Merric Blackman
Australia
Waubra
Victoria
Ramping up my reviewing.
Happily playing games for many, many years.
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Despite the fact that I already owned the Switzerland map, I did not hesitate in purchasing the second map collection for TTR. I'm very glad I didn't, as the India map is something special: very challenging, very enjoyable.
My opponent for these games was Rose, who hasn't play anywhere near as much TTR as I have, but she had played before.
Our first game was very much getting used to the dynamics of the India map; there are a LOT of short, coloured routes, and they're likely to be tremendously important. You also gain bonus points for connecting your tickets in two separate ways, which I immediately realised could be done by "looping" the stations; actually completing the loops could be quite difficult, especially when both of us were needing the same stations!
I was playing green, Rose was playing blue. Rose had a set of fairly disparate tickets, and so wasn't able to complete a loop. Meanwhile, I completed a loop but couldn't get more than two tickets on it; the bonus points were enough to (just) hand me the game at 117-105.
The second game saw me making a more concerted effort to create the Grand Loop, whilst meanwhile actively blocking Rose's connections. I managed a smaller loop than I'd hoped, but I was able to block Rose's loop (and cause her to go out of her way to complete her tickets).
Rose, indeed, was unable to complete all of her tickets, whilst I completed a massive seven of them. My score was very good - 146 to 112.
The final of our three games was not a good one for Rose; she made the mistake of taking two new tickets at the very end of the game when I had four trains left. To make things worse, the location she need to travel to was one I immediately blocked with my next play - she was terribly unimpressed by this, but it does emphasise the danger of taking tickets late - risk management is a huge part of all TTR games, and perhaps even more on the India map.
I wasn't able to complete any loops this game, but completing seven tickets and stopping Rose from completing her tickets gave me the win with 128-111.
There's a lot of planning involved in playing 2-player on this map, and I'm looking forward to future games with it.
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Ramping up my reviewing.
