In 8 games around the world

Boardgames
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I was just looking at a certain game on my table and thought how we cannot travel much right now. So if you were to organize a game night or game week-end around traveling the world what games would you choose?

Find the (most interesting) sequence of games that will let you travel around the world. It doesn’t have to be 8 games… do it in more or less. Like with any 'round the world trip you can take a couple of connecting “flights” across oceans or the blank spaces on your personal game map. No constraints on games but if you want you can restrict yourself to:

  • only games from your collection or wishlist
  • only games you rated at least a 7 on BGG
  • only games from a certain category (can anyone do it in 18xx?)

How?

So start with a game set in the country you currently live in or any other if you want to shroud yourself in mystery. Choose east or west. The next game in the series should be further in that direction. How do you get there? Boat, plane, train? Repeat with more games until you are back where you started.

How does a game qualify?

I just want to give a few general pointers on how I am thinking one could choose games for such a trip:

  • Games that take place in the real world in a specific place like Castles of Burgundy or or Pax Pamir are easy.
  • A game can feature multiple countries like Merv does or probably Marco Polo.
  • The place does not have to appear in the game title
  • Place can be “implied” as in Ghost Stories which is set in a Chinese village.
  • An abstract game like Ganesha with obvious cultural ties would qualify as a trip to India.
  • You could use games that feature the whole world map as jokers.
  • Leaving Earth qualifies for all the countries represented with space agencies :slight_smile: Just choose one.
  • Lord of the Rings games are all set in NZ–obviously
  • The country where the game designer is from could also be an interesting choice.
  • Whatever you say goes as long as the trip is an interesting one.
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Seeing what I can do with implied locations, and strictly from my own collection…

Game Country Travel by
Whitehall Mystery UK
Rallyman GT Spa (“Belgium”) track (World Tour expansion) Belgium car
Flamme Rouge France bicycle
Die Kutschfahrt zur Teufelsburg Germany stagecoach
Automobiles Monza track Italy car
Deception: Murder in Hong Kong China police van
Homeland: the Game USA unmarked van
Mafia de Cuba Cuba old Chevy with surprisingly capacious boot
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This is a fun idea. Well obviously I’ll start in beautiful New England during an Indian Summer. Then west to try some fresh fruits and veggies in the Fields of Green of the Midwest.

Across the Pacific to ride the Nippon Rails in Japan, then visit Jaipur in India. From there I’ve always wanted to be taunted by an ice cream vendor in Istanbul.

Now it’s at this point that I do a lot of north-south bouncing, so let’s go down to Saharan Africa and swap some dates and salt with the Tuareg/Targi, then up to Denmark to find some old rocks with runes (vikings fucking love their rocks) and we’ll have A Feast for Odin.

Continuing westward to London and pass by Scotland Yard, then we’ll do a very southern trajectory: Visit La Sagrada Familia, then waaaaay down the Atlantic and around Cape Horn (wishing I had Panamax in my collection) to Chile, where we’ll see some of the telescopes participating in The Search for Planet X.

Finally a long trip up to end my trip with some comforting American food: A delicious New York Slice.

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I’m going to cheat while I think about this

The Ticket to Ride series gives me UK, London, Europe, Amsterdam, Germany, Africa, India, USA finishing in New York!

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So, surprisingly, I do not own all that many games set in Germany. I’ll start with a game from my wishlist (the rest I own):

  • In Hallertau I’ll be planting hops and brewing beer in southern Germany.
  • Then I transform myself into a barbarian horde to travel east for the (Pandemic:) Fall of Rome.
  • A short break in Greece to play a round of 7 Wonders Duel
  • On my way further back in history I settle the Faiyum peninsula in Egypt.
  • Next I’ll outfit a few caravans to go across several countries to trade in Merv in today’s Turkmenistan
  • Just next door I’ll meddle in the great game in Pax Pamir 2 in Afghanistan
  • Back to trading in Goa on India’s west coast.
  • I’ll hunt a few ghosts in a Chinese village in Ghost Stories
  • I have to stop in Japan to create a few paintings in Kanagawa
  • From there it is south to visit Robert Louis Stevenson’s grave on Treasure Island on Samoa under the wide and starry sky…
  • Actual treasures we hunt in El Dorado which would most likely be located in Colombia
  • A hop north to become a Fake Artist in New York
  • A long trip back across the ocean to meddle in Irish politics in Inis
  • A different kind of meddling will help me renovate an English country estate in Obsession
  • I end the trip in the very North of Germany with Arler Erde to raise some sheep and drink tea for a pastoral finale.

