Showerthought: Why does everyone call 'Ticket to Ride' a gateway game when half my family still cant figure out the routes?

I hosted game night last Saturday with 5 people, 3 of them new to modern board games. We pulled out Ticket to Ride and within 20 minutes two people had built routes that blocked their own long tickets. I spent the next 40 minutes explaining why you check your destination cards before laying track. How is this a gateway game if people cant grasp the basic strategy in the first play? Am I the only one who thinks the 'easy entry' label is overblown for this game?

2 comments

2 Comments

robin6589d ago

My mom literally built Seattle to Vancouver three times in one game. Did they at least get the scoring after you explained the tickets or was it just chaos the whole time?

grayw329d ago

Oh man, "chaos the whole time" is basically my middle name when it comes to teaching this game lol. I tried explaining the scoring after the first route was built and my friend just stared at me like I was speaking ancient Greek. She kept trying to connect Denver to Houston through Minneapolis and I'm like that's not how this works. I ended up just saying "look, long trains good, short trains okay, just don't let anyone block your stuff" and it worked out somehow. Pretty sure she beat me by 20 points just from blindly grabbing tickets at the end.