one hundred fourty six

Saturday’s Ticket-Europe score. Same basic win as last time, lots of routes, one station, none of the 6 or 8 routes, just good old railin through Europe. One thing I’m particularly proud of is I clashed with another player and burnt up turns just making them ‘go around’ my routes.

Because you’re only allowed to do one thing on each turn in Ticket to Ride, I call this an ‘Economy of Turns’, each turn needs to be spent doing something that puts you on a direct path to making a route and winning the game. That seems simple, but before I realized this, my games consisted of a lot of card drawing and waiting – we all did it. The first time I consciously made an effort to spend the fewest turns to win, I destroyed my opponents by at least 60 points each. That was the only time the strategy worked that well – from then on it has been a driving force behind each game, and they all are done in about 45 minutes. By spending fewer turns building up cards and building routes, thereby using my trains faster (which are the truly limited resource of the game – 45 in Europe, 40 in Switzerland) the game reaches it’s conclusion faster. If you are lucky enough to outpace your opponents, they may have incomplete routes, and curse your name at night.

So, that was a blast. The other thing that was a blast is that when y’all went and left town to go to wedding receptions, my readership dropped sharply! But I’m glad you’re all back and I’ll try to get back to regular posting.

This morning I’m going to a neighborhood garage sale. I’m looking forward to it, because I almost always find something awesome. I would like to get some kind of stereo or home theater receiver that takes RCA input, but for cheap. I’ve got a few good speakers (well, cheap, at least) that I’d like to rig up to a MAME box.

Speaking of, the boy and I went to an arcade yesterday just to look at the games, and … is it me, or are there no great games at arcades anymore? The technology in them looks just barely above N64 level. Well, I guess it’s just a money pit anyway, but I fondly remember the days I’d walk to the Seven Eleven with my friend Miguel to play Street Fighter 2 and watch others play it. The arcade was much better than it was on SNES (which we didn’t have at my house until after we had an N64 – which is the source of some of my fondest memories of my teenage years, but that is a post for another day.) I was never particularly good at fighting games anyway, but it was always fun to test one’s mettle against some random stranger.