I had scheduled an interview with Moon in the BGG booth, but my understanding was that we would discuss the Ticket to Ride family, game design in general, and whatever else came to mind. Moon doesn't appear at many game conventions, so this was an interview I was looking forward to — and in the end we filmed a game overview as we did with dozens of other guests. Ah, well, Moon is still a great person to have on camera as you're never sure where the conversation might lead.
We haven't processed that video yet (or the 200-ish others that we recorded over four days), so let's go with a text description for now:
In the France half of this expansion, 2-5 players collect train cards and claim routes in order to complete tickets in hand, but most of the tracks on the board aren't colored! Each time that you draw cards, you must take a colored tile that's 2-5 train cars long and place that tile on an empty track bed. Once you've done this, any player can claim that route by discarding the appropriately colored cards from hand, as in any other Ticket to Ride game. (Single-length routes are already colored, and the map contains a number of gray-colored ferry routes.)
Multiple track beds on the game board overlap, and once a tile has placed on the board, any track beds crossed by this tile are off-limits and nothing can be built on them. To build a route, the player discards the right cards, returns the tile on this route to the pool of tiles, then places their trains on this route and scores the appropriate number of points.
At the end of the game, players score their tickets, with bonuses being awarded for longest continuous route and most tickets completed.
In the Old West half of the expansion, 2-6 players start the game by choosing (in reverse player order) a starting location for one of their three city pieces. The first route that a player claims must have this city as one of the route's two endpoints, and each subsequent route claimed must connect to that player's existing network.
After claiming a route, a player can place one of their remaining cities on either end of that route by discarding a matching pair of train cards. Only one city marker can be in each city. Whenever a player builds a route that connects to a city owned by another player, the owner of the city claims the points for the route, not the player placing the trains. If both endpoints of the route have cities, then the owner of each city scores these points. Whoever completes the most tickets in this expansion scores 15 bonus points.
As a variant, you can play Old West with Alvin the Alien. No player can start the game in Roswell, and the first player who builds a route into Roswell scores 10 points, then places the Alvin marker in any city that they control. The next player to connect to this city scores 10 points, then moves Alvin as before. Whoever controls Alvin at the end of the game scores 10 bonus points.
Within the first few turns, you could already get a sense of what might come. I placed a four-length white route out of a city that someone else had built into as I hadn't seen her picking up any white cards while I had a few already in hand. I then placed a five-length white route connected to that. I needed only one of those routes, and now I felt secure about getting at least one of them. What's more, the game includes only one four- and five-length tile of each color, so those white tiles were locked on the board until someone claimed those routes.
Later, someone placed a two-length black tile in a spot that I might need to get to Belgium, so I claimed it ahead of him, forcing him to spin the wheels for another turn until he could claim it. If we were being mean (and weren't so focused on learning the new board), someone else could have dropped a two-length non-black tile on the other track bed, further delaying his plans should he not have the needed train cards in hand.
You could imagine the game being a lot more competitive once you became familiar with the tickets and board. Switzerland and Italy all require tiles to be laid before you can build into them, so perhaps you could hog a color of train cards, then lay tiles of that color into the country — assuming you don't actually need those tiles elsewhere, of course. You must place a tile each time you draw cards, so even when you're not planning to claim anything in the next couple of turns, you're locking in new elements of the board that affect everyone, especially with the crossing track beds as you can convert what would have been a 15-point play in a single turn into something that requires two or three turns to complete with fewer points gained. Again, it's all about knowing the tickets and being able to read the holders of those tickets.
In the end, Moon beat the three of us, although only twelve points separated all four players. I drew tickets on the final turn as I had no train cards in hand, losing 7 points in the process; a swing in the other direction would have won me the game, but not knowing the tickets I have no idea whether I could have even scored at all!
Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 6 – France & Old West, which retails for $45/€40, debuts at SPIEL '17 in October, with the game reaching European game stores that same month; the title should be available in North America by mid-November 2017.