Ticket to Ride Europe

One of the most easiest and popular boardgame in every corner of the world is the Ticket to Ride series/family (Zug um Zug at Germany). You can play it with friends or play with against artificial intelligence of a phone, tablet or personal computer. But the real fun when you play it with your friends gathering around a big table.

If you not familiar with boardgames or you not like them, then you can still give a chance for the Ticket to Ride or the Ticket to Ride Europe. I have the Europe version of it, because it add a little more spice to the gameplay. I won't introduce all of the rules, I just wanted to tell about this game briefly.

The major components:

- 45pcs (+3 reserve) plastic trains in 5 colour

- 3pcs stations in 5 colour

- main destination cards

- regular destination cards

- a gameboard with a map on it

- lot of train cars

The goal:

You draw 1 main destination card and 3 shorter destination card in the begining of the game. You have to keep the main destination card and choose least 2 shorter destionation cards from the 3, and this will be your primary goal. You have to build train routes with the help of the train cards. Each route have a value. If you accomplish the building of a route between the to city indicated on the card you'll give the point. If you not, you will loose that amount. At the end of the game the most points win!

A round:

At your round you can do 4 things:

1. You can draw another 3 destination card and keep least 1.

2. You can build a road with the help of your traincard in your hand.

3. You can draw 2 train card blind from the deck or 2 from the 5 face-up ones from the table

4. You can build a station.

The last turn start, when somebody left only 2 or less plastic trains.

Summary:

The rules are quite easy, but the fun factor of this game is high. With this game you can easily know the major city of Europe (or USA at the original version), you can build long train routes and defeat your fellow players.

I highly recommended this game for casual and heavy gamers at well. I think this is my wife (at the right side of the picture) favourite boardgame.

Busy weekend with Formula One race

Friday my wife and me travelled to my parents and left there our children, because we were ahead a quite busy weekend. It was a pleasent ~250km long drive.

We spent the Saturday morning with cleaning and cooking some cakes for the Arkham Horror boardgame party. These preparation was exhausting, but luckily we just finished with everything just in time. The Arkham Horror boardgame party (with four of my twitter-friends) had took almost 5 hours long. It was a very interesting and exciting cooperative game, but unfortunatelly Cthulhu defeat us at the end. I enjoyed very much my first cooperative boardgame experince, with fighting against strange demonic monster in the dark city of Arkham. I think I want to get this game, but unfornatelly it's a little bit expensive.

Sunday morning I had to get up early (6 a.m.) because I got a ticket for the Hungarian Formula One race from a friend of my wife. Thank you Adrienn!

Saturday evening was a big storm, which only calmed down to the next morning. The rain still spat, so after I had fueled my car I went to buy a raincoat. The way to the race track wasn't as crowded as I expected. I was lucky and found parking place easily. When Adrienn and me arrived the rain stopped... and the hot and deadly ray of the sun started to roast us to red. Unfortunately the path from the gate to our seat was very muddy and slippery, so it wasn't easy to go up and down downs around the track.

We found our seats just in time, so we could enjoy the first race event of the day, the GP3 race with one Hungarian driver. He was on the 14th place on the starting grid, but thanks for the wet race track and the well-timed change of tires he finished at the podium, at the 3rd position. Unfortunately it was the most exciting race of the day...

To the second race, with GP2 drivers, the race track was almost dry, so the racers didn't have to change tires during the race. Due to this the number of overtaking dropped drasticly and we saw a boring race.

Before the main event, the Formula 1 race, we saw a so-called Porsche Supercup race too, but this was also eventless. That followed by the parade of Formula 1 drivers. They travelled a whole lap on the platform of a truck. They were waving to the crowd and answering the questions of the interviewer.

45-30 minutes before the race the drivers were trying the start procedure. I made a short video about it with my phone.

The Formula 1 race stated at 14.00. The sound of the engines were incredible. Especially at the start! Alas the race was boring, due to the special characteristic of the race track. As many drivers said, "the Hungaroring is very similar to Monaco, but without houses". There is no good place to overtakings. Furthermore Schumacher, my personal favourite driver had a very bad luck that day.

The feeling of a Formula 1 race is indescribable. The racers, the cars, the sound of engines, the crowd, everything...

The driving back to the city was a quite long. The mass of the cars moved slowly on the road, but we luckily arrived to the Arena, when the concert of Bryan Adams started . I met there with my wife, handed over to her to my ticket (our F1 tickets are valid for this event too) and the keys of our car, and I went to the station of the underground. Then a quick storm, with heavy rain arrived... I was soaked though in an instant moment. Yes, I was lame and left my raincoat and umbrella at the car.

These made my day complete and put into a frame: soaked, burned and soaked again. But I enjoyed this weekend very much, and I hope I'll have oportunity to repeat it again soon.

Discworld: Ankh-Morpork - The Boardgame

I love fantasy genre, I love humour, I like Terry Pratchett books as well, which take place in the strange Discworld. These elements led me to buy Discworld: Ankh-Morpork - The Boardgame by Martin Wallace.

Background story

Lord Vetinari left the city, so the lords of Ankh-Morpork want to get the rule over the capital of Discworld. Our aim to lead one of them to reach his aim, against the others. Is it looks quite simple? Well, it isn't. Ankh-Morpork is the city of chaos, where everyday strange things happens.

Components

The components are quite good, and we have a feeling we got quallity product from our money. The cardboard map is awesome! The artwork on the cards are funny amazing, the wooden pieces (minions and buildings) are good. I have a little problem with the wooden coins and the inner storey, but it doesn't matter.

About the game

It's a 1 hour, 2-4 player game with many confrontation, backstabing and - as I mentioned before - with many chaotic element. I don't want to write much about the setup of board and this game, just only every player gets 5 card and $10. After we have choosen a personality card secretly, we can start the game.

The goal depends on the personality card we choose: we have to control x area, we have to x minions on the  board, we have to x troublemarker on the board, we have to collect x amount of money or we have to let play until the last card of drawing deck.

During our turn we play out cards, then drawing back 5 hand of cards. The played cards determine our actions: we can place a minion, we can build a building (this add some kind of bonus to your turns), we can remove a trouble marker, we can kill a minion, we can get money from the bank, we can interrupt an action, we can play another card or we can play an event card. Playing out random event cards means you start something chaos over city of Ankh-Morpork, and with these cards you can ruin the strategy of others... or yours. This add a funny part to the whole game, but sometimes it can be annoying as well.

Conclusion

I think it is a good, funny game with quallity components. If you like backstabing the others, and if you haven't got any problem with a little luck base then maybe it is your game. The interesting world of Terry Pratchett's Discworld adds lot to this game. If you didn't read any books from him, it's no problem and if you read... then you can met many familiar character from the books. You can quickly learn to love it, if you don't take it too seriously!

(source of the pictures: bgg)