Entries from September 2006 ↓

I hadn’t thought much of the description of Ticket to Ride when I first read it (drawing cards to build train routes), but every review I read raved about it.  All but the most hardcore gamers loved this game and said they played it often with their friends and family.  It had been the top selling game on TimeWellSpent.org for a good year and according to several gamers I’d talked to, it was one of the quintessential introductions into German style board games. With all that good press, we finally decided to give it a shot.

I am so happy we took everybody’s overwhelming advice.  This game really is good wholesome fun.  The board depicts the United States with a series colored “train routes” between different cities, varying in length from one to six spaces.  Players start out with 43 train pieces, two or three “trip tickets” and four train cards, which are colored to correspond to the various spaces on the board.  On each turn, players can either draw cards, draw trip tickets, or claim a route.

You earn points by claiming routes with your trains.  The points go up exponentially as the route’s length increases.  For a route one space long, you get a single point.  For a route six spaces long, you get fifteen.  Players claim routes by laying down enough cards of the appropriate color for the route in question.  To claim the five-space green-colored route between San Francisco and Los Angeles, a player would lay down five green cards (or three greens and two wild “engine cards”) and then place one of their train pieces on each space in the route.  Obviously, with the way the points are tallied, it’s in a player’s best interest to claim longer routes, the obvious caveat being that it takes longer to draw six cards of one color than, say, two—especially when it seems like the cards you need never come up when you’re actually looking for them.

At the beginning of the game players draw trip tickets showing two cities that they have to connect with a continuous line of their trains by the end of the game.  Each trip ticket has a certain point value, with the longer routes obviously giving you more points than the shorter ones.  At the end of the game, you gain the given number of points for each ticket you complete and lose the number of points for whatever tickets you leave unfinished.

The game is played until one player runs out of trains, at which point you tally up the points for each route and trip ticket.  An additional bonus is given to the player who has the longest continuous route.  The player with the most points wins.

I finally understand all the fuss surrounding this game.  It has exactly the right amount of complexity and options for strategy so that you can feel challenged yet still have a nice relaxing game that doesn’t make you think too much.  Part of the excitement comes from the fact that you really don’t know who’s going to win until the very end of the game when all the points are tallied.  The rest of the excitement (and tension) comes from the fact that since nobody can see the other players’ trip tickets they can end up inadvertently (or on purpose if they’re particularly perceptive) blocking somebody’s route, forcing the other guy to take the long way around.

My only beef with Ticket to Ride is that it involves very little direct competition with the other players.  By and large, you’re concentrating so much on completing your own trip tickets that you don’t really have time to worry about blocking your opponent’s route or otherwise messing with their progress. But other than that one small gripe, it’s a great game that we’ve managed to sell the entire family on. It gets pulled out frequently whenever all the siblings-in-law get together.

Additional Note 1/5/09: We have also tried the Europe version of this game and found it to much less fun for several reasons. First of all, unlike the America version where converging train routes cause you to frequently clash with your opponents who are making trips through the same geography, the Europe trips often go way off by themselves, further alienating you from competing against the other players. Beyond that, since I’m not as familiar with European geography as I am with the United States, it was a lot harder (and not in the fun way) figuring out and remembering exactly where my trips were supposed to be taking me.

VITALS: This is a 2-5 player game which generally takes anywhere from 30-60 minutes to complete. I originally thought the designation of ages 8 and up was a tad too generous but our niece started learning to play at 8 and while she may not be as competitive as the 30-year-olds at the table, she does just fine with it.

OVERALL FUN FACTOR: It’s fun and not too taxing on the brain, though I find that as time goes by I am less and less excited to play it. I think it all goes back, again, to the lack of direct competition. But maybe that’s just me. It’s still a good game and worth having in the collection nonetheless. 7 out of 10.

BoardGameGeek.com Reviews

Lauren and I finally had a Saturday night with nothing work related, so we cozied up on our couch, played a board game and decided to watch the movie Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. It had been several years and I forgot what a solid little comedy it was.

For those who didn’t grow up in the eighties and haven’t seen this movie, briefly, it’s about two boneheaded high school kids who are trying to form a band… except now they’re failing history. They have one last chance to get an A-plus on their final oral report and pass the class or else Ted will be sent away to military school. From seven hundred years in the future, in drops (literally) a man named Rufus. He sends the moronic duo on a ‘most excellent adventure’ through history, where they gather ‘personages of historical significance’—including ‘the most bodacious philosophizer in ancient Greece’, Socrates (pronounced ‘SO-craits’); ‘the very excellent barbarian’, Ghengis Kahn; and of course, ‘the short dead dude’, Napoleon. They succeed in passing their report, and we realize the full importance of these two kids and the band they’re trying to form.

No doubt, this movie requires big, huge, gigantic suspension of disbelief, what with time-traveling phone booths, and entire civilizations achieving world peace through rock-n-roll, plus several dozen minor plot points that you just kind of have to say, “Sure, why not.” But if you can get by that, it is just ninety minutes of good clean fun. Heck, minus a few dirty words here and there, this movie is tame enough that I wouldn’t feel weird about my young kids watching it. And if this movie doesn’t fill you with the urge to play air guitar, nothing will. But most of all (and this really is the mark of a truly great movie) this flick has a ton of quotable lines. I mean a ton.

‘Sixty-nine, dudes!’

I honestly don’t think anybody could make a Bill & Ted today. The closest they came to trying was that lame waste of life, Dude, Where’s My Car. It’s like Hollywood thinks that in order to make a movie about idiots, the movie itself has to be idiotic. Yet, Bill & Ted, for as “dumb” and improbable as the movie was, was actually quite witty and well thought out. And apart from the titular duo being abnormally stupid with ridiculous surfer accents, you never feel as though you’re watching one-dimensional stock characters. Compare that to Dude, Where’s My Car—which wasn’t so much a movie as it was a series of disconnected vignettes that only served to beat you over the head with the fact that these guys were idiots and nothing more.

‘Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.’

But let’s move on. What occurred to me tonight was how this movie really defines my generation. Or more accurately, one’s knowledge of this movie, or lack thereof, can tell you a lot about which generation they are a part of. And it all comes down to Keanu Reeves. Everybody from my generation cannot watch a Keanu Reeves movie without thinking, “Dude, that’s Ted jumping on that bus… That’s Ted talking to Dracula… That’s Ted learning kung fu.” If you come from a later generation, you simply replace all those declarations with, “Dude, that’s Neo in that vineyard.”

‘All we are is dust in the wind, dude.’

Something else that’s extra funny about this movie for me personally is George Carlin. I am a huge Carlin fan. I can quote every album I own verbatim, making the same use of his crotchety anger and numerous F-bombs. But here’s the thing, I first met ole George as Rufus in Bill & Ted. A couple years later I saw him hosting a comedy awards show and had no idea that he was this comedic legend. I simply thought, “Wow, that’s weird. Why would they have Rufus hosting a comedy show?” The first time I heard a George Carlin routine I thought, “Hey, that’s that guy from Bill & Ted sounding all angry at the world.” It’s all so ironic because, obviously, Carlin’s role as Rufus was the one role where he stepped out of character. But tonight, I had to laugh because for the longest time, I thought that was who George Carlin really was.

‘It seems to me that all you have learned is that Caesar is a salad dressing dude.’

There is one thing that makes me sad when I watch Bill & Ted. Alex Winter. For him, playing Bill S. Preston Esquire was really where he topped out. After making the sequel, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, he really didn’t do much. I checked out IMDB and the few post-Bill roles he did have were in movies or TV shows that I’ve never even heard of. It’s really too bad. Why did Keanu have life after Bill & Ted and not Alex? They both seemed evenly pitched in their roles as idiots. But somehow Keanu is the one who achieved longevity. Though, actually, I just did a Google search on Alex, and it looks as though he’s developed a new career behind the camera as a writer and director of films and appears to be doing very well for himself. So… good for you Alex.

‘Eat the pig! Eat the pig! Ziggy ziggy ziggy zig!’

But anyway, long story short, Bill & Ted… great movie. If you haven’t seen it, rent it. If you already own it, watch it again, because I’m sure it’s been awhile for you too. Watch it and remember that idiocy can be done smartly. And of course, above all…

‘Be excellent to each other… Party on, dudes!’