Ticket To Ride: Marklin Edition

Wow, another day of games. But this one was more social than gaming. Jon and Roxana invited John and Gina Gravitt and myself over for an Easter party. The house was decked out with cute Easter themed items. Jon had just recently bought this new game and I was happy to try it out. Although I am not generally fond of Ticket to Ride.

This game has more choices going on. It introduces a passenger piece that you can place on the board when you lay a track down. One of your actions is to move it along your segments and collect points chips (which start out at some number and get progressively less valuable). You can play ticket cards to move along someone else’s track. Also, this game introduces another type of engine card that is only used for tracks 4 or greater. If taken face up, it does not cost you the turn. And this game splits the destination goals into two groups (a short path for less points and long path for more points).

So they have made some progress into turning this game into a slightly meatier version. Another bonus is that all of the train cards have unique pictures of the Marklin model trains.

We took a break while the kids ran off trying to find Easter eggs.

David and Goliath

Next up was this trick taking card game. It was interesting as a three player game. Quite different from a five or six player game. However, I don’t feel that you have many choices in leading or playing cards (since you are forced to follow suit). It was rare that I was able to get only one or two of the cards in a suit (which score you the most points).

Hacienda

To finish up, we played Hacienda. Jon was able to build off by himself and created a long chain. Which put him next to a lot of markets and gave him a lot of money when he brought his herds to the markets. And which easily gave him the win.