I recently tried two new boardgames, somehow similar: Takenoko and Ticket to Ride - Europe, and here's a brief review.
Takenoko
A panda, a farmer and the Emperor.
Performing actions (usually 2 per turn) like on placing terrain tiles or water channels, move the farmer (who grows the bamboo), and the Panda (who eats the bamboo), you've to achieve your missions which can be: arrange the terrain in peculiar ways, have a certain number of bamboo pieces on a certain number of tiles or have a certain number of bamboo pieces in your panda stomach.
The rules are quite simple, each player has a summary sheet with the actions available each turn, only some cards can be a bit confusing (no text on them, nor in the summary sheet - so totally language independent, once you know the basic rules). Every player plays his game, aiming towards his/her secret goals, given by the objective cards. The interactions between players is totally indirect: you manipulate the same terrain, panda and farmer using them for different things! At the beginning of the game this really hampers other players strategies, but later in the game the effect was far feebler.
The cons of the game is that beyond half the game, many new objective cards you draw (drawing objective cards is an action) can be easily achieved with few actions or later in the game with no actions at all, since you already find on the table the conditions you need to reclaim the goal of the objective card. An other cons of the objective cards: at the beginning of the game you draw three, and you can't change them in any way (you can draw more cards, but only when you've less than three cards in your hand).
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| Wonderful pre-painted miniatures included! |
Ticket to Ride - Europe
Choo, choo!
A game which does not need introduction. Confronting it with traditional Ticket to Ride, a beautiful new map (since I'm Italian I like Europe map more!), new objective cards, some little tackles here and there, greatly improve gameplay and re-playability.
Also TtR is a explained in less than 10 minutes: basically every player has to complete train routes in the middle of Europe. Also in this game, players are driven by objective cards which score you points if you complete the grand route depicted on it, obviously the longer the grand route, more rewarding the card. Interestingly enough, the cards reduce your final score by the same amounts of points if you don't complete them! Luckily you can choose the cards to keep, but once chosen you can't discard them. You can draw more, if you want (always need to keep at least one of the 3 drawn cards). The routes are completed by discarding from your hands the same amount of colored cards (e.g. green cards) of the segment one particular route is made of. Some cities have more and some fewer links between, so main competition is for taking the best routes before your opponents complete them.
There are a couple of additional rules for tunnels and ferries, but nothing complicated.
The game plays fast, the game ends when the first players end his construction block (i.e. the maximum extent his routes can extend). Then objective cards are revealed and points scored. Very difficult to predict the result of the other players before the end of the game, and this adds tension (in a positive way) to TtR. Totally recommended for people looking for a simple but competitive game!
