Ticket to Ride
For a while I have been toying with a different strategy for Ticket to Ride: totally ignoring contracts while trying to garner as many long routes as possible. There are some pretty big disincentives to trying this. For one thing you cede at least 10 and possibly 20 points to another player off the top for the longest trains and most completed contract bonuses. You also will have at least 3 unfulfilled contracts with at least 18 points or so lost there. To offset this you average around 2 or so points per car versus closer to 1 for strategies that are less concentrated on long routes. That is potentially as much 48 or so points but more likely less than that. One other factor might have made a difference and it was this that required I actually try the strategy. Playing long routes minimize the number of turns one needs to exhaust his car pool. Since each route averages more trains per build fewer builds are required. Also more time is spent drawing new cards rather than using turns on short routes. (A turn used up for a 1 car route uses up just as much card drawing potential as one used on a 6 car route.) This could make the game significantly shorter and prevent others from completing their long contracts for lack of time.
Tonight I had a phenomenally poor contract draw. No contract was over 10 and one was as low as 6. I figured there would never be a better opportunity to try this strategy. I was able to reduce my contract liability to 25 points. The verdict is that this does shorten the game. A lot. The other two players had roughly half their cars unplayed at the game end. However it didn't shorten it enough to make the difference. One opponent had no trouble completing the bulk of his contracts including his cross continent gravy train. The other didn't but still completed enough to best my score. He also would have done better had he realized I was warping the game to a premature ending. That consequence of my strategy didn't dawn on him until I had only 3 cars left by which time he could do little about it. The other scores were indeed lower than normal but not enough to let the long routes make the difference.
Normally I am tempted to try a strategy several times before pronouncing it dead. I don't think I need any other trials for this one however. Nothing really went wrong with it. I had no trouble scoring the long routes in a hurry. It is a lot easier to build up a 6 card group when you don't care at all what color it is in. Just always draw to your strong suit. So I see little chance of improving that. So I don't think there is any way to cut much more time off the game than happened here. Even so one player had no trouble finishing his big contracts. The other could have easily done better if his play the last 3-4 moves been different and even without that he still had enough contracts to beat my score.
Tonight I had a phenomenally poor contract draw. No contract was over 10 and one was as low as 6. I figured there would never be a better opportunity to try this strategy. I was able to reduce my contract liability to 25 points. The verdict is that this does shorten the game. A lot. The other two players had roughly half their cars unplayed at the game end. However it didn't shorten it enough to make the difference. One opponent had no trouble completing the bulk of his contracts including his cross continent gravy train. The other didn't but still completed enough to best my score. He also would have done better had he realized I was warping the game to a premature ending. That consequence of my strategy didn't dawn on him until I had only 3 cars left by which time he could do little about it. The other scores were indeed lower than normal but not enough to let the long routes make the difference.
Normally I am tempted to try a strategy several times before pronouncing it dead. I don't think I need any other trials for this one however. Nothing really went wrong with it. I had no trouble scoring the long routes in a hurry. It is a lot easier to build up a 6 card group when you don't care at all what color it is in. Just always draw to your strong suit. So I see little chance of improving that. So I don't think there is any way to cut much more time off the game than happened here. Even so one player had no trouble finishing his big contracts. The other could have easily done better if his play the last 3-4 moves been different and even without that he still had enough contracts to beat my score.