travel

Elfenroads combines the previously released Elfenland and Elfengold, along with the new Elfensea.

In Elfenland, young elves have to pass a very special test before they are accepted as grownups. All elf girls and elf boys receive a map of Elfenland, and they have to visit as many famous towns in Elfenland as possible, using the common types of transportation: dragons, unicorns, giant pigs, elfcycles, troll wagons, magic clouds, ferries and rafts. These types of transportation, however, are available in limited numbers and can be used only in specific regions. Thus, an exciting race starts among the elves to find out who will make the best use of the available transportation. The one who visits the most towns wins.

Elfengold, an expansion for Elfenland, adds gold coins to the game that players use to bid for the Travel Counters and other new items. It also adds Gold Value Tokens to the towns that indicate how much gold players earn for visiting a town. Two magic spells and a new obstacle — a Sea Monster — are included as well as two round cards to allow for longer games up to six rounds.

In Elfensea, as in Elfenland, young elves have to pass a special test before they are accepted as grownups. The same rules apply in Elfensea as in Elfenland, except as described in the rules. The game board map is different, and the common types of transportation — dragons, unicorns, giant pigs, magic clouds, whales and rafts — differ somewhat as well. As in Elfenland, these types of transportation are available in limited numbers and can be used only in specific regions. Thus, an exciting race starts among the elves to find out who will make the best use of the available transportation. The player with the most points wins.

Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails takes the familiar gameplay of Ticket to Ride and expands it across the globe — which means that you'll be moving across water, of course, and that's where the sails come in.

As in other Ticket to Ride games, in Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails players start with tickets in hand that show two cities, and over the course of the game they try to collect colored cards, then claim routes on the game board with their colored train and ship tokens, scoring points while doing so. When any player has six or fewer tokens in their supply, each player takes two more turns, then the game ends. At that point, if they've created a continuous path between the two cities on a ticket, then they score the points on that ticket; if not, then they lose points instead.

Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails puts a few twists on the T2R formula, starting with split card decks of trains and ships (with all of the wild cards going in the train deck). Three cards of each type are revealed at the start of the game, and when you draw cards, you replace them with a card from whichever deck you like. (Shuffle the card types separately to form new decks when needed.)

Similarly, players choose their own mix of train and ship tokens at the start of the game. To claim a train route (rectangular spaces), you must play train cards (or wilds) and cover those spaces with train tokens, and to claim a ship route (oval spaces), you must play ship cards (or wilds) and cover those spaces with ship tokens. Ship cards depict one or two ships on them, and when you play a double-ship card, you can cover one or two ship spaces. You can take an action during play to swap train tokens for ships (or vice versa), and you lose one point for each token you swap.

Some tickets show tour routes with multiple cities instead of simply two cities. If you build a network that matches the tour exactly, you score more points than if you simply include all of those cities in your network.

Each player also starts the game with three harbors. If you have built a route to a port city, you can take an action during the game to place a harbor in that city (with a limit of one harbor per port). To place the harbor, you must discard two train cards and two ship cards of the same color, all of which must bear the harbor symbol (an anchor). At the end of the game, you lose four points for each harbor not placed, and you gain 10-40 points for each placed harbor depending on how many of your completed tickets show that port city.

Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails includes a double-sided game board, with one side showing the world and the other side showing the Great Lakes of North America. Players start with a differing number of cards and tokens depending on which side they play, and each side has a few differences in gameplay.

During the medieval goings-on around Orléans, you must assemble a following of farmers, merchants, knights, monks, etc. to gain supremacy through trade, construction and science in medieval France.

In the city of Orléans and the area of the Loire, you can take trade trips to other cities to acquire coveted goods and build trading posts. You need followers and their abilities to expand your dominance by putting them to work as traders, builders, and scientists. Knights expand your scope of action and secure your mercantile expeditions. Craftsmen build trading stations and tools to facilitate work. Scholars make progress in science, and last but not least it cannot hurt to get active in monasteries since with monks on your side you are much less likely to fall prey to fate.

In Orléans, you will always want to take more actions than possible, and there are many paths to victory. The challenge is to combine all elements as best as possible with regard to your strategy.

Alvin & Dexter – A Ticket to Ride Monster Expansion can be added to any of the various standalone Ticket to Ride games that designer Alan R. Moon and publisher Days of Wonder have released since 2004.

These monsters stymie players both during the game and once it ends. During play, no routes can be built into or out of a city where Alvin or Dexter are currently nesting, and during the final score tallying, any destination ticket showing a city where either monster stands is worth only half its normal value.

Desperately need to build a route to Seattle, Paris, or wherever else a roaming monster has set up shop? Discard one (or two) wild locomotive cards, and you can move the monster up to three (or six) cities away from its current location. Move a monster more than any other player, and you'll pick up an endgame bonus for your role as monster minder.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 5 – United Kingdom & Pennsylvania contains a double-sided game board with new rules for use with Ticket to Ride or Ticket to Ride: Europe with players now creating train lines in the British Isles and in Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania half of this map collection adds a share mechanism to the basic TtR game. Each time that a player completes a route, they claim a share of one of the companies depicted next to that route. At the end of the game, whoever holds more shares of a company than all other players receives points as a reward.

The United Kingdom half of this map collection introduces the concept of technology to TtR. At the start of the game, players can build only one- and two-train routes and only in England. By spending wild cards, players gain the ability to build routes three trains long or longer, in addition to being able to build ferries across water and build train routes in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Players can also buy bonus cards that allow them to score extra points for taking certain actions during play. Despite the name, the map covers both the UK and the Republic of Ireland, that is, the islands of Great Britain and Ireland.

Take notice: If you find some of the Advanced Technologies feeling unbalanced, please take in consideration that Designer Alan R. Moon has himself mentioned that "The Advanced Technology Cards were not fully playtested".