boardgaming in photos: Ticket To Ride Nordic Countries, Ticket to Ride Marklin, Traumfabrik (Dream Factory)

5 Dec 2020. Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries is for  2 or 3 players only. It was first published in 2007, and over the years it has been kept in print. I guess it continues to be popular. Or maybe it's the whole series that's popular, thus helping every variant and expansion. Elder daughter Shee Yun is not so keen about boardgames nowadays, but younger daughter Chen Rui is usually willing to play. So we brought this out for a spin when there was only three of us. The player colours in this variant game is unusual - black, white and purple. I told Chen Rui this game features Santa Claus - that guy on the box cover. 

Christmas is coming, and this game has much Christmas atmosphere. 

This is a standalone, complete game. You don't need to use components from the base game. On all the train cards you get snow, which is nice. In Nordic Countries, jokers (locomotives) can only be used on tunnel routes or ferry routes. You can't use them on normal routes. Because of this, when taking a face-up joker you are not considered to have taken two train cards. 

All the main cities are in the south. When we started our game, all of us needed access to some of these main cities, so we were a little nervous about getting blocked. 

I (white) had initially planned to head north via a coastal path along the Atlantic Ocean. However my way was blocked by Michelle (purple) so I had to switch to the other path along the Baltic Sea. Chen Rui (black) took the same path to head north, which made me bite my nails. We might get into each other's ways. 

On that middle path Chen Rui (black) and I (white) had claimed different stretches because we didn't want to get blocked. We tried to claim routes as quickly as we could, lest the other was collecting the same colours and aiming for the same routes. Claiming routes in such a matter is dangerous. All these disjointed stretches can be easily blocked and cut off. 

One special element about this map is that 9-train grey route at the top left. It is worth 27 points! This is a regular route, which means you can't use jokers. However there is a special rule allowing you to treat any four cards as one card of any colour you want. When we played, Chen Rui contemplated claiming this route. Unfortunately by the time the game ended, she didn't manage to do it. Two turns before the game ended, if she had claimed one of the face-up green trains, by her final turn she would have enough green trains and other train cards to claim this 9-train route. Unfortunately on that crucial second last turn she chose to draw cards blind from the deck, and she didn't manage to get any useful cards. Had she chosen differently, she would have won the game, beating me by 1 point. 

6 Dec 2020. Traumfabrik is a Reiner Knizia design first published in 2000. The first version was in German, and the setting was movie-making from the 1930's to the 1950's. Since then the game has been reprinted in different versions, including an English version Hollywood Blockbuster. The English version used more modern movies, directors, actors and actresses, but in order to avoid legal issues, all the names were tweaked, and cartoonish caricatures were used instead of proper portraits or photos. I didn't like that. Between Traumfabrik going out of print and the publication of the second version, a fan created this version above using movies circa the 1990's. I liked this and could relate to these movies much better than the original, so I downloaded the files and made my own copy. 

The game is played over four rounds, and each round has eight auctions, in which you bid for various movie industry professionals in order to make movies. You bid for directors, actors and actresses, cameramen, special effect experts and musicians. Different screenplays require different combinations of professionals to complete. 

The game has a closed economy. If you win a set of tiles (professionals), the money you pay is divided equally among the other players. So the money only flows between the players, none coming in and none leaving the system. The fourth and eighth auctions of a round are handled differently. These auctions are called parties. As many tiles as the number of players are drawn, and you take turns claiming one tile for free. The turn order is determined by the total star power of actors (and actresses) you have recruited. So there is good reason to recruit many actors. First pick is always desirable. It is more likely you'll get something you need, or something of better quality. 

I had the honour of producing Lord of the Rings and I managed to get Peter Jackson to direct it! In this game it is not often that things turn out like in real life. Lord of the Rings had 18 stars, which meant at game end it would score 18 points. It became the best movie when it was released, and remained so until the end of the game. It helped me win two best movie awards (5 points each) for Rounds 2 and 3. In Round 4, there was no overall best movie award. Instead it was broken down into categories - best drama, best adventure and best comedy. Lord of the Rings won best adventure. 

Austin Powers being directed by Ang Lee was rather questionable I admit...

These were Chen Rui's movies. She had just completed Titanic. That day we had just joked about that "draw me like one of your French girls" scene, and she had complained about that huge floating door scene. By the end of the game, she managed to complete all three of her initial movies and also all those she drew during the course of the game. Not a single one wasted. She also had the most star power throughout the game and always had first pick at parties. She won the game. Although she did not make the best movie ever, the average quality of her movies was high. 

