55 new destinations tickets:
- 6 long routes (blues)
- 19 regular routes
- 30 Big Cities routes
- A reprint of the 46 original routes ( 6 long, 25 regular and 15 Big cities)
Of course this part of the expansion will only work with the Europe map.
Usually I don’t like to pay again for something I already paid in the base game, but the design of the old tickets cards as some minor change to easily match the new option offered with the new tickets cards, in particular for the new Big cities variants which use part old and part new cards.
The new tickets provide 3 new ways of playing:
Europe expanded:
You just add the 19 new regular tickets to the original ticket’s deck.
The new tickets added range in length from 14 to 2 with each city gaining from 0 to 2 tickets except Warszawa which gain three new tickets.
The average length of tickets change from 9.65 to 9.34
This one is just a minor variant
Mega Europe:
Shuffle all long routes (6 old and 6 new) then give 2 of them to each players.
Shuffle all others tickets and give 5 per player.
Each player must keep at least 3 ticket with at most one long route.
The new blue routes range from 20 to 16 in length.
The addition of new longue route is welcome as experienced player knew the old ones by rote, the new long route mix up things and make it harder to guess where your opponents are trying to go.
Note that the long route now has a blue back as well as a blue front so that anyone can distinguish them just from the back.
Also note that some of the Big Cities tickets which have a brown back like regular card are actually longer that the blue routes one having a length of 25, seven others big cities routes have length of 21 to 16.
This variant gives a new fresh taste to the game for those who knew the old ticket deck too well.
Big Cities of Europe:
For this variant you only use the tickets with the Big Cities logo (30 new and 15 old)
The long blue routes are not used in this version but as I’ve mentioned previously some of the Big Cities routes are actually longer.
Deal 5 tickets per player, each player must keep at least 2 of them.
If a player choose the draw destination Ticket action, he now draws 4 and must keep at least one of them.
All tickets in this variants connect to only 9 cities With each Big City being rather evenly represented: London(8),Paris(10),Madrid(10),Berlin(9),Wien(9),Roma(9),Athina(9),Moskva(10), Angora(9).
On the 45 Big cities cards 36 start and end in a big city while the 9 other only start or end in a Big City.
The length of the Big Cities ranging from a whopping 25 for Madrid-Moskva to a pathetical 3 for London –Paris and Berlin –Wien.
Now that all the tickets revolve around only 9 cities the game became a real cut-throat as many players will strive to reach the same cities.
Also note that the average ticket’s length is slightly longer with an average length of 11.07(compared to 9.65 in the base game).
This variant is the one that change the game the most. It works especially well with the new Warehouse & depot expansion as station now became critical. This combination as quickly became a favorite in my gaming groups.
With all this new tickets, I wish they had added the Globetrotter card which grants 10 VP for the players who completed the most tickets; you can borrow one from TtR Märklin or Scandinavia, or make your own.
Final words:
All in all this is a good expansion which provides new twists to the gameplay with a very low increase in rule complexity. If you have TtR Europe I warmly recommend this expansion as in my opinion it just make the game better. If you haven’t TtR Europe the Warehouse & Depot still work very well but you might think that it’s rather on the expensive side.
With all this material you can also devise your own variant, like playing only with long routes or secretly looking at the card before putting them on the warehouses.
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Chad Hensley
United States
Farmington Hills
Michigan
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Thanks for your review. I an so excited about this expansion.
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David Hoffman
United States
Briarcliff Manor
New York
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Holy crap, that's a long review for a little expansion!
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AJ Smith
United States
Apple Valley
Minnesota
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I really don't like the idea of the blue destinations having a different back. Now you don't have the option to shuffle them in with the regular destinations--a variant we often play during 3-person matches using the base game.
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Valharik wrote: I really don't like the idea of the blue destinations having a different back. Now you don't have the option to shuffle them in with the regular destinations--a variant we often play during 3-person matches using the base game.
As I've said 7 of the new Big Cities tickets have length ranging from 16 to 25 and they do have a brown background like the other tickets, so you can use them instead of the original blue routes.
Players can also keep the back of their tickets hidden from the other players, it doesn't seem to hard.
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Jon Dahlberg
Sweden
Linköping
It's Lupus
Test for Lupus
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deltarn wrote: At any time during his turn a player can as a free action place one or more depots from his supply and put them on map.
I find this part of the rules a bit unclear. In our first game we decided that the extra action is done after the regular turn. The exact wording from the rules is:
rules wrote: In addition to his regular turn, a player may always, as a Free Action, take one or more Depots still next to his Warehouse and place them on any empty cities.
The "In addition to" indicates after to me, but the "may always" part seems to indicate at any time.
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jon_dahlberg wrote: deltarn wrote: At any time during his turn a player can as a free action place one or more depots from his supply and put them on map. I find this part of the rules a bit unclear. In our first game we decided that the extra action is done after the regular turn. The exact wording from the rules is: rules wrote: In addition to his regular turn, a player may always, as a Free Action, take one or more Depots still next to his Warehouse and place them on any empty cities. The "In addition to" indicates after to me, but the "may always" part seems to indicate at any time.
I asked the question to a DoW staff member. He says "at any time even before your regular action";
I specifically asked if it was legal to put a depot on the map at the start of your turn and then proceed to take control of a track that reach the depot you've just placed, and I was told it was possible. (at least that's what I understood)
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ackmondual
United States
Virginia
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deltarn wrote: jon_dahlberg wrote: deltarn wrote: At any time during his turn a player can as a free action place one or more depots from his supply and put them on map. I find this part of the rules a bit unclear. In our first game we decided that the extra action is done after the regular turn. The exact wording from the rules is: rules wrote: In addition to his regular turn, a player may always, as a Free Action, take one or more Depots still next to his Warehouse and place them on any empty cities. The "In addition to" indicates after to me, but the "may always" part seems to indicate at any time. I asked the question to a DoW staff member. He says "at any time even before your regular action"; I specifically asked if it was legal to put a depot on the map at the start of your turn and then proceed to take control of a track that reach the depot you've just placed, and I was told it was possible. (at least that's what I understood)
In practice, I dunno. I suppose other players may just claim both into Edinburgh simply b/c they need to get there and that's more valuable then denying you the ability to pick up mass train cards at once.
Perhaps the timing needs to be right. Wait too long, you won't be able to properly spend all of those trian cards anyways. Too early, and you're cheating your out of some cards like with all the other warehouses.
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Putting one depot in Edimburgh, or any other remote location is a strategy but in my games I haven't found that it makes the extension "broken".
in a game with 4-5 players you will need another player to block the link.
You can also achieve a similar strategy by putting a depot in the middle of the board in a place where many players will want to go, like Berlin.
It might take longer to fill all links, but players are usually more interested in going to Berlin than Edinburgh. In one game I had a depot in Munchen which was completely surrounded in the first half of the game.
Putting a depot in Edimburgh is rather restictive. You need one of 2 colors, and your depot might not be so useful during the early stage of the game. There's a trade off between using a depot early to try to get those all important link quickly in the opening and trying to rip off a large stack at once which will necessarily happens later in the game.
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Jin TS
Malaysia
Petaling Jaya
Selangor
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Wow, what a complete explanation on the expansion..
I guess this is the one thread i should read to judge whether it is a good buy or not..nice review and really helpful..no doubt, anyone who has T2R:E should get it.. 
Thanks for posting it..
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Posted Thu Oct 15, 2009 4:31 pm
