Ticket to Orange Trains

After a great day of board gaming, dinner at Buca di Beppo, and then a pirate move with the gang (In this case, Tim, Mike, Mason, Katiya, Weronika, Matt, Gary, Patty, Lorian and myself), we came back to my place and started up a game of Ticket to Ride. This time we played the correct way - previously there was some confusion about what people could do in a turn, with our interpretation that one had to draw, play a route (if they chose), draw route cards, and then move a passenger if they chose, all in the same turn. This really caused the game to slow down. The correct way is that you have to choose one of those four things to do. This fixes my one complaint about the game - it now moves quickly, the only slight pauses were when someone had to figure out which route cards to keep, as it usually took a while to figure out the names and locations. Very fun, and a lot less susceptible to the graph theoretic approaches we saw in the first game, as the connectivity changes were much more prominent due to hoarding of cards and then rushes to claim critical routes. Gary won with an excellent job of using passengers and completing a ton of short routes, with Tim a close second with a ton of long and improbable but high-scoring routes. Patty was third, with a respectable 100+ score, and I managed a 48, ending up being lapped by Gary and nearly by Tim. I blame this all on the lack of orange trains in my hand, ever - I needed a single connection of 3 orange trains at the end (along with a 2 connection I easily had the cards for) and 30 points of failed routes in my hand would have been made, at least bringing my score up into the 100+ range. Oh well :) It was a good game, and actually played pretty close to the 30-60m time listed on the box, unlike our first play.