Days of Wonder had a new expansion for Ticket to Ride available at Essen this year – a combination of two new boards with an Asian theme. This box is the first (of hopefully many) Map Collections. In fact, the second map collection, containing maps related to India, should be available in the very near future.
The TtR:Asia Map Collection contains two maps. The first map has been designed by Alan R. Moon, the designer of the original Ticket to Ride game, and gives players a new way to play the game – in partnership!
Above, you see the board for the Team Asia variant. You will need to have a copy of the base Ticket to Ride game in order to provide you with most of the trains you need as well as the train cards. However, all the tickets used in this game are given in the expansion box. Continue reading
impressive, studded with the likes of Mr. Jack and Jamaica, but particularly relevant because Laget’s Mare Nostrum from 2003 is the inspiration for Mundus Novus. Much of that sprawling 2+ hour game has been stripped away, but what is left is the core card reallocation mechanism. This is a great foundation on which to base a game, but the problem is that there’s almost no game left in the overly streamlined and vacuous Mundus Novus.
found in the previously mentioned, hinted-to names of this ninja game. Your enjoyment of that style of game will definitely impact your opinion of this game. That said, after two plays, I would say this is a really clever implementation of the genre. The game pits guards of an imperial palace against two intruders: a traitor and a ninja. With two players, one plays the guards and one player plays the intruders. With three players, one plays the guards, one plays the traitor, and one plays the ninja. With the addition of a fourth player, the guards are split into two factions based on their colors and are controlled by two separate players. For first time players, fifteen minutes should be set aside for rules and clarifications. Once you have played, everything is very intuitive and you can get into the game very quickly.
Opinionated Gamers Roundtable: Is Crowdsourcing good for our hobby?
In a previous roundtable (on New Games), Jeff Allers brought up the current trend of “quantity over quality” that has been seen in the hobby over the past few years. To quote him:
The whole trend actually pushes both publishers and designers to emphasize quantity over quality. If someone wants to make a living from game design, they need to release lots of games (including variations of the same game for different markets), as most will only sell a few thousand copies before they are out of print. The solution? I think the bubble is destined to burst at some point. Most people will stop buying so many games (perhaps, it’s already begun), and publishers will either limit their new releases to 1 or 2 every year or they will go out of business. Competition among designers will grow, but that will also force all of us to work harder in distinguishing our games from our competitors rather than producing so many games that work well but feel similar to those already out there.
Jeff raises a good point that there is a lot of “quantity” going on right now. I think that this issue is being exacerbated by both the “mainstream” industry players as well as Kickstarter. For better or worse, Kickstarter lowers the financial barrier to publishing a game. There are a lot of games that would not exist in published form were it not for crowdsourced capital. Is that good? I think the jury is still out (at least in my mind) — crowdsourcing has definitely led to more games coming out, but what about the quality of those games? Will Kickstarter end up being a boon or a obstacle to those looking for good new games…
Thoughts?
Continue reading →
Share this:
Like this: