I’ve admittedly gone a little “Ticket to Ride” happy as of late…apologies, though this should be the last entry for a while. “Europa 1912” is the expansion to “Ticket to Ride: Europe” and like “USA 1910” (the expansion to the original “Ticket to Ride”), you’ll need the base game in order to play it. Since I’ve already covered the game’s rules in my reviews of the original and “Europe” versions, I’ll opt to simply go over what this expansion has to offer.
Components
The expansion includes (taken from the manual):
5 New Players’ Warehouses and 25 new Train Depots (5 in each color)
55 New Destination Tickets, all marked with a 1912 logo in their upper right corner:
• 6 New long routes (blue background)
• 19 New regular routes
• 30 New big city routes (Big Cities logo)
The original 46 Destination Tickets (6 long, 25 regular and 15 big city) that came with Ticket to Ride Europe.
Warehouses & Depots
Each player will get a warehouse and five depots at the beginning of the game. In counter-clockwise order, starting with the last player, they’ll seed one depot onto an empty city. Whenever players opt to draw train cards on their turn, they MUST take one from the deck and place it next to any player’s warehouse (which is sitting in front of them). Players still get to draw two train cards per turn when they opt to do so.
When a player claims a route that contains a depot, they may discard one of their own depots (which are sitting in front of the player) to take all of the train cards from that player’s warehouse. Players can also, as a free action on their turn, place one of their unused depots onto an empty city…placed depots cannot be returned to the player and they cannot be discarded to utilize the collection of train cards after claiming a route with a depot.
The person with the most unused depots at the game’s end scores ten bonus points.
Variants
Players can opt to use any of these new variants (taken from the manual):
Europe Expanded – Add the 19 new regular routes (with the 1912 logo) to the original set of Destination Tickets (cards without a 1912 logo). All other rules remain unchanged.
Mega Europe – Shuffle all 12 long routes together, and deal 2 to each player. Each player may keep one or none, but not both. Discard all long routes that aren’t kept; remove them from the game. Shuffle all the other Tickets (both regular and big city, new and original) from this expansion together and deal 5 to each player. If a player kept a long route, he must now keep at least 2 of these other Tickets. If he didn’t keep a long route, he must keep at least 3 instead. All other rules remain unchanged.
Big Cities of Europe – The long routes are not used in this version. Place the Big Cities of Europe card visible to all players. Shuffle all big city Tickets (cards with the Big Cities logo). Deal 5 to each player. Each player must keep at least 2. During the game, if a player chooses to Draw Destination Tickets, he draws 4 and must keep at least 1.
The Review
Compared to “USA 1910”, this expansion offers a bit more, what with the inclusion of warehouses and depots. The “USA 1910” expansion was a bit more cosmetic, I felt, as it mainly addressed the card size and added new routes (but no new gameplay mechanics as significant as warehouse and depots). The warehouses and depots can even be used in the regular “Ticket to Ride” game, if you happen to own both. I’ll say here what I said about the “USA 1910” expansion…it’s great for folks who play “Ticket to Ride” religiously, but not necessary to get the full enjoyment out of the core game.
Final Verdict: 8/10
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I’m just curious, what is the purpose of placing down more depots during the game? It seems counter productive to place an additional depot on the board simultaneously limiting your spending power while increasing the likelihood of an opponent being in a position to gain additional cards and reducing the possibility of gaining the 10 point bonus at the end of the game.