Today we're going to take a look at the award winning game Ticket To Ride! If you haven't heard of it (which if you haven't, WHAT?!?) Ticket To Ride has you collecting train cars of various types to try and claim railways routes, complete ticket destinations, and to try and have the longest contiguous route. You can learn more about it here.
Why are we looking at TTR today? Because of the 10th Anniversary Edition! It has already gotten to several people in Europe and should be coming to the doors of those who preordered it in the U.S.A. soon. Today I wanted to sit down and see how they changed up the rulebook for this massive special edition and if they fixed some issues the previous rulebook had as well. Is the 10th Anniversary Edition up to par? Here is the original rulebook, and here is the newer rulebook. Pull up those PDFs, All aboard? Let's get started!
Why are we looking at TTR today? Because of the 10th Anniversary Edition! It has already gotten to several people in Europe and should be coming to the doors of those who preordered it in the U.S.A. soon. Today I wanted to sit down and see how they changed up the rulebook for this massive special edition and if they fixed some issues the previous rulebook had as well. Is the 10th Anniversary Edition up to par? Here is the original rulebook, and here is the newer rulebook. Pull up those PDFs, All aboard? Let's get started!
The first major change that's easy to notice is the number of pages, cut down by a two whole pages! How did they do this? The page has been widened up a bit and instead of having the rules listed straight down in a line they used columns to get the information into a more compact space.
We always appreciate shorter rulebooks here when they look good, and boy does this rulebook look good! There are more pictures in the instructions (always a plus), the setup picture isn't spread across two pages so it looks a lot better, and while this isn't quite rulebook related, they show off those new components well! Plus everything has a nice crisp visual update to really make it look like you've bought something special.
We always appreciate shorter rulebooks here when they look good, and boy does this rulebook look good! There are more pictures in the instructions (always a plus), the setup picture isn't spread across two pages so it looks a lot better, and while this isn't quite rulebook related, they show off those new components well! Plus everything has a nice crisp visual update to really make it look like you've bought something special.
Now that I've given out some praise, let's get a bit more critical. On of the most commonly confused rules in the original TTR involved locomotives: "If, after having drawn one card the replacement card is a Locomotive, the player cannot take it. If at any time, three of the five face-up cards are Locomotives, all five cards are immediately discarded and five new ones are turned face-up to replace them.
Note: If a player is lucky enough to get a Locomotive from the top of the deck in a blind draw, it stills counts as a single card and he may still draw a total of two cards that turn."
I can think of quite a few better ways to explain that rule, did they make the newest edition better? Not really no. While it adds if three locomotive cards are face up you replace the face up cards (something not in the original rulebook) they didn't make the explanation any easier. "A face up locomotive card counts as two cards when drawing." would have sufficed, so I'm disappointed that they didn't fix this up.
But this isn't the worst offender. If Susan had the rate this game on the Susan Rating Scale, it would get Two Curls Down.
You might be extremely surprised, surely an amazing company like Days of Wonder would produce a fantastic rulebook for it's biggest game on it's 10th anniversary, and I gave it so much praise before. What did it miss?
The 10th Anniversary Edition comes with something special, the cards from the 1910 Expansion of the original game, something else to pack in even more awesome for the special edition. This expansion included several variants, extra ticket cards, and a special globetrotter card among other things. The newest rulebook doesn't mention anything about how those cards are supposed to be used AT ALL and on top of that it doesn't at least include some sort of link to an explanation of them. even worse they are glossed over in the components section too.
This is a HORRIBLE oversight on the rulebook. Those who haven't played with the expansion before will have no idea what to do with the extra cards and will be forced to go online to even have a clue. If you want to make this even worse, the only rules for the expansion offered up on the Days of Wonder website are in Italian so even if you think to check out the website you hit another dead end. So in all honesty, the game isn't actually playable with the rules included out of the box. For the 10th Anniversary Edition of such a prolific title this is inexcusable. It really does go to show that no matter how big you are or how long you've been working on a title, get a rules editor.
Did any readers pre-order the game ? What do you think of the new rulers? Let us know below! Until next time: Every Game Deserves A Good Rulebook
Note: If a player is lucky enough to get a Locomotive from the top of the deck in a blind draw, it stills counts as a single card and he may still draw a total of two cards that turn."
I can think of quite a few better ways to explain that rule, did they make the newest edition better? Not really no. While it adds if three locomotive cards are face up you replace the face up cards (something not in the original rulebook) they didn't make the explanation any easier. "A face up locomotive card counts as two cards when drawing." would have sufficed, so I'm disappointed that they didn't fix this up.
But this isn't the worst offender. If Susan had the rate this game on the Susan Rating Scale, it would get Two Curls Down.
You might be extremely surprised, surely an amazing company like Days of Wonder would produce a fantastic rulebook for it's biggest game on it's 10th anniversary, and I gave it so much praise before. What did it miss?
The 10th Anniversary Edition comes with something special, the cards from the 1910 Expansion of the original game, something else to pack in even more awesome for the special edition. This expansion included several variants, extra ticket cards, and a special globetrotter card among other things. The newest rulebook doesn't mention anything about how those cards are supposed to be used AT ALL and on top of that it doesn't at least include some sort of link to an explanation of them. even worse they are glossed over in the components section too.
This is a HORRIBLE oversight on the rulebook. Those who haven't played with the expansion before will have no idea what to do with the extra cards and will be forced to go online to even have a clue. If you want to make this even worse, the only rules for the expansion offered up on the Days of Wonder website are in Italian so even if you think to check out the website you hit another dead end. So in all honesty, the game isn't actually playable with the rules included out of the box. For the 10th Anniversary Edition of such a prolific title this is inexcusable. It really does go to show that no matter how big you are or how long you've been working on a title, get a rules editor.
Did any readers pre-order the game ? What do you think of the new rulers? Let us know below! Until next time: Every Game Deserves A Good Rulebook