Your Ticket out of Monopoly-ville: Ticket to Ride

Your Ticket out of Monopoloy-ville: Ticket to Ride

Overall Rating: 7 out of 10

Type: Board game

Suggest Ages: 8+

# of Players: 2-5

Playing Time: 30-60min+

Replay-ability: 6 out of 10

Expansions available: 1910 Expansion Pack (Cost = $15)

Cost: Approximately $36

Ticket to Ride is train building game filled with strategy and little geography (though the cities are not necessarily in the right spot--that is Chicago is sort of in Indiana). There are 5 different colors to play (black, blue, green, yellow, and red) each player receives 45 plastic train cars in their color to start the game. They also receive 3 route cards of which they have to keep at least two, and four colored train cards. 

Route Cards!

Route cards have a brown backing and contain two cities that you have to connect with your trains and a number amount that you receive at the end of the game for making that route. If you don't make the route, you get negative points! 

The colored train cards are used to claim parts of a route. There are eight different colored cards plus wild cards. During each turn, you can either draw two colored train cards, one wild train card, take more routes, or claim parts of your route. 

If a section of a route has three yellow boxes, a player must play three yellow train cards or a combination of wild train cards and yellow train cards to claim that section. If they do this, that is the only thing they can do per turn. If there are a number of gray boxes, say two, then a player can play any color of train cards but it must be two matching for example to two blue cards or two green cards, etc. 

Usually you want to try to complete a 20 point route because these are some of the longest, highest value routes, but you can complete a lot of smaller routes if you'd prefer. When picking your first routes, it's best to choose routes that you can complete with one line of trains. For example, try to avoid perpendicular routes or parallel routes because that makes it harder to complete the routes and uses up more of your limited train supply. 

There is also a bonus of 10 points awarded to the player with the longest continuous train. I really like to finish my routes early and then work on getting the longer train. It makes me feel accomplished even if I don't end up winning. 

Overall, this game is easy to learn, fun to play, and not as stressful as other board games. Though the Europe version (which I also own) is more complex and more stressful with tunnels and ferry routes. I like this game a lot and would recommend it. I have played at least 25 times (probably more) and I still really love it. I think it might be time for me to get the expansion pack because I now know all the routes and that's a somewhat unfair advantage. I do think this game has a learning curve as you learn the strategy that works best for you, but it's worth it! 

It's like a Scary Movie: Betrayal at the House on the Hill

It's like a Scary Movie: Betrayal at the House on the Hill

Overall Rating: 9 out of 10

 

Type: Board game, Co-operative with defector

Suggest Ages: 12+

# of Players: 3-6

Playing Time: 1hour+

Replay-ability: 9 out of 10

Expansions available: Not Officially (Some Unofficial talk here)

Cost: Approximately $35

 

So if you like co-operative games, but you miss the competitive aspect of non-coop, then you might want to look into co-operative games that have a defector. In Betrayal at the House on the Hill, all of the players begin on the same team. You're a group of explorers finding omens, events, and items in an old haunted house. Until the time when "the Haunt" begins, at which point a player becomes a traitor or there are monsters or both! This game can be pretty spooky, given the haunted house, creepy event cards, horrifying items (including weapons like the blood danger), and even worse omen cards!

The game starts with three pieces of the board the basement landing, the upstairs landing, and three rooms on the main floor: the entrance hall (where all players start), the foyer, and the connecting downstairs landing to the upstairs landing. In the beginning of the game there is no way for a player to get to the basement, and even once a player makes it to the basement, there is often not a way for the player to get out of the basement. This happens because there are multiple room tiles that cause players to take a one-way trip to the basement.

Room tiles are what build the game board. Each player can explore house in whatever direction they choose as long as they follow the number of moves they have. You explore new rooms but going through doorways of the house into rooms that have not get been discover. You then find a room title in the stack marked accordingly (ground, upper, basement) and place it on the board so that it's door and the door you entered through are connected.

The basement.

Room tiles usually have special symbols on them that tell you which card to draw (event, item, or omen). The play continues this way with players drawing items and decreasing and increasing their player stats according to the cards and room tiles until the Haunt begins.

Each die has two blank sides, two sides with one, and two sides with two.

The Haunt begins when a player fails a haunt roll. After each Omen Card draw, the player has to make a haunt role. The player roles six dice to determine whether the haunt will happen. The player must role equal to or greater than the number of omens out on the board in order to avoid the haunt. For example, if there are four omens on the board, a player needs to role a four or higher.

Once the haunt begins, there is a traitor attempting to murder/change/whatever the other player either alone or with a group of monsters or the traitor turns into a monster. There 50 different haunts outline in the traitor's guide and the survival guide of the game. Once the haunt occurs, the traitor leaves to read about their objectives and the heroes stay to talk about their objectives. The heroes have to be careful not to give away information to the traitor or vise versa because neither party knows the full story.

Overall, this game is super fun to play. There's a horror-movie-esque feel, but even if you don't particularly enjoy horror movies, it's still worth a shoot, especially with the right people. You can play in character if you want and it makes it that much more fun to make up how the people arrived at the house together and how they are all related and what their motivations are. But if you're not into doing that, then it's just as fun to simply play the game!

The replay-ability of this game is crazy! There are 50 different haunt scenarios, the game board is never the same, and the characters are great. I love learning about the new haunts and trying to figure out what is going to happen next.

Just a note though: There are a lot of punch out tokens, so you might want to have some Ziploc bags ready when you open this game. That's probably the only downside I see for this game.