gamerbling

Sunday night is game night at the Gamer Bling household, with the Gamer Bling Official Companion, Gamer Bling Expansion #1, and Gamer Bling Expansion #2.

Each one gets to choose the game of the week in rotation. Recently, that game was Ticket to Ride: Europe, as chosen by Gamer Bling Expansion #1.

The Promise

Ticket to Ride: Europe promises to take you “on a new train adventure through the great cities of turn-of-the-century Europe,” a promise that is reinforced by the appearance of five different people dressed in five different colors, all looking happy and adventurous.

Curiously, the game also promises that you can “erect lavish train stations” and become “Europe’s greatest train magnate,” goals that seem far beyond the reach of most of the people on the cover, especially the schoolgirl in yellow and the sooty engineer with the wrench and oilcan.

So… adventure or capitalism? Already Gamer Bling begins to wonder who the heck writes their marketing text.

The Delivery

Despite the personable faces on the front cover, you do not play a person adventuring by train. You are, in fact, much closer to a train magnate. However, unlike what you might have experienced in Sid Meier’s venerable Railroad Tycoon, the tracks you lay do not even have to be contiguous.

The map is a very nicely rendered and thematic map of Europe before The Great War. Single and double train routes connect the various cities. Each route is colored to show what sort of cards a player must discard to gain control of that route.

Broken down to its most basic mechanics, the game is a mix of set collection and territory grabbing. Each turn, you either acquire cards for a set (either by taking a face-up card or via a blind draw from the deck), or else discard a set of cards from your hand to claim a route that matches the cards in quantity and color.

Players score points by claiming routes (longer routes are worth proportionately more) and by connecting the cities listed on your “tickets,” which are basically secret missions.

There is a bit of passive conflict inasmuch as you can claim a route that someone else may want, but there is no overt attacking. The ability to place train stations to allow you to use another player’s route to improve your score mitigates any potential hostility that would erupt over contested routes.

Tunnels also allow for a bit of a gamble; when claiming a tunnel route, it costs 0-3 more cards than its list price, as determined randomly by deck draws.

Finesse

Color-matching games are problematic for the colorblind, but Days of Wonder very nicely has symbols unique to each color. Thus even those with complete colorblindess can play by matching symbols on their cards to the symbols on the map.

In addition, since the game pieces are (a) limited in quantity and (b) used as a game-end timer, DoW very nicely includes extras in a separate baggie to replace any that get eaten by your dog or your toddler.

Skills

As a homeschool parent, Gamer Bling believes in seizing every opportunity for learning. Here’s what the kids can learn or practice with Ticket to Ride: Europe.

Long-Term Planning: Connecting a city in Spain with one in Russia requires forethought. It’s a long route, with a lot of links and multiple paths to select from.

Geography: It is, in fact, a map of Europe. Even if it is 1910. At least the kids can learn where the cities basically are, even if the borders have changed. However, the city names are rendered in the local language. Rome is Roma, Vienna is Wien, and Istanbul is Constantinople. This is cool for adults, but less so for kids. But at least the Russian cities are not rendered in Cyrillic.

Family Game Night Value

This is a very accessible gateway game, easy to learn, easy to play, and fun to complain about when the cards aren’t falling your way. Better yet, with the secret-mission Ticket cards remaining hidden until the end of the game, you can’t tell who’s going to win until it’s all over.

It is a regular in the rotation at the Gamer Bling table.

TL;DR

This was an instant hit in the Gamer Bling family. And from everything Gamer Bling has experienced and heard, it is the best of the Ticket to Ride line of games.

Buy it.

And thank you for taking the time to read a Gamer Bling Sunday Night Review.

Sunday night is game night at the Gamer Bling household. Sadly, this does not mean watching football. Happily it means playing games with the Gamer Bling Official Companion, Gamer Bling Expansion #1, and Gamer Bling Expansion #2.

The quiet lull after the Expansions are shelved for the night is a decent enough time for Gamer Bling to spout his opinion on the Game of the Week. This week, that game was RoboRally, as chosen by Gamer Bling Expansion #2.

The below should all be approached with the understanding that Gamer Bling owns the original version of the game from 1994, as well as a few extra boards he scrounged here and there. Any improvements in the 2005 reprint remain unknown to Gamer Bling, and are therefore unimportant.

The Promise

RoboRally promises “Robot Racing to the Extreme!” And, in Gamer Bling’s opinion, “extreme” starts with this marketing promise.

You steer a robot across a map filled with various environmental hazards, including but not limited to conveyors, crushers, lasers, oil slicks, pits, and your fellow racers. With Phil Foglio illustrations, it promises to be a game of wacky zany racing.

Sounds like great family fun, right?

The Delivery

Each turn, you program your robot’s movement across the board using a selection of cards, each of which has one action printed on it (“Turn Right,” “Move 2,” etc.). Your hand starts at nine cards, but gets smaller as you get damaged. Of these nine (or less) you choose five to get yourself across the board.

Your goal is to tag each of the however-many flags you placed on the course during setup.

Thus each turn boils down to this basic subroutine:

* Inspect your limited options for movement.
* Arrange them in an order that best progresses you toward your goal.
* Rinse, repeat.

Gamer Bling finds that this game is not particularly wacky, inasmuch as 2/3 to 3/4 of the game time is planning, and the rest is execution. It moves quite slowly for a race game.

The wackiness does arise on occasion when one robot bumps into another and knocks it off course. If this happens early enough in the turn, the hapless second robot can get sent careening in the wrong direction while following its program.

Sadly, this does not happen often, because there is too much room on the board and the robots easily get split up geographically. This past game we just finished, one robot was knocked one square once, to no major effect.

Gamer Bling also notes that when RoboRally used to be demoed at the WotC booth at Gen Con by the late Paul Randles, Paul demoed it on a board that was a quarter the size of just one of the board tiles provided in the game. That promoted interaction between the robots!

The game also rather breaks when one stops thinking about the fun of being wacky and focuses on the goal of running the race most efficiently. Gamer Bling usually wins this game by crushing margins by doing just that, rather than trying to get repairs, upgrades, or mess up other players like the Expansions do.

Skills Required

As a homeschool parent, Gamer Bling believes in seizing every opportunity for learning. Here’s what the kids can learn or practice with RoboRally.

Spatial Orientation: This is a biggie. You must be able to steer your robot right and left when it is across the table, facing you, and sitting on a rotating gear. This has led many to do the infamous “RoboRally Dance,” wherein one uses hands, fingers, bodily facing, pens, or what have you to diddle one’s way around the board. Watching this is often more entertaining than the game itself.

Optimization: You have limited resources, and you must apply them in as efficient a manner as possible.

Planning: One must scout the best route to advance to the flags. For example, conveyor belts are obstacles if the run against you, but beneficial if they run with you, thus going out of your way to catch the right conveyor can make a lot of difference.

Family Game Night Value

Kids love it. Boys especially, since it involves lasers and crushers and pushing people into pits.

It’s accessible, and a solid gateway game for non-gamers.

And it’s fun while it’s new. As a veteran gamer, however, this reviewer is tired of it. He only keeps it around because Gamer Bling Expansion #2 keeps asking to play it.

TL;DR

For a race game, it’s slow.

For a nominally wacky game, it’s pretty dry.

Pick it up if it’s cheap, or you want to house-rule it into shape.

And thank you for taking the time to read a Gamer Bling Sunday Night Review.