Caveat: there are 3 countries on this list that I would not want to visit iRL, you can probably guess which those are. So all that much better to be able to explore with games :slight_smile:

edit: forgot a trip to NYC

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As no game ever features Leicester, we’ll start in my hometown of Bristol (Bristol 1350 [1]). Then I’ll take a quick train north to Lindisfarne (Lindisfarne), before hopping on a longboat to the Netherlands (Lowlands).

From there, I’ll take a leisurely coach tour of France. Stopping off in Paris (Montmartre [2]), Peyrebeille (The Bloody Inn [3]), and Carcassonne (Carcassonne).

I’ll need to ride a horse over to Italy (Condottiere), which I’ll keep as I journey across Central Asia (Huns), before trading it for a camel in Jaipur (Jaipur).

I’ll immediately ditch the camel to take a boat over to Japan (Traders of Osaka).

A plane is probably the best bet to get me over to South America, whereupon I’ll grab an alpaca-driven cart up into the Andes (Altiplano). Then a quick pirate ship over to Haiti (Tortuga 1667) and back to Guatemala (Tikal).

I’ll use one action point to travel via canal to Mexico (Mexica), then use the remaining 5 to teleport myself to Yukon (Klondike Rush [2]).

Then I’ll saddle up an orca and cross the Arctic (Inuit), leaving me in a good position to grab a boat down to Ireland (Irish Gauge).

And finally, I take a Ryanair (obviously) flight back to London (The Great Fire of London 1666) and head home.

[1] Ok, this one isn’t in my collection yet and I haven’t played it.

[2] Haven’t played these two either.

[3] Looking this up led me to realise the game is based on real events :anguished:

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What a great idea! These are all in my collection or wishlist, or on the way from Kickstarter:

Begin in London with Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective
Down to Italy for some Viticulture
Across to Greece for Santorini (or Corinth)
Jump all the way over to Japan for some painting with Kanagawa
Then across the water to NW US and Canada, literally called Cascadia
See all of the US Parks
And finally down to Mexico for Die of the Dead.

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Thank you everyone for taking up my idea and making world trips. I feel quite inspired :slight_smile:

You all followed my “rules” better than I did myself :slight_smile: Love the different modes of transport.

Ah, telescopes, that is a good one. Does the game actually mention Chile? Also, maybe a moment of quiet is in order for the destruction of Arecibo ;(

I had such trouble with South America, but then I haven’t played the Tikal-Trilogy (except Tikal as app, definitely Bildungslücke) or Altiplano. And I did not remember Bloody Inn was based on a specific place.

Ah, forgot about Parks a much better game for world traveling than Fake Artist :slight_smile:

I was also considering Viticulture but decided I already had kind of a historical theme going in the middle of my trip so I stuck with Fall of Rome.

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Sure does! All of the player screens have a different real telescope on them, and at least two of them (the Very Large Telescope and SOAR) are in Chile. I only remember two because we haven’t played IRL with more than two players so haven’t really used the other screens.

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Yeah. (I have an LSST badge on my hat… @InkyBloc, does the game mention Vera Rubin? I still won’t buy it because app game, but that would get me interested in the promised non-app expansion.)

There are some games that could score for lots of places – Pandemic, Supremacy, basically anything with a world map. (And Black Orchestra is wider than merely “Germany”, though I think it would be reaching to use it to score Poland.)

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No, it looks like they’ve had enough of Chile. The other two are the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, and the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona. In case it wasn’t clear, this is all meaningless flavor in the game, and not very prominent flavor at that.

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Yeah, I got that impression – but I know someone who works on LSST so I have a slight personal connection.

