Ticket to Ride vs Blood Rage

If you're gonna choose train cards, you can either pick two from the cards that are revealed or two random ones. It's not all luck of the draw because...

Blood Rage is more a game of card drafting, clever warrior placement/movement, and misleading your opponents about your intentions. That's not to say that the cool Viking theme doesn't come through, because it absolutely does. I usually think that the Viking theme is a bit overdone, especially in board games, but it works here because Blood Rage is more about wanton death and widespread destruction than it is about bearded dudes in longboats fighting trolls. The rules of this game have just the right amount of complexity to them

We have to clean each one individually with Windex and wipe each of them individually, then let each one sit out individually to dry. This sort of takes care of the dirt and stickiness, but the lamination should be better, especially how everything else keeps clean. We haven't needed to clean them again since the one time. It would be nice if the cards were larger, too

However, don't necessarily listen to me, because most of the people I game with prefer Blood Rage. And I have to admit that Blood Rage has a lot of things going for it. First of all, the rules are very simple, and it doesn't pull that card game trick where the complicated rules are embedded in the core cards. It's not hard to teach this game; it takes about fifteen minutes to explain to a bunch of relatively experienced board gamers, or twice that for more casual players

Theme Well, several off-shoots from Ticket to Ride have come. Not to mention an expansions for the original game that adds several smaller routes. So there is evidence that the theme can be slanted, but in Ticket To Ride Europe, game play is the same with some twists, like you can use someone else’s route for your destination’s sake without getting points for the route, and you route requiring tunneling through mountains are more pricey. These off-shoot stand alone games are a good way for Days of Wonder to charge full price for what could have been a less expensive expansion to the existing game

According to legend, do slain warriors return from Valhalla to fight again as mortals? I don't know, but they do in this game. The cards offer the best incorporation of the theme. Thor cards grant benefits for winning battles, Loki grants benefits for losing them, etc. It would have been just as good with alien races or mech-fighters

Fun game to play. Easy game to teach the kids to play with the adults. Gets kids knowing where major cities are and how to pronounce them.

I can send a guy back. The next action is simply questing and anytime. You want to quest you'd, simply take one of these cards and you put it facedown...

I am of the opinion that some of these modern classics, (**Small World, Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Dominion, Catan,** etc...**)** are still worth playing today

That was sometimes broken up by your workers being captured and sold. God forbid someone do something crazy like build or contribute to the chapel.

The setup and play are very hard to understand. Outside of a neat box and concept, this is probably one to stay away from..

This is tough without knowing more about your preferences, budget, play group, etc. Which of those games gets played the least/most? Have you rated them all on BGG or something?

i thought I was disproportionately bummed about it but then we babysat and our friends daughters also commented that their favorite part about the game was the cards and that the smaller size and simpler design was an outrage. So I felt validated. I would happily pay more for those magnificent cards or collectors editions with special art. I did order the extension set which had better cards but still feel that the game should have come with the original, magnificent cards

It has an interesting bidding mechanism for combat that felt fresh to me and created a lot of excitement. I personally thought it felt a bit deeper than Blood Rage or Cyclades, in that the strategies were a bit less obvious.

There's something about the texture and weight of plastic pieces that makes them vastly inferior to their wooden counterparts. If Ticket to Ride came with wooden trains, I think my enjoyment of it would increase tenfold.

All these games accomplish what a heavy euro should: giving a huge, varied, interesting decision space with a thousand ways to play the game.

It is not a quick game, so plan to spend at least an hour to play, depending on how many players you have (and how quickly they make decisions). If you play often, consider purchasing the expansion pack! Highly recommended.

**Blood Rage** (5p) - We made a few rules goofs and the game dragged a bit, but I'd still be interested in trying it again. I liked the engine building take on area control, but it was a bit too chaotic for my tastes. **C+**

If I were to nitpick, I would definitely say the cards are oddly small and thus can be hard to shuffle and handle- especially at the start of each game, when you'll end up spending 15 minutes just trying to mix them up as much as possible. But it's a small price to pay for such a fun game. Overall, Ticket to Ride has quickly become a family favorite, and it is definitely one I'd highly recommend! A 5 out of 5!

* I hate mini cards. I know this is another quibble. Everything in this game so so nice and sleek, except for the card size. A lot of games use mini cards, and they annoy me