My Love Affair With Train Games

Long-term readers may remember my heretical article where I mentioned that I didn't like Ticket to Ride, nor train games in general. So my love affair with train games is somewhat like my love affair with my ex-wife, except she had the good grace to leave me. (I sound like an Australian liberal DW Tripp, don't I?) Let's just say that although we're on speaking terms, relationships between train games and I are strained.

That is not to say I'm no good at them. The last time I played Ticket to Ride: Europe, I won. The last time I played Ticket to Ride I played the "ignore tickets buy long routes" strategy and came second. The time I played Union Pacific I won. Then I discovered that I don't mind Metro at all, and after losing my first game I won the second. (But I don't think Metro is really a train game.)

Over the Christmas-New Year period I played a few more train games, mostly as part of the BGG Top 50 project. The first was Railroad Tycoon. Despite advice from generalpf to go northeast, my tycoon card said I should become the rail baron of Chicago. So I did that. Because I wasn't stressed about winning I managed to get by with only one share for the entire game, and my 8 points for routes out of Chicago and my 6 point advantage for having no shares just got me the win.

Later on it was time to play Ticket to Ride: Marklin. I don't know why, but I didn't mind this one so much. I definitely liked the 4+ wilds - they seem to make it a bit easier to get the cards you need for a long route. I didn't mind the passenger mechanic, although I often complain about that sort of thing feeling tacked on. And I did like the proper sized cards. I won this one as well, for no obvious reason.

That same night we played Metro again, and I played nasty and was unstoppable and won easily. Much later that night, we played it again, and several people took it upon themselves to prevent me from winning for a third time in a row. All good things must come to an end.

The big black cloud on the horizon is Age of Steam, which I haven't played yet but is ranked #10 at BoardGameGeek. It looks really serious. And long and boring. I don't much want to play it. I'll probably win.