That clapboard on the right is the start player marker. 

These were my movies. Lord of the Rings was respectable, but the others were so-so. I didn't manage to complete Chicago (leftmost). If I had managed it, I might have won. 

The Marklin edition of Ticket to Ride was a collaboration with Marklin, a model train company. Every train card in the game features a different model train locomotive or carriage. All of them are gorgeous. The most unique part of this version is the passengers. Every player has three passengers, and throughout the game you have three opportunities to score points using your passengers. During game setup, you place victory point chips on every city on the board. Some cities only get one chip, some get multiple chips of different values. During play, when you claim a route between two cities, you may place one passenger at one of these cities. On your turn, you get one more option - to move your passenger and claim one victory point chip from every city he visits. Normally he can only use your train tracks, but for each passenger card you spend, he can use one track of another player. The tension in the passenger element of the game is between spending time to build long paths so that your passengers can collect more chips, and using your passengers earlier than other players so that you get to claim the higher valued chips and claim more chips before your opponents snatch them up.   

All score markers have an M on them, for Marklin, but I always associate that M with M&M chocolate. The player colours in this game are different from standard Ticket to Ride - black, white, red, yellow and purple. 

The train cards are absolutely stunning. The card at the top left is a passenger card. That joker (locomotive) at the bottom right is a special type of joker which can only be used for routes of length 4 or more. When you claim such a joker from the face-up pool, you are not considered to have claimed two cards. I think that's a good deal! 

In the early game, Michelle (red) and Chen Rui (black) developed their tracks in the west (bottom of the photo), and things looked precarious for them as they seemed to be overlapping a lot. Shee Yun (yellow) and I (white) developed our networks along the central north-south path. Shee Yun was rather unlucky in this game, and kept getting blocked by either Michelle or me. It wasn't intentional. We did need those routes which she had intended to claim. Michelle started using her passengers early and collected many chips. 

Towards late game we expanded towards the eastern (top of the photo) part of the map. Chen Rui (black) extended her network to Berlin mainly because she wanted to get those high valued chips there. She eventually claimed a 7VP and a 6VP chip from Berlin, using two separate passenger runs. When we did end-game scoring, she did well in chips despite not having many of them. 

boardgaming in photos: Agricola, Love Letter, Forbidden Island

28 Nov 2020. My wife Michelle and I used to play a lot of Agricola. At the time our children were still very young. We would wait till they were asleep, and sneak to the study to play on the floor. We played swiftly. I bought the Gamer Deck expansion, which contains many Occupation and Minor Improvement cards. I still have not played with all of them. I also bought the major expansion Farmers of the Moor. We did play that a few times. Now that we were revisiting Agricola, we left out the Moor expansion first to allow us to ease back in gently. 

Despite a long time away from the game, we were still able to play quickly. We easily grasped the tempo again. In this particular game, my Minor Improvements were not very exciting, but I had a great set of Occupations. The most useful one was the Wet Nurse. When I built two new rooms at once, I immediately had two babies. For a few rounds I had 4 family members while Michelle still had only two to work with. That made a huge difference. 

I eventually expanded my home to five rooms. At this point I was still living in a wooden house, but later on I managed to upgrade to a clay house. I had hoped to upgrade to a stone house, but I didn't have enough time to do so. Michelle managed that and scored handsomely for her stone house. 

These in the top row were my Occupations. The first one, the Tutor, gave me 1VP per subsequently played Occupation. Since I had many good Occupations, having him was a godsend. I had planned to play many Occupations anyhow, so playing him first was a great bonus. At the rightmost, the Field Watchman and the Sower helped me with growing grain and growing vegetables respectively. Because of them, I fared well in both areas. 

29 Nov 2020. Even when Love Letter was all the rage, I didn't intend to try it, because how much fun could a tiny 16-card game be? It was because of this lovely fan-made Adventure Time version that I downloaded the files and made my own copy to play. I promptly fell in love with the game. I am thankful that I did not miss this work of genius. 

I did 4-player games with my family. My children are familiar with the game but Michelle is not very familiar with it. Sometimes elder daughter Shee Yun would deduce that someone was likely holding a certain card, and she would get it right, and Michelle would be flabbergasted. I teased Shee Yun for being Sherlock, and then said to Michelle, "It's elementary, Watson", before explaining how Shee Yun worked that out. 