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  1. Let’s start by hopping on a train here in Kansas City in the (pre-ordered, due soon?) 18West and take that to Chicago
  2. In Chicago, we have quite a few cube rail options but the big 18xx one would be (P500 pre-ordered) 1846: Race for the Midwest and take that over near Detroit to the off-board location, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
  3. From Windsor, we can pick right back up in (Kickstarted, not yet delivered) 1867: The Railways of Canada. From here, eastern Canada is our oyster, but I think our best bet for moving on is to catch a steamer out of the maritime provinces offboard (I would catch a flight, but it’s currently 1867 and airplanes won’t be invented for a few decades yet… so there’s probably a pretty long line at security)
  4. I believe how oceans work is a scientific mystery (at least to train gamers), but we will trust the captain to do his best to make landfall in (pre-ordered) 18Ireland. I’ve never been to Ireland (but I certainly would love the opportunity to visit), so let’s choose Limerick as our arrival port… so at the very least we’ll have a lovely crude joke. We’ll chug our way across Ireland to Dublin, where we can catch another boat to…
  5. (Kickstarted, not yet delivered) 1822: The Railways of Great Britain, landing first in Swansea, taking a ride on the rails across to London. In 1822 (and most other games with London in), you cannot travel through London… you must end one journey and begin another. But let’s ignore that and hope we don’t get arrested before we’re off to the English Channel to meet up with
  6. (pre-production, available free on TTS, fan-reimplementation of 1862) 18WE (Western Europe). You could spend weeks or months touring around this particular game. But, at the end of our extravagant European tour, we will make our way towards the St Petersburg offboard location to meet up with
  7. (Kickstarted, not yet delivered) 1861: Railways of the Russian Empire. From here, many interesting places are also available, but we will make our way towards the unfortunately named “Asia” off-board location.
  8. Where we will land in mainland China depicted on the (top of wishlist, due to be reprinted this month by Lookout Games) 1880: China. From here, we will chug across the massive country to Shanghai, where will will once again hop on a boat, this time sailing across the Pacific, back to 18West, where I can catch a train back to Kansas City.

Incidentally, I could do the same route using only crayon rail games as well.

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Using games in my collection with place names in the title (Map):

Game Location Transport
Brass: Lancashire UK
Quacks of Quedlinburg Germany Double-decker train (I’ve wanted to go on one ever since I saw one at Aachen station when I was 13!)
Istanbul Turkey Transported by the magic of They Might be Giants
Babylonia Iran Trade caravan
Pax Pamir Afghanistan The slow-moving entourage of a deposed king
Yokohama Japan Nissan Micra
Okanagan Canada Open-topped canoe
Teotihuacan Mexico Feathered serpent
Jamaica Jamaica Pirate ship (Arrrr!)
Brass: Lancashire UK Walking 10 miles in the snow, uphill both ways

Today I learned that the River Pamir runs from the Pamir mountains in Tajikistan, through Afghanistan.

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Ehmmm, my collection is limited, but, including wishlist, I think I may be able to do it:

Before that, I can actually do it in one single game with several of my games: Pandemic (by helicopter, my favourite event card), my old copy of Risk staying at my parents (this has to be more likely on foot or by boat) or even Splendor (travelling by caravan from the emerald mine of South America, to the diamond pits of South Africa or the jewels of India, the app actually focuses more onto this aspect of the game).

But, starting with the canal boats from Brass: Lancashire, to catch a train from London into Scandinavia using Ticket to Ride: Europe, to board a drakkar from Raiders of the North Sea to cross to America, where with Welcome To I could do a coast to coast in one of those amazing American cars from the late 60s. There to the Caribbean for Merchants and Marauders travelling on a galleon, to move underwater through Oceans all the way round the south Atlantic and Pacific (I guess on Cousteau’s Calypso) to stop somewhere on Asia to play Arboretum and travel by tractor all the way to the old Austro-Hungarian empire for Love Letter and from there by carriage back to Lancashire… as you do.

