Ticket to Ride: Heart of Africa

We love the original Ticket to Ride and bought this as another option to change it up a little bit here and there. This one is a lot of fun and the terrain cards add another challenging dimension!*Note: This is actually an EXPANSION, and not a stand-alone game. You do need the colored train cards, trains and score markers from the original Ticket to Ride to play.

I love this series of games -- Ticket to Ride. I also have the US version and the Europe version You need one of these to play the African game because you need those game pieces. These are such fun games -- once you understand the rules! We actually modify the rules a bit to make it a little less complicated. Lots of fun and laughs.

Great game bought to add to my others

We've been playing a lot of TTR lately, so I decided to buy all of the map collections. This on is another great addition that works very well with two players.The Heart of Afria adds terrain cards. You get one terrain card with your for train cards at the beginning of the game, then you can pick them just like you would pick a train card (so you could pick two train cards, two terrain cards, or one of each on your turn). You can spend one matching terrain card to double the points for a route of the same color that is 1-3 long, and two terrain cards to double the points for a route that is 4-6 long. After a few plays it appears there are multiple ways to win (focusing on doubling route points, focusing on tickets, etc.). We were very happy to see this as it is possible that circumstances might be such that you will not be able to double the value of a route every time you want to.Otherwise, it has the same luck and more strategy components than TTR USA. In fact, we rarely play the USA map these days... mostly play this one, India and Switzerland, and are looking forward to giving Asia a try.

My son is a great fan of Ticket to Ride, so we often play together. It's at exactly the right level of gameplay for friendly family entertainment. We like this expansion, but it's not our favorite. The Asian expansion is a better deal. But if you have that, and you're looking for another interesting map, this is a nice addition. It features Sub-Saharan Africa and there are limited routes through the center of the map, so it can be more competitive for a multi-player game. My son and I play it with just the two of us, and we don't usually run into problems with that. It's a good map for a friendly 2-3 player game.The description in the catalog doesn't explain terrain cards very well, but they're actually pretty simple to understand when you read the rules. Basically, if you have enough for a particular route, they enable you to double the score you earn for claiming a route. The terrain cards add another level of choice and strategy which help keeps the game fresh and interesting, but they also enable you to run up the scores if there's a disparity among the players. That unbalances the game unless you're all similar in ability. It also means the 100 point scoring track isn't really long enough, so you have to keep track if you've lapped another another player. You don't need to use the terrain cards, so you can tailor the game to the people playing it, which is a plus.The physical components are beautiful and high quality. We enjoy the map and are learning some African geography too :) I would have preferred if the entire continent was on the map the way it is with the Asian expansion though.In short, this is a nice addition to the game, particularly if you're looking for something to freshen the game because you've played it a lot, but I recommend the Asian expansion before this one.

This is a great board game! It is legit and so much fun to play!

I've only played it once, but the game has some interesting twists. First of all, the board can get very crowded very quickly, even with just three players. You can almost count on being blocked more than once and, possibly, having to do a long and costly detour. Another challenging element is the way that colors are clustered on various parts of the board. You can find yourself only really needing three or four of the six colors throughout the whole game, and if those cards don't come up and everyone needs those same colors, everyone is always picking off the top of the pile and amassing a handful of worthless cards. It comes down to who got blocked the least. As for the desert, jungle, and mountain cards, I'm not really sure how much they add to the game, although they do add kind of an "act now or wait?" intensity. I don't think the instructions mention how the ferries in the game work, so if someone only has the original game, he or she may be confused.Anyway, it was fun, and I look forward to playing again to see whether my first impressions were completely on target.I know some of the versions in the past have been made in Germany, and these were always of high quality. This game was made in China, and the quality seemed a bit lacking. For example, the six-panel board didn't fold completely flat--it was sort of "sprung" on one side.

I have MANY versions of this game, and this is the best and most played