Finn and Jake are best friends. You can use Jake to peek at the card of an opponent, and then on your next turn use Finn to guess his card and thus eliminate him. Technically you are no longer guessing because you've already seen his card. Your opponent will be forced to hurriedly play whatever card he is holding, because if he doesn't you will eliminate him next turn. 

Getting the Princess card early is bad. You can't play her because that eliminates you. So you will be forced to play whatever other card you draw on your turn. You don't have a choice. The Princess is only good if you get her near the end of the round, because it is the highest valued card. In this particular round, I drew both the LSP cards. LSP protects you from all attacks, until the start of your next turn. It was handy having LSP protecting my Princess. With 4 players, two turns would already be half a game round. 

I always play to 3 points, regardless of the number of players. I think playing longer than that makes the game outstay its welcome. Normally with 4 players you play to 4 points. With fewer than four, you need to score even more points to win. In this particular game, all four of us reached 2 points! The next game round would be the grand finale. That was exciting! 

Later on we had one game when Chen Rui won three game rounds straight without anyone else scoring a single point. That was the other extreme. 

In one particular game round Michelle played four Finns! As we played, we developed one theory. If a person plays Finn early, his other card is likely also Finn. It is not a good idea to play Finn early because there is little information available. So a person wouldn't want to play Finn unless he has no choice, e.g. both his cards being Finns. It is also possible his other card is Princess Bubblegum, which he can't play.  

Forbidden Island. Younger daughter Chen Rui remembers this as being a stressful and difficult game. We played with three players - Chen Rui, Michelle and I. We played at normal difficulty level. It turned out to be easier than she expected and we won without too much trouble. 

Location tiles showing the monochrome blue side are flooded. If they get flooded again they will disappear forever - removed from the game. When in the flooded state, it is still possible to save them. Just perform the shore-up action to flip them back to the dry side (multi-coloured). 

Sunk tiles sometimes break the island up and thus disconnect paths. When this happens, you will be forced to rely on special action cards or special abilities to move across the straits. It doesn't necessarily doom you, but it will make life more difficult. In our game, the helipad was at the top left, and we did our best to prevent it from getting cut off. Once we retrieved all four treasures we would need to head in that direction, get on the helicopter, and get off the island.  

Location tiles on the edges and out of the way may not seem important, but it is still useful to save them and keep the island intact as long as possible. This buys you time somewhat.   

We played a second game, this time at hard difficulty level. Things didn't go so well this time. The timing of our card draw was poor. We were forced to sacrifice green cards so that we could collect enough cards of another colour to retrieve the treasure of that colour, before we returned to collect green cards again. It took too much time and we couldn't get that last treasure before the whole island disappeared beneath the waves, sending us all to the bottom of the ocean. 

Hansa

 

The Game

Hansa is an old game, published by Uberplay in 2004. Uberplay no longer exists, but back in the day it released quite a few decent games, including China, my favourite incarnation of Michael Schacht's Web of Power. Hansa is also a Michael Schacht design, with a very 90's and 00's style. Simple mechanisms, yet having plenty of tactical decisions and much player interaction. 

A game set up for 4 players. 

After seeding the board with initial goods discs, the rest of them are organised into five face-down stacks. Goods on the board will be claimed by players. They are worth points. As they get depleted, players can decide to replenish from these stacks. Once you touch the 5th stack, the game will end after the current round. 

The merchant ship starts in Copenhagen. You are all merchants aboard this same ship. On your turn, you play captain and decides where the ship will go and how many cities it will visit. You can decide to stay put too. The ship must follow the paths on the board. At some cities, you have two or three options. At others, like Kalmar on the right side of this photo, there is only one outgoing route. 

At each city, including the city you are in at the start of your turn, you may perform at most one action. There are three action types. The first one is simply to buy a goods disc. You just take one from the city. If one player has the most market stalls, you pay $1 to him, else you pay $1 to the bank. If you are the one with the most market stalls, you pay yourself $1, which means the goods disc is free. 

The second action type is to sell goods. To do so, you must have at least two goods discs of the same colour. You may sell discs in two or more colours, but for each colour you must have at least two discs. To sell, you must also have a market stall (those small wooden discs in the cities in player colours), because the selling action consumes a market stall. The action of selling simply flips your goods discs face-down. It increases their victory point values. At game end, a face-up goods disc is worth 1VP, but a face-down goods disc is worth the number of barrels plus 1. So a 3-barrel goods disc will be worth 4VP. 

