Train in Vain

Photos to follow.

The girls had their gymanstics practice cancelled last night so we decided to break out an old favorite, "Ticket to Ride."

TTR is a Euro-lite game where one's goal is to complete randomly drawn routes between various cities in the US and Canada.  Completion of routes nets one VP's based on the length of the route.  Failure to complete routes results in loss of VP's.  Completing routes involves playing same colored cards.  During one's turn they can either draw cards or play cards to claim a route.

TTR has been a bit of a mystery to me.  In around a dozen games, i've never won and never had a good grasp on strategy.

So it was Sheri, Hannah, Mads and myself.  This would be Mads first game playing without help.  Of my first 3 routes, i drew Atlanta to LA and Nashville to Portland as well as a long North-South route which i discarded.  This seemed like a great combo as both routes were worth 17 VP as well as being more or less the same.

In our last game, which was a year and a half ago, i had followed a combined strategy of trying to mess other people's routes up as well as completing my own routes.  It didn't work in part because there are often ways around blocked paths and also because the girls are pretty cagey game players and don't often telegraph where they are going.

With my two East-West routes, i figured i'd focus completely on my routes trying of course not to be too obvious where i was headed.

Well, this worked perfectly for me, but i have my doubts of whether it had anything to do with strategy.  Basically, the ladies all had North-South routes.  I had no competition for my routes so it was a breeze to complete them.  I then decided to draw some new tickets and got a LA to Miami worth 20 VP.  This was perfect for me as i already had built Atlanta to LA, so i only had to complete an Atlanta to Miami connection.

When we tallied the final scores, i had 136--a new house record for us as we do keep track of winners--and won by a good margin over Sheri, 111, Mads, 96, and poor Hannah at 76--she thought she had completed a route but hadn't so suffered a 18 point swing.  I can't feel too bad for Hannah though as she is the leader in overall wins.

Good fun with the game clocking in at 1 hour 45 minutes.  I fully expect Mads to start racking up wins soon with some experience, as her luck is legendary.