Geez, this was difficult, particularly as the Far East I only have covered with Battle for Rokugan, which is completely not a valid stop for this particular proposal. I had to squeeze Arboretum there as a patch

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Well, I guess I will start off by touring the US, so from Portland, I will get a Ticket to Ride a train and head to Las Vegas and try to become one of the Lords of Vegas. With all my winnings, I’ll hire a limo to drive me down to Texas and invest some of my money into the Black Gold they drill for there. Then I’ll take a chartered flight to Atlanta and visit the CDC to see if they have a cure for this Pandemic yet. For some reason, the only available rental vehicle in the city is an old, beat-up, mismatched VW Beetle which I drive up to Chicago to check in on the only openly operating wizard in the US with The Dresden FIles Cooperative Card Game. Then a dimensional portal from Arkham Horror TCG whisks me to Massachusetts, and I pay for a cab so I can go watch kaiju duke it out to see who will be the King of New York.

Done with the US, I go on a Loony Quest to Canada (their $1 coin being called a looney, you see?). A long sea voyage from there brings me to Inis, now known as Ireland, of course. Another boat ride takes me to Scotland’s Isle of Skye. A few days of riding a cart lets me bring some goods south to be inspected by the Sheriff of Nottingham, and then train down to London to visit the locations of Mr. Jack’s horrific crimes.

A ferry across the channel gets me to the Lowlands of the Netherlands. A train takes me to German to visit The Quacks of Quedlinburg for some medicine to treat the mild cold I caught from all my traveling. Then back west to see the Art Nouveau in Bruxelles 1897, and continue on to see the beauty of Orléans in France. A tour of Spain follows, as I try to become El Grandest grande.

Concordia leads me to book passage to Sicilia, but before I get there, an unexpected island appears, and it is a mad scramble to Survive: Escape from Atlantis. Sailing north from Sicilia, I form an army and become a Condottiere in Italy for a bit and lead it east to Bucharest to put an end to The Fury of Dracula. From there it is not far to visit the bazaars of Istanbul, and then I journey south to Egypt to view the pyramids, one of the 7 Wonders of the world.

Camels take me east to tour the countries of the Middle East in search of the Five Tribes. A genie wish whisks me away to Jaipur, India to view the palaces and visit the markets. Following the advice in the OP, I travel to China, and a horrific night leaves me with some amazing Ghost Stories. I travel across the sea to Japan and travel the Tokaido.

Flying eagles then take me down to New Zealand, on a Quest for the Magic Ring. Figuring I should be making my way home, I decide to make one more trip, using the rest of my Vegas winnings, to fly up to the International Space Station. However, I am forced to leave shortly after in order to Escape the Aliens from Outer Space. Luckily, the escape pod lands close to home, and my travels end.

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Game Location Transport
Brass: Birmingham UK
Paris France By car through Chunnel
Lisboa Portugal By car & bike through France, car through Spain
The Great Zimbabwe Zimbabwe By ferry, train, hot-air balloon
Glory To Rome Italy By plane
Walking In Burano Italy To Venice by Mini and by foot
Orient Express Turkey Venice to Istanbul by train
Merv Silk Road Istanbul to Beijing by camel and horseback
Gùgōng + Pànjūn China Winter and Summer Palace by cab
Yokohama Japan By plane
Macao China By plane to Hong Kong, then hydrofoil
Fuji Fuji By container ship
Teotihuacan Mexico By plane
Western Legends USA By plane, then horseback
Spirit Island Canada By car, then canoe
Northwest Passage Canada By bike, plane, then icebreaker
Inis Ireland By icebreaker
Leaving Earth USA To Cape Canaveral by plane
On Mars Mars By rocket
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Welcome to the community @emspace :slight_smile: thank you for sharing your trip around the boardgame world with us. Love that you finished On Mars :slight_smile: (can’t wait for my copy to arrive)

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Could you do it with games you have played? (Ducks away quickly…)

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Thanks. These are all games I own — except for Merv which I’m desperately trying to get my hands on. I enjoy all of these games and would happily play them in their respective locations…except for Mars, maybe. I feel like there might not be as much leisure time, what with having to eke out a living and avoid being swept away by storms.

I see some cleverly chose Oceans, and I could’ve played that from Ireland to Cape Canaveral, probably. I also liked someone else’s idea of Parks.

Some day, I’ll get to travel again. :genie:

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