One important impact of selling goods is you may force other players to lose goods discs. If the colour you sell in is being collected by others, they must lose one goods disc of that colour. This can be painful. When you collect goods discs, you must watch out for signs of danger. 

The third action type is to set up market stalls (those discs in player colours). You discard a goods disc to gain as many market stalls as the number of barrels on the disc. 

When the game ends, you score victory points for only two things - your goods discs, and your market stall presence. At every city where you have market stalls, you gain 2VP. If you are the only player with market stalls in a city, you score 4VP instead of 2VP. 

The goods discs come in 6 colours. With fewer players, you use fewer colours. 

Replenishing the board is a decision you have to make at the start of your turn. If you decide to replenish, you must do it for all empty spaces on the board. The cost is $1. 

The Play

Hansa is not new to me. I wasn't blogging yet when I first played it, so I have never written about it. Most of the game is quite tactical (i.e. short-term). You can't really plan too far ahead. You just analyse the board situation and make the most of it. You must consider the board situation you will leave for the next player. You don't want to leave too good a situation for him. You have to watch what your opponents are trying to do. 

Setting up market stalls is the strategic, i.e. longer-term consideration, part of the game. You want to spread out a little, so that you won't get into a situation where it's hard to get things done. If you lack market stalls in a certain section of the board, and you keep finding the ship there on your turn, you will have a tougher time selling goods, and you won't enjoy those free goods or those $1 payments from other players. Setting up market stalls is board positioning that you have to plan for. 

I played a full 4-player game with my family. The rules are simple and there is not a lot to explain. You have to really sit down to play to get a better feel of how the actions relate to one another. 

Even though we were careful in watching what colours others were collecting, we still got into situations where we were forced to discard discs because others were selling goods in our colours. In the early game everyone tried to sell as efficiently as possible. Only after the first few rounds we started realising the importance of setting up market stalls. They provided longer-term and ongoing benefits. Selling goods consumed market stalls, so we needed to create more market stalls. 

The Thoughts

Hansa reminds me of snooker. You are not just trying to do what's best for yourself on your turn. You must also create the worst possible situation for the next player. Send the ship to some corner where he has no market stalls, or where there are no goods to pick up anymore. Force him to spend money to replenish. He might get lucky and draw a goods disc that he wants, but it's usually worth trying. You can also send him to cities with goods he doesn't want. Every player should try to screw the next player. This is that kind of game.   

It feels good to revisit this very 90's / 00's German game. Minimalistic yet clever. 

boardgaming in photos: Russian Railroads, Patchwork, Star Realms, scorekeeper app

6 Nov 2020. Allen, Han and I played Russian Railroads on boardgamearena.com. This is the main board. This is a worker placement game where you are going to develop your own player board to try to score as many points as possible. Scoring is done every round, so you want to build a strong scoring engine quickly, and keep improving it. In our game, two actions became almost automatic - claiming $2 and claiming 2 temporary (blue) workers. These action spaces are at the top right of the screenshot. Money can be used as workers, but workers cannot be used as money. Some action spaces specifically require money. Using a worker to claim $2 is almost a no-brainer because you are converting 1 worker to 2 flexible workers. Similarly it is almost always a good idea to convert 1 worker to 2 blue workers. The only time you don't want to do these first is when there is some other space which happens to be critical to you at that moment.

I wasn't very comfortable with the emergence of such automatic actions, because they felt scripted. It was almost like the game dictating what I should do, and not me making the decisions. "Don't tell me what to do!" Being the rebel, I avoided such prescribed actions. And the result was I simply lost out on these advantages. This was basic maths and my hipster mentality made me ignore it, which was a stupid thing to do. Allen and Han had no such inhibitions. The same thing happened when we played The Voyages of Marco Polo. They always grabbed the black dice, but I wanted to be different and picked something else, to my own detriment. Why do I do this to myself? 

This was my player board. I decided early to focus on industrialisation, i.e. the purple track at the bottom. The track was broken and I had to build factories to link up the segments, to allow my purple industrialisation token to progress. I had one factory tile now. 

