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.