Gateway Games Part II

This week, two more Gateway Games: Ticket to Ride and Blokus

Ticket To Ride

Ticket to Ride has become another darling of the Gateway Geeklists. It's a train-themed game in which players score points by claiming routes on the map using brightly-colored trains. Players have specific cities (printed on "Destination" cards) which need to be connected - succeed, and you'll score points; fail, and you'll lose that many points.

The game is complicated slightly by the other players. A number of linkages on the map are only available to one player, so if I grab Los Angeles to Phoenix and you need to get into Phoenix to complete one of your destination tickets, then you'll need to find another way through.

It's playable on Xbox Live and on Days of Wonder's website. There is also a standalone version of the game which interfaces with the web version.

The rules are fairly simple - on your turn, you have three actions from which to choose:
1) Draw cards from the deck
2) Play sets of matching cards (and wild cards) to claim a route between two cities
3) Draw more "destination" tickets.

You need to draw cards to complete tickets, but if you spend too much time drawing, your opponents will claim the tracks you need. At the same time, if you claim too fast, you will telegraph your moves and experienced opponents will cut you off.

Destination tickets have the potential to score a lot of points - but if you can't complete them, they count against you.

There are now four standalone versions of the game, too, each with its own unique wrinkles. There are also a couple of expansions, some of which require the original (USA) map, some of which work with any of the standalone versions.

There aren't a lot of trouble spots in the rules, either. Beginning players frequently try to claim routes one train at a time - LA to Phoenix requires three cars at one time, rather than one train per turn for three turns.

There are no gray train cars, either - a gray route on the board can be claimed with any color cars. They still all have to be the same color, mind you.

Blokus

Blokus is an excellent spatial-recognition game. It's colorful and eye-catching, and very easy to learn. It's playable on the official website. It holds between two and four players, but I do not suggest playing it with three.

Each player is given a set of tiles - they remind me a great deal of Tetris tiles, but have between one and five squares, rather than the four squares used in Tetris. The goal is simple: Place all of your tiles.

The first tile is placed in the corner. Each successive tile must be diagonally adjacent to at least one of your other tiles, and cannot be orthagonally adjacent. The rules are that simple.

There are four versions of this game, as well. In my opinion, Blokus Trigon is the best of the four, as it scales to three without trouble. I do suggest playing the basic game first, however.

If your visual and spatial perception are good, you will do well at this game. If they are not, then you will not. I love this game, but it frustrates my wife. Not enough that she won't play, mind you, but she will usually only play a few games before growing frustrated.

Rules-wise, there aren't any sticky spots. There is a small issue, however, if one member of your group is colorblind. It's (admittedly) an issue with many games, but most games can add a small symbol or emblem to each color to help colorblind players. This one does not compensate in any way for colorblindness. If you do have colorblind players, it's best to have them play either blue or yellow, as those are noticably different shades from the red and green pieces.

Gateway Games

There are hundreds and hundreds of GeekLists over on BoardGameGeek about so-called "Gateway Games."  That is, "games which can draw more non-gamers into the hobby."

These are all German-style board games, because that is what I tend to prefer.  If there are questions, I can discuss Eurogames vs. American-style boardgames at some point in the future.

There are a few games which appear on nearly all of these lists, and with good reason.  There are games which regularly appear and probably shouldn't.  And then there are the games which are not regularly on these lists, but probably should be.

This week, I'm going to talk about two of the old standbys - games that appear on nearly all of these lists.

For each game below, I'll list the game, say a bit about it, give a brief overview of the rules, why it's a good gateway game, and what issues new players seem to have with the rules.

Settlers of Catan

For many eurogamers, Settlers of Catan was our gateway game.  It wasn't the first German import game to hit the US, but it was the first to hit big.  It is or has been available online via BSW, Xbox Live (under the name Catan), and is coming for the Nintendo DS.

The game itself is pretty simple - three or four players earn victory points by building settlements and upgrading those settlements into cities.  Each turn, the dice are rolled.  The results of the dice cause spaces on the board to generate resources.  Then the player whose turn it is can trade resources with other players and spend those resources to build more roads and settlements.  You can also spend resources to buy special cards (which do a variety of things) or upgrade your settlements to cities.

There are bonus points available for having the longest continuous road and for having the largest army.

The first player to ten points wins the game.

It's a good gateway game because it's very simple to learn, encourages player interaction, and is easy to find an opponent for. 

Non-gamers who are curious about this game can visit nearly any game store and find a store copy which is used for demoing the game. Ask the person behind the counter if they can give you a demo - the same goes for many other games as well.

The game is also expandable - there is an expansion which allows up to six players to play.

There are only a few rules points which tend to cause confusion, too. Ports are a bit troublesome, as is the bandit.

Carcassonne

Carcassonne is another regular on the lists. Aside from one of the scoring details, it's a very clear game of tile-laying, and its worker figures ("meeples") have become emblematic of eurogaming in general. It's also available on XBox Live.

Every turn, you draw a tile from the bag. Tiles have roads, cities, fields, and a few other elements on them. You just need to match tile edges - roads have to match roads, and so on. After playing a tile, you may place one of your workers on that tile (with a few restrictions).

The basic rules are simple and very clear, and the game has a number of expansions of varying quality. I do highly recommend the first expansion, which allows for a sixth player and introduces a larger meeple.

The only trouble spot rules-wise is scoring the fields - even the publisher(s) haven't entirely made up their minds on that one, as the rules keep changing. It seems like every printing includes a new method of scoring the fields.

In a few weeks, I'll be talking about games that I think are good gateway games - games which don't appear on as many of the geeklists as, perhaps, they should.