Feb
26
Busy week of gaming part 2
Filed Under Agricola, Galaxy Trucker, Session, Ticket to Ride, Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries | Leave a Comment
Winter holidays did mean a lot of gaming this year and what would have been better way to spend time now that we have had the warmest winter in ages.
Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries was a rather nice experience when I had a chance to play the game with one of my old friends. I haven’t played TtR that much and it’s quite hard for me to judge which version of the game is the best but I enjoyed our two games. The quality of the components is definitely better in Nordic Countries than in Switzerland expansion which I tried in Tracon and I don’t have any complaints with the design of the game. Game play is almost the same as in the other games in the series and the only major diffirence is the board which is challenging. There’s not that many ways to connect cities so fight over the routes is hard and it is relatively easy to block others to getting to their goals. The Murmansk route is also huge and the 27 points that is awarded for finishing the route might just be a bit too much.
I also had a chance to try the original
Ticket to Ride with three players for the first time and I must say that I enjoyed it also quite a bit. I had two non-gamers playing with me and the game just the kind of game one can introduce to people who don’t know anything about gaming. Maybe three is a bit too few to play the US map but then again there were not that much competition and blocking while anyone hadn’t played the game before.
Galaxy Trucker is a newest addition in my game collection and the more I play the game the more I enjoy it. I love the theme of the game and the fact that the theme fits the mechanics fluently. Nothing is more fun than to first use junk to contruct a so and so space ship and then explore the unknown with it. There’s no down time and everybody’s busy all the time doing something and although there’s not direct interaction among the players it definitely feels like there would be a lot. Great game and one of my favorites from the year 2007.
The other favorite for most of the gaming world has been
Agricola which I had played before Sunday once (family game) and somewhat liked. This time we played with cards which made the game lot more challenging from the family game and I also noticed that the cards you get in the beginning can really decide your whole game. My cards weren’t that good which made scoring a bit trickier.
I’m not a big fan of Agricola. It’s close to perfect in it’s own category (optimization) but while I’m not a huge fan of heavy optimization I don’t get any kicks out of the game. Agricola feels like a solitaire game where usually you don’t use your actions to affect the others because you lose more by doing so. Interaction is there but it’s more indirect and occurs usually only when you are trying to achieve same goals as you fellow players. For some this is heaven but maybe for me heaven lie somewhere else.