Review: Ticket to Ride- Europe

We picked up Ticket to Ride-Europe for Eric's dad per the suggestion of the Game Store Salesman. It is a very fun game! Each person gets one long mission and must build train tracks to accomplish that goal. You build train tracks by collecting colored cards and laying them to build sections of track. For example, the section of track from Petrograd to Moscow costs four white cards. Each mission is made of several sections like that example- with several different colors, and some sections have certain stipulations attached. On each turn, you also have the opportunity to draw up to three smaller missions. Of those, you MUST keep at least one. The object is to accomplish your missions. Each mission is worth the amount of points designated on the card. For every mission you have not accomplished by the end of the game, you are docked the designated amount of points. Thus, it is possible to earn negative points. Obviously, the object of the game is to get points!

This is a FUN FUN game! We were hooked immediately and promptly "borrowed" the game from Eric's dad for about a month. Then we got our friends Janssen and Bart hooked on the game. Then they borrowed it from us and got more people hooked. Eventually we bought our own game, and so did Janssen and Bart.

The game is 2-5 players and takes about an hour. Sometimes Eric and I play where we each are two colors and have two main missions. We could sometimes play those games in about 40 minutes. The more familiar you are with the board, the faster you get at playing the game.

One difficulty is that all the cities are written in their native language- Roma, Vien, Lisboa, Kyiv, etc. I find that I have a general idea of the geography of many European cities, but I sometimes don't know what countries they belong to. I can't believe I'm admitting that to the whole Internet. But there you have it. Where are Sochi and Zagrab anyway?