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I can’t even count how many times I played Love letter. I play it when I’m going to the pub with my friends, I take it along to parties, Christmas dinners, weddings, I put it in a bag when going to school or work or travelling outside of my home country.

It is small, it is simple, yet somehow it hasn’t gotten repetitive in the last twelve months. Everybody I got into this game loved it. They wanted to spend two hour sessions playing Love letter instead of Eldritch horror, take it out and deal the cards instead of watching Simpsons or playing Scott Pilgrim on Xbox. They missed their last buses home and had to sleep on the floor because my couch was filled with other people who missed their transportation lines because of playing this game.

It fits every bag, every purse, every pocket in a man’s jacket and it is cheaper than the latest film with Steven Segal. I have many versions of the game. One bought, several print-and-play and one home-made. I guess I will grow tired of this, but man … this game has stuck with me longer than anything I had ever played.

I didn’t like Ticket to Ride USA. I played tens of games on an Android and about four to five in reality and the game just wasn’t quite enough for me. The rules are very family friendly, there is definitely some strategic thinking going on, but overall the ever winning player was the one who got the best tickets in the beginning, claimed the five/six piece routes and also the longest route. I missed the completing tickets part as I always considered to be the most fun aspect of the game.

Ticket to Ride Europe delivers this without a flaw. Many of the central Europe routes are just one to three pieces short and so the strategy of getting most points for large routes doesn’t work here. This game adds some fun mechanics, incentivizes the ticket strategy and also creates a start balance by providing each player with only one “big” ticket for the entire game.

There is definitely some luck involved, the cards you get and tickets you draw, but overall I found this game much more strategic and entertaining than the USA version. If you like completing tickets, don’t build railways over USA, connect all the European cities instead!