Rich W

These achievements are both very similar, so I’ll include them both in one strategy.

Opponent(s)
One opponent: Marg –She may claim some of the same routes you need to before you get to, but you need to choose her because she gets hung up at the end of the game and just draws cards until there are almost none left. Often, you’ll be able to see where she is going and try and take the black/orange routes near where she is going.

Ticket Selection
All Black
Start with anything from the base route of LA-El Paso-Santa Fe-Denver-KC-St. Louis-Chi-Pitt-NY and you should be able to complete many of the tickets in either the standard or any of the variants. From NY I then connected to Montreal-Sault St. Marie-Duluth-Winnipeg. This also almost assures you the Longest Route bonus ticket, which you may need.
All Orange
Pretty similar to the all black one, but you may need to choose ones that begin in San Fran or Las Vegas instead, though you could still choose ones from LA as its only 2 from Vegas.
Both
Long route selections may actually make this one tougher. You may find it easier to achieve them by choosing shorter routes that don’t take as many turns to complete, as you’ll see below. The All Black took much longer than the All Orange one for me, and I think it’s because I chose shorter routes. Though I can’t really be sure, I may just have been luckier in my draws.

Bottom Line
Your problem, and it’s a big one, is how many tickets of the specific color you need in order to claim all of the routes of that color…while still winning! There are 12 each of the black/orange and 14 locomotives (wild), and statistically you will only see about half of each the first time drawing through the deck.

Picking which of the routes first is important and should be, I think, the same ones: Denver-KC and Chi-Pitt. Both of these routes are right in the middle of almost everything and are therefore likely to be taken very early. Once you’ve secured them, try and make out where your opponent is going and determine if it’s near any of the other routes you need. After picking the most common and ones near my opponent, I would then try and claim the biggest routes, saving the smallest ones for last because it would be very near the end of the game and I would need to pick fewer cards to claim them.

Picking a good time to claim your off-color routes can be a little tricky as well. I usually did this when the initial draw deck was close to being exhausted. There usually weren’t any more of the train cards you needed and I felt it was best to wait until the draw deck was exhausted and the discards were reshuffled into a new draw pile. Not to sound like a total numbers geek, but it would mean that there was a higher ratio of your cards to other colors, so that you could start to draw up again and have a better chance of drawing the color you need.

Unless you draw extremely well in what color you need, you will almost certainly exhaust that draw pile a second time and have to recycle the discards. This is good news…but also bad news. The good: most of the cards that are left are of the color that you need. The bad: the game is very close to being over, if it isn’t already.

There’s a lot of pressure at the end of these two achievements because it almost feels like you’re racing against a clock in order to get all of the routes, which I did enjoy, despite how frustrating it could be at times. There were many times where the opponent just decided to end the game right before I was able to claim the last route I needed, and there were more than a few where I thought I had completed it, only to discover after the scoring was done, that I had missed one of the routes somehow!

For me, it was a toss-up between the All Black and the All 5 Route achievements for most difficult. Perhaps the most frustrating part about the All Black/Orange achievements is that you often get very far towards completing it, but your plans can be dashed at the last second, ruining your whole game and forcing you to start all over again. I confess that I made some crude hand gestures at the screen and used some off-color language at times. I apologize if any of you were offended. 😉

This achievement can be quite difficult because not only do you need to be very selective in which tickets you take, but you have to save for all of the routes. All while hoping the opponent doesn’t take any of the routes you need. Oh yeah, and win. Can’t forget that!

Opponent(s)
One opponent: Marg –She almost never selects a 5 route to start the game. Once she’s placed her first couple of trains, try and take the 5 routes near where she is going.

Ticket Selection
There are only 2 of these 5-routes that connect to one another: Port-San Fran-Salt Lake. The rest are spread out across the board, which makes selecting tickets pretty difficult. After you take all of the 5-routes, you’re left with just 5 trains with which to make other connections. That’s not a lot to work with. You could conceivably make some western connections with those extra ones, but I chose to connect Miami to Toronto, using the two 5-routes in between. Mega Variant might be helpful here, as it adds a lot more tickets, but you also have to take and additional ticket to start. Not sure if it’s worth the trade-off. I did it using the Standard rules.

Bottom Line
This achievement may have been the most annoying to complete. There were several times when the opponent claimed a route just when I had just drawn up enough cards to claim it (grrrrrrrrr). I also found myself quitting a lot when the initial tickets offered weren’t at all viable to connect considering how many trains you have left. If you’re really trying for the Conductor Level Achievements (Conductor Level 5: 20,000 plays. REALLY Days of Wonder?), then go right ahead and finish the games. If not, you’ll find yourself quitting a lot of games. 😉

This one is difficult because you need to punch a great deal of tickets without leaving very many unfinished.

Opponent(s)
Just choose one opponent: Marg –When it gets towards the end of the game she will, more often than not, just end up drawing cards from the draw pile until there aren’t any left. This will allow you to more time to draw routes at the end of the game to complete this achievement.

Route Selection
The ‘shape’ of your route should resemble a right-handed checkmark. Starting with Vancouver and going south all the way to LA, then to Phx-Santa Fe-Den-KC-StL-Chi-Pitt-NY-Bos-Mont. Many routes in the Mega variant will be along this line and you will have 10 trains left to make spurs off of it.

Bottom Line
In my game, I had spurs that connected to Las Vegas, Nashville, and Atlanta. I completed 26 out of 27 tickets and scored 405.

Once you get the route, start drawing tickets. The one main thing you need to consider is where your spurs are going to be. If you are drawing a lot of Atlanta tickets, then that’s where you’ll have to go. And be careful of how many trains you have left. Remember, if you get down to 2, you only have one more turn left to place trains or draw tickets!

Tickets connecting to Miami might not be viable for this one. I never tried it. There is a good deal of luck involved when drawing tickets. You only draw three at a time and must pick at least one. Sometimes, you can get stuck with three tickets that go North-South and don’t match your route at all. This can wreck your score badly.

There were about a half a dozen times where I thought I had enough, only to come up short. I think you should really consider getting to completing at least 25 before finally trying to end it. Good luck!

This achievement was one of the more difficult ones, mostly because it must be done in Standard Game only. This means a lot fewer tickets to work with.
Opponent(s)
Just choose one opponent: Marg – I think she is the easiest to beat. When it gets towards the end of the game she sometimes gets ‘flummoxed’ and will, more often than not, just end up drawing cards from the draw pile until there aren’t any left. This will allow you to more time to draw routes at the end of the game to complete this achievement.
Ticket Selection
Ideally, I think the ‘shape’ of your route should resemble a right-handed checkmark. Starting with Vancouver and going south all the way to LA, then to Phx-Santa Fe-Den-KC-StL-Chi-Pitt-NY-Mont. Most of the routes will be along this line and you will have 11 trains left to make spurs off of it. However, I was able to do mine a little different due to the initial draw that I had. From LA, I went instead to El Paso-Dal-Hou-NO-Atl-Nash- StL-Chi-Pitt-NY-Mont. Which makes more of a ‘U’ shape than a checkmark. I ended up completing 16 tickets and missing one.
Bottom Line
Even after figuring out what the path of my route should be, this took me a great many games before drawing tickets that worked with it. It should be noted though; this achievement doesn’t say that you have to win to get it, so you could conceivably just draw up as many tickets as you can once you have the basic route. However, this would make it difficult to keep track of where exactly to put your spurs, so it may not work that well.

Don’t leave a real tip here! This is a game that’s all about bluffing your opponents. If they read your tip, they will know better how to read you the next time you play them!

Unless….the tip you leave is a FALSE one in order to mislead your opponents into believing a LIE!

In which case…I guess you can leave one here. 😉

In a game that’s more about trying to out-race your opponent(s) to the highest point total than about actually beating them down (which I like btw), the Attack cards, while relatively weak, must be used wisely.

Specifically, the ones where the opponent must take (x) from their tavern and place it back in supply OR you get a benefit. Their power is actually scaled to how many people are playing. If you only have one opponent, then you can only get [2 VP, 2 gold, 1 Intrigue, or 1 Quest]. So the more opponents you have, the greater benefit for you, while still not being all that powerful of an obstical for your opponent.

Therefore, I think it’s best to play these cards early in the game when more of your opponents won’t have the colored cube in their Tavern.

Mandatory Quest cards are probably best used as late in the game as possible. That way, you can use it on the leader, or at least someone who is ahead of you (or immediately behind). All while hitting them with it at a most crucial time in the game.