The BoardGameArena interface allowed us to easily see everyone's progress. Player boards are divided into four parts, three railroad routes and one industrialisation path. On the railroad routes, the circles in the player colours indicate how far their trains can travel, while the thick black / grey / brown / etc lines indicate how far the tracks of these qualities have been laid. On the industrialisation paths, players' progress is indicated by the thick purple lines. 

I had now built five factories, thus fully connecting my industrialisation path. My industrialisation marker had now reached the end of the path, giving me the maximum possible points per round. Among the three train routes, I only worked on the first, and completely neglected the other two. On the first train route, my black tracks had reached the end, triggering the ability to build white tracks. White tracks are the highest grade tracks. Industrialisation was my main focus, and scoring points from tracks was my second. I had been working towards building white tracks. Along the top I had five x2 markers, which doubled the points I received from my tracks. 

I just realised one thing. I had neglected to improve my trains, and that stopped me from scoring more points from my tracks. On the first train route my total train level was 4, which meant I could only score up to position 4. My tracks from position 5 onwards scored nothing. I had forgotten about that and I had assumed tracks would score points regardless of train level. Scoring was done by the computer and we didn't have to manually count. I didn't realise my oversight throughout the game! 

This was Han's player board. One thing which Han and Allen did differently from me was they recruited engineers - those tiles at the top right. Game setup for Russian Railroads is mostly fixed, and engineers are one of the few variables. While on the main board, they provide additional worker placement spots. Every round, one of them is available to be recruited. If you recruit him (or her), you get a private worker placement spot. Usually the engineer spots give a better-than-average benefit. You also score points for having more engineers than others. I never won any engineer because I was always short on cash. You need cold hard cash to grab engineers. 

On his first train route, Han's trains were of levels 8 and 7, so he could now reach the end of the route, position 15. Some benefits to be picked up along the train routes require not only the tracks reaching them but also the trains being able to reach them. 

This was Allen's player board. His first focus was the third train route, followed by the second. On the third train route, he built his grey-grade tracks to the fifth spot as quickly as he could, and that gave him 30 points per round! In Russian Railroads, scoring is done every round. If you can build a strong scoring engine early, it will help tremendously. 

By the end of the game Allen beat us 445 to 269 and 263! An absolute slaughter. I notice one problem with how I play. I tend to like to make plans, and then I am obsessed with sticking to them. It is good to have a plan and to make sure your actions are aligned. It does make your game more focused and efficient. However sometimes being too fixated on executing the plan is bad. In this particular game, I set out to work on industrialisation and track building in the first train route. Near game end, I realised two things. Firstly, I could do most of what I had planned to do with some actions and some time to spare, and secondly, what I had planned was not quite sufficient to win. I became a little lost because I didn't really have a plan B. I was inflexible and did not adapt well. It was a little too late by the time I realised it. I should have been more watchful and I should have adjusted my strategy earlier. I was playing this too much in a multiplayer solitaire manner. 

22 Nov 2020. I booted up Patchwork on my iPad. I played against the strongest AI, and lost spectacularly. That's good. A challenge keeps you coming back. You can see on the right side that the AI had won four of the 1x1 cloth pieces. On my side, I had only won one of them. 

26 Nov 2020. I skipped to the most recent challenges in Star Realms, because I wanted to play with the new cards and new game mechanisms. These challenges have some weird rules too, e.g. in some cases I can only buy cards on the left, while the AI can only buy cards on the right. Sometimes I only get to buy cards of specific factions. That helps in creating focus and triggering more ally abilities, which is fun. In this screenshot above, those two bases on the right can only be purchased by me and not by the AI. 

One thing that surprised me a little was these newer challenges seem quite easy to beat. I completed many of them on the first try, unlike the earlier challenges. It was fun to play with the new cards, but the challenge was not quite there. In this screenshot, my health (technically "Authority") was still at 50 while the AI's had been reduced to 3, and now I had built up an attack value of 42, ready to put the AI out of its misery. 

I played Mystery Rummy: Al Capone and the Chicago Underworld with Michelle, and didn't want to use pen and paper to keep score. I searched the Appstore for a scorekeeping app, and found this one called Games Keeper. The colour choice is questionable, but I find it easy to use. It's free. 

boardgaming in photos: San Juan, Jambo, Ticket to Ride: Japan

22 Nov 2020. San Juan is a sister game to Race for the Galaxy. Different designers, but both were inspired by Puerto Rico. San Juan is the official card game version of Puerto Rico and is more similar to it. It is not as complex as Race for the Galaxy. The most important thing these two games have in common is that cards are buildings you can construct (or planets you can settle), and at the same time also the currency you have to spend to construct (or settle) them. Despite some similarities, owning them both is not redundant. They are different enough and I enjoy them both in different ways. 

