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I want to say : I've played this game about half a dozen times. The first 5 times were absolutely brilliant. I can't imagine a better "conversion" of TTR for 3 Players. The game really shines, compared to the fairly drab TTR:USA or TTR:EUROPE, which just aren't very fun for me with 3P.
BUT OH MY GOD, did we find a problem with this game, at least it felt like a problem : THE WILDCARDS (Engines).
Since they aren't wildcards at all, and only usable in tunnels / bridges, they can actually clog your hand up. Not only that, but if you end up with a lot of them that you can't play (no bridges or tunnels), and your opponents need a bunch of them, the game can come crashing down.
As you might have guessed, I ended up with 10 of the Engines, and couldn't use a single one. My routes were almost entirely up the middle N/S (sorry I am not good enough at the cities yet!). The routes needed not a single Engine to complete, even though they weres quite long. Meanwhile, I am piling up engines, that I have absolutely no way to play, and my opponents can't get draw a single engine to save their life. It was very very painful. I ended up winning something like 150 to 75 to 50, and I think it could have been worse, as I ended up taking extra tickets to cycle some of the Engines back into the deck for my opponents.
Anyone ever seen this? Are we doing something wrong, or was this just a freak, a one-time glitch?
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Oliver Paul
Iceland
Reykjavik
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Did you know that instead of playing an engine (on a space that needs an engine), you can play 3 other cards?
You can also use your engines on the long 9-train track, as one of 4 cards for each train.
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Martin Jackson
United Kingdom
Bath
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Or you could spend your wealth of engines on some ferry/tunnel routes that you don't need for your tickets - it will get them out of your hand, get you more points, and block your opponents
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murksofus wrote: Did you know that instead of playing an engine (on a space that needs an engine), you can play 3 other cards?
You can also use your engines on the long 9-train track, as one of 4 cards for each train.
I am sure we forgot the 3cards=Wild rule, but I remember it as soon as you mention it! I will review that. It helps a bit.
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Tim Stellmach
United States
Arlington
Massachusetts
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I don't get how anything can clog your hand in a game with no hand limit. Drawing cards that aren't the kind I happen to need at the moment seems like something that happens all the time in TTR.
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I guess "clog the hand" wasn't really the right terminology. It clogged the ENTIRE GAME up really. I had them all, and couldn't play them. Everyone else needed them and couldn't get them.
Even after being reminded that the other players could use 3-for-1 engines on their routes, I still see this as a huge problem, although I admit it's probably pretty rare.
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Srdjan Magas
Croatia
Burnaby
British Columbia
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I don't see how it can be a HUGE problem, they just simply use any other three cards for the locomotive they don't have. It's pretty simple. lol
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Cro1 wrote: I don't see how it can be a HUGE problem, they just simply use any other three cards for the locomotive they don't have. It's pretty simple. lol
Considering that they each needed at least 5 engines, I guess it's not a huge problem, but it's pretty much a guarantee that they will lose.... Oh wait... 
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Srdjan Magas
Croatia
Burnaby
British Columbia
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each at least 5? most of the ferries in nordic require only one locomotive, thats only 3 cards...by the time u collected all the locomotives from the deck they would have 20 cards in their hands by now? no? lol but yah, i guess we r talking about something rare here, never happened to us.
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As I say, I was going up the middle, they were going up either coast. I just had a look at the map, and I'm almost positive they both needed about 5 Engines. There are a number (6) routes that need two engines, and number (7-10) that need 1 engine, so I'm pretty sure I'm not overstating it.
I know for a fact that I couldn't use a single engine, and I drew tickets to have mercy on them, and still only needed one engine. LOL.
Anyways, it's a really good game, and that game doesn't hurt my opinion of it that much. I can honestly say, in SEVERAL HUNDRED games played, I have never seen one user with that many engines. It was a fluke to be sure. It was the worst of the TTRs to have this fluke in, though! In any other version, I would have been as happy as the butcher's dog to have 10 engines, and my opponents, while probably not happy about it, wouldn't have been as disadvantaged as they were in Nordic.
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Srdjan Magas
Croatia
Burnaby
British Columbia
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Lol yeah, i can certainly see this happening but yah very rare. Btw, im hooked on the india map now though lol...very nice with 3 players damn. have you tried?
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murksofus wrote: Did you know that instead of playing an engine (on a space that needs an engine), you can play 3 other cards?
You can also use your engines on the long 9-train track, as one of 4 cards for each train.
Is that just a rule for this map / set? I have never heard of the rule where you can use 3 of any card to equal an engine. I also never heard of not being able to use wilds as wilds... I'm hoping it's just something unique to this particular set, which I don't have yet, and not that I've been playing the game wrong all this time!
Me
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James Newton
United Kingdom
Wiltshire
In the interest of giving credit where credit is due, my avatar is a scan of a hand-drawn caricature by cartoonist Jim Naylor which was done at my company's 20th anniversary dinner.
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jasonmiceli wrote: murksofus wrote: Did you know that instead of playing an engine (on a space that needs an engine), you can play 3 other cards?
You can also use your engines on the long 9-train track, as one of 4 cards for each train. Is that just a rule for this map / set? I have never heard of the rule where you can use 3 of any card to equal an engine. I also never heard of not being able to use wilds as wilds... I'm hoping it's just something unique to this particular set, which I don't have yet, and not that I've been playing the game wrong all this time! Me
Yes. The rules for locomotives vary with the different expansions.
I think that Noridc is the only one that has the 3-cards-as-a-wild rule, which is partly because of the really long route (9 trains long, I think?). However there is at least one other expansion which also only allows locos to be used on certain routes, not as wild - although I can't remember which offhand.
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churchmouse wrote: However there is at least one other expansion which also only allows locos to be used on certain routes, not as wild - although I can't remember which offhand.
FYI, it's Switzerland. The rule for Switzerland is the same as Nordic (i.e., for use on tunnel routes only), but there's no '3-cards-as-a-wild' rule. So the problem described in the OP could absolutely happen in TTR:Switzerland, although it seems like it would take an extraordinary amount of (bad) luck for nearly all locomotives to end up in one player's hand.
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