My partner and I rarely find an occasion when we both have the energy and the brainpower at the same time. Often, when we make an effort to carve out some time, we play something mindless and/or short; fare such as Fluxx (Star Fluxx and Firefly Fluxx being some of the better flavors) or Skipbo (a game my partner likes waaaay too much, but I knew that going in before we actually got married). But, occasionally, we play something worth mentioning:
Ticket to Ride – Heart of Africa – I have made a habit of buying my partner a Ticket to Ride product of some sort for every special occasion (birthday, Christmas, Mother’s Day, wedding anniversary) for the last few years, which means we’re practically “caught up” on the available products. I recently gifted her the Map Collection: Volume 1 – Team Asia Asia & Legendary Asia and Map Collection 3: The Heart of Africa; 1 for her birthday and the other for Mother’s Day (I don’t remember which for which… I could go look but it doesn’t actually matter).
I regret to inform you, dear readers, that our play of Heart of Africa included more than building rails and completing tickets in the heart of Africa – we used the entire map! Early on in the game, I felt as though the money spent on the expansion was probably not worthwhile; I was making sure to use the Terrain Cards to double almost all of my routes and I had kept all 4 of my initial tickets and was making great progress on them. Through the course of the game, we ended up dividing up and completely blocking each other out of portions of the map; I had routes connecting the south with almost all of the eastern portion of Africa, whereas my partner had concentrated her route building on the south and western areas. This division of the continent had a strong role to play in what occurred next: I kept drawing tickets that were impossible for me to complete. My partner also struggled, but fared slightly better and was able to come up with 9 completed tickets, most of which were worth 12+ points. I ended up losing 22 points to routes that she cut me out of (in both cases, just before I was about to claim the critical link); but even if I had made those 22 points, I still would have lost by 20+ points.
All-in-all, Heart of Africa is a a great addition to a Ticket to Ride map collection. My biggest gripe of the whole thing is how much I felt like a white male of European descent covering Africa in railroads for my own purposes. I don’t know if the game is problematic… but it does provide some additional geographic education that I would otherwise miss out on, as the subject of “Cities in Africa” does not come up very often in my day-to-day life.