During the COVID-19 Movement Control Order I don't go out much to play new games, so I have been bringing out old games. This is a good thing. I do have many old games that I like, and many of them are often neglected because we gamers are always attracted by the new and shiny. It feels great to revisit my older games. It's like catching up with old friends. The photo above is the 2-player setup for San Juan. 

Having the library in the early game is good. If you have the library, as the active player picking an action, you get double the privilege. E.g. a $2 discount for constructing buildings (as opposed to $1), selling 2 extra goods instead of just 1. If you build a library early, you will be benefiting from it very frequently throughout the whole game. The library activates for all action types you pick, unlike most other buildings which are only useful for specific action types.

Eventually I gave up on the library, because it was expensive to build. If I had decided to build it, it would have taken a few turns. I decided to forgo this opportunity because I didn't want to slow my tempo in the early game. 

I have produced one coffee at my coffee plantation (face-down card on top of it). I built this coffee plantation in the early game. Later I built a silver smelter too. My strategy was to produce and sell high-value goods. I had a market built, which allowed me to sell at higher prices. 

My wife Michelle built a library early in the game, which got me a little worried. It is a powerful building. She built the quarry too, making all violet buildings cheaper by $1. She only needed to spend $2 for the $5 Hero statue! When she picked the Builder action, she would get a $2 discount because of the library. The quarry gave an additional $1 discount. The library and quarry combo is strong. 

Jambo is a 2-player card game about traders in pre-colonisation Africa. You make money by buying and selling goods. The challenge is in managing the varying goods combinations you get the opportunity to buy and sell. Suppliers only sell in specific combinations, and buyers only buy in specific combinations. You juggle the differences. Both players start with $20 in capital, and aim to reach $60. 

There are six types of goods. The currency is gold nuggets. 

We both started with one large stall which could accommodate 6 goods. There are small stalls in the draw deck. If you happen to draw them, you can play them, at a cost. The small stalls fit only 3 goods. Michelle was not so lucky with the small stalls and never drew any. I drew one early and played it, and after that I kept drawing more. I didn't really need more. That said, Michelle managed to beat me in one game despite never building any small stall. Small stalls are handy, but not absolutely necessary. 

The game has cards with many different abilities. This is a text-heavy game. Some cards help you. Some cards hurt your opponent. Some are tools which you can play in front of you and use every turn. Jambo is fast-playing and works well as a spouse game. 

We did Ticket To Ride: Japan again - Michelle, younger daughter Chen Rui and I. This time I couldn't catch up with them on competing to build the shinkansen. See that track at the bottom right. Michelle (red) was leading, closely followed by Chen Rui (blue), and I (green) was last. Right from the start they were aggressive in building the shinkansen network. The shinkansen trains were used up quickly. 

This time I aggressively drew tickets. All these tickets tucked under the board were my completed tickets. I won by a large margin. I was lucky in being able to get many long-distance tickets. I loved getting tickets with major cities like Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya and Hiroshima, because they were all already connected to the shinkansen network. One particular ticket required getting to Narita airport, so I needed to use my own (green) train to get there (photo above). 

Chen Rui (blue) also needed to get to Narita. Thankfully for her there was another route she could take, from Utsunomiya. Since we did a 3-player game, only one of the two routes between Tokyo and Narita was available, and I had claimed that. Our shinkansen network started in the south and extended to Tokyo. At Tokyo it split into two, one branch heading west to Nagano, and the other continuing north and eventually terminating at Sendai. At that point we ran out of shinkansen trains, and shinkansen routes would need to be claimed using player colour trains. 

Michelle (red) drew many Tokyo metropolitan area tickets, which I think is a bad thing. These are often short distance tickets which don't score many points. Also it is easy to get blocked in the metropolitan area. Doesn't sound like a good deal at all. However not all tickets involving a Tokyo underground station are restricted within this Tokyo underground map. In some cases the other destination is another city on the main map. 

It is normal for the train network to develop this way. The shinkansen will always be the main artery, and there will be many short extensions in the player colours branching out from it.