TTR: Iberia & South Korea
- Andy Page
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
We are gathered here today…
Ticket to Ride (TTR) Europe (Days of Wonder) was the first eurogame that my wife & I acquired, and since then we’ve collected most of the other TTR base games & expansion maps to the point where they now feel like family to me. So when it came to playing TTR: Iberia & South Korea, it felt like meeting a cousin at a family wedding: tho' there was plenty of familiarity there were also some