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Odds are that you're already very familiar with Ticket to Ride. With over two million games sold, Ticket to Ride is widely touted as one of the best introductory titles for new gamers, but there is more to this popular train game than its entry-level map. Publisher Days of Wonder has hit its stride in releasing new maps to expand the base Ticket to Ride game. Today, we'll be looking at The Heart of Africa, the third entry into the map pack series.
Players: 2 to 5
Ages: 8 and up
Playing Time: 45 minutes
Retail: $25.00
Rating: Worth the challenge. Ticket to Ride hasn't been this competitive in a while, and new terrain cards keep the game fresh.
What's the Same: Heart of Africa or not, you're still playing Ticket to Ride. The particulars of this map are that you'll be playing with a stock of 45 trains, and will select a minimum of 2 destination tickets from a hand of 4 to start the game. Additional destinations will be selected with with a minimum of one card from a hand of 4.
Some additional rules seen in previous editions also make appearances. Ferry routes are present on the map, but there are no tunnels. At the game's end, the player with the most completed destination tickets receives the 10-point "Globetrotter" bonus, rather than the traditional longest train bonus.
What's New: The African landscape has some unique challenges, resulting in countries with multiple destination spots. Sometimes these are dead ends (with no connection from one to the other permitted), such as the North African territories. In another case, two connected spots on the island of Madagascar both count as the same destination.
Terrain cards are the major new addition, though. Similar to the market of train car cards, a separate market of two terrain cards is available at all times. When a player chooses the "draw cards" double-action for their turn, train car and terrain cards are interchangeable. You can pick two of the same type or one of each, and as usual, select from either face-up market or blindly chosen off the top of the decks.
Gameplay: But what do terrain cards actually do? Well, they shake up the game's strategy for sure. Each terrain card represents three of the different possible route colors. If the right conditions are met, a player can use these terrain cards to double the value of an appropriately-colored route.
Those conditions require the player to discard one terrain card for 1, 2, or 3-train length routes, and a matching pair for 4, 5, or 6-train length routes. Lastly, in order to use the terrain cards, the player must have at least as many of that specific type as any other player possesses. All of these conditions need to be met at the moment you place trains on the board, and the terrain cards are discarded along with the train car cards.
Now players will have to question every move they make. Are they better off claiming routes immediately and securing their position, or waiting a turn or two to lock in double-points?
There's another unique feature in Heart of Africa that's not necessarily obvious at first glance. Without any additional rules gimmicks, destinations have become much more difficult to reach. Just as the game's name says, routes through the heart of Africa are hard to come by. It's not as noticeable with 2 or 3 players, but a shortage of double routes in the map's center makes the map rather crowded with 4 and 5 players.
This change-up in route difficulty has skewed the standard formula for destination ticket values as well. Instead of being based solely on the minimum number of trains to connect both destinations, ticket values have been adjusted to provide a true reward for the risks taken in crossing the continent's center.
All things considered, Heart of Africa is a great map. While in play, the game becomes extremely competitive, but for veteran players, that's exactly the sort of cutthroat advanced competition that keeps the game fresh.
This expansion's hallmark, terrain cards, forces players to walk a tight line and pick up on other players' strategies earlier than in other Ticket to Ride games. This information will be needed not just for gauging the relative value of new destination cards, but for deciding how much risk should be taken in spending time to collect terrain cards. Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 3 - The Heart of Africa is a worthwhile expansion, and one that will keep players on their toes for a while.
The only downside in this map collection volume is that there is only one map to collect. The first and second volumes in this series each included two maps, but to its credit, Heart of Africa comes in $10 lighter for the single map. Overshadowing all of this is the fact that it also happens to be the best map collection map yet. Any complaints levied here only exist because people want more of a good thing.
