Charity Challenge Week 3 - Night 1

We’ve reached week 3 of our charity challenge. Thank you all so much for following along and supporting Rachel and I during this month! If you’d like to donate to our campaign supporting CAMH you can do so here.

Rachel managed to win the challenge last week, while I took week one. We’re all tied up to start the week and you can feel the tension around the house

The Choice

I’m picking the game to start the week and I’ve decided to pick a game I think I have a decent chance of winning as well as being a game I think we’ll both enjoy playing to start the week.

Tonight we’ll be playing Ticket to Ride Nordic Countries!

The Game

Somehow we’ve never played Ticket to Ride in the competition. The main reason for that is it doesn’t typically play amazingly well for two players, but Nordic Countries solves that. The map and routes are designed specifically with 2 and 3 player configurations in mind.

If you don’t know what Ticket to Ride is it’s an insanely popular game built around collecting sets of cards to build train routes across a map. As you play you will collect destination tickets, and completing the routes on those tickets will get you points. But be careful, if you don’t finish your tickets you will get minus points.

To learn more about Ticket to Ride check out this video.

The Result

The opening of this game was very intense. We were quietly collecting cards and building trains. Rachel started towards the south end of the map, I was working my across the mid section towards the north. Everything was nice and tight until Rachel played the giant 9 train long connection between Murmansk and Lieksa. That train route was worth 27 points on its own. Shit. Suddenly my fun tense game of Ticket to Ride to start the week is an uphill climb to catch up.

I fought back hard. Once I finished my initial 4 destination tickets I drew more tickets a fairly rare 3 rounds in a row. I hoovered up as many potential points as I could and got to work trying to furiously build out more routes and complete more tickets than Rachel. In the end I did completely 8 routes to Rachel’s 5, but between her 27 point’er and the 2 routes I didn’t complete Rachel crushed me 120 to 106.

While the start to the week was fun, I was hoping to get a win on the board. We go again tomorrow!