Random Babblings

So the weekend comes and I finally get to sit down with TtR:Marklin.

As per usual, Lisa and I had Todd and Rosanna over for an evening of gaming. Since I had acquired a few new games I was eager to try them out.

Every one at the table had previously played a TtR game, so after a brief explanations of what made this different we were off.

The first thing that struck me is that you really shouldn’t do a free for all on the ticket selection. In the previous games you would deal out the appropriate tickets and people would return them pretty randomly. In this game I could see that what the players who are going before you keep in view of Long vs. Short will not just impact what tickets you would keep, but perhaps what tickets you would draw. I realized the first half of this as we were started, but am onl thinking about the second half now.

So Todd drew 3S/1L and the rest of us, Lisa, Rosanna, and myself respectively, took 2S/2L. Ironically we all seemed to keep 2S/1L. So play got underway. The great card hoards started to accumulate, with the typical contention for colors even if people were headed to different parts of the board. I realized a “problem” though with the face ups. We often have situations where people don’t like the cards available and they stagnate as people draw from the deck. This is usually caused by a combination of Locos and one other color. Marklin seems to exacerbate this problem with Locos, 4+Locos, and Passengers.

So, play progressed and some routes started to get claimed, and it seemed that 3 of us were building around Duseldorf. This caused a quick block out when the 3 of us built on the 3 wide 1 train, and then only two of us filled in the 2 wide 1 train, blocking out Rosanna. After a little bit of fussing she started working around the situation.

Meanwhile I had two tickets which worked to create an overall run of Duseldorf to Berlin. Having placed my passenger in Duseldorf I ran the first passenger of the evening along that route. This kinda put a shock into the other players who hadn’t expected passengers so early.

Play continued and I finished off my southerly W-E route. Meanwhile I had placed another passenger in the SE corner, and picked up a few passenger cards. After completing my third ticket, I worked a few more single train routes to get closer to Duseldorf. Hoping that no one else ran a few more passengers. The with judicious use of passenger cards, I ran my second passenger from Regensburg to Duseldorf and back to Berlin. Needless to say the others were not happy with me.

By this time the game was winding down to a close, people taking a few extra tickets, and scrambling to make those last connections. Rosanna started the last round, leaving Lisa in the lurch for one last connection.

Scores were tallied and I came out on top. Lisa was not far behind and would have overtaken me with that last ticket. Todd and Rosanna maintained a respectable 3rd and 4th w/o too large of a gap like has been noted elsewhere.