Ticket To Ride

Has anyone else been feeling the board gaming love lately?  Well, it's been a slow shift, but my husband and I have slowly become addicted to board gaming.  Am I nerd? I don't think so....but I do realize my coolness factor may have just got shot down with admitting that, but I digress.

So, we stopped to think the other night about how we have slowly switched from watching TV or movies late at night to playing more games (which by the way it way more interactive and healthier for your marriage then just starting at the TV screen)...and we came to this conclusion: Ticket To Ride.

Ticket to Ride was the game that started us wanting to play games at night when the kids are in bed and wanting us to invite other couples over to play with us...ultimately it started our weekly game nights with friends and started our ever increasing love of board gaming.

If you haven't heard of it Ticket To Ride is a very popular game out right now.  It has actually been out for a while, since 2004 to be exact.  It is so good in fact that it won the Spiel des Jahres award for that year.  Of course we didn't have any clue what that Spiel deh..what meant, but we ordered it online looking for something fun that had good reviews.  We didn't realize it would start a new love of gaming in our lives.

The concept of the game is quite simple: draw and place train cards to complete tracks of rail from one city to the next, all the while trying to complete longer destination cards that are from one city to a completely different city somewhere else on the board.  Whatever destination cards you don't complete are negative and the ones you do earn you positive points.  Whoever has the most points at the end wins. Easy right?

Well it gets more complicated when someone lays on you track and then your all of a sudden blocked from your city.
Is there another way around?
Should I just a longer track to earn more points? or should I go the short route before I get cut off?
Should I risk it and take more destination cards??
Ugh! So many choices...
This is what makes the game.

Now that we have been gaming for awhile we have come to gauge a game by the Spiel des Jahres award. This award we have learned is only given to games that 'everybody' could play.  So they are fun and interactive games that are maybe a bit more involved then 'party games' but are still easy enough it doesn't take 3 hours to play like some of the really complex games. So we try to look for this award when we are getting a new game.

Anyways, if you haven't tried out Ticket To Ride you should.  It's even sold at Target now because of it's popularity, although I always buy it on Amazon where it's cheaper.

Happy Board Gaming!

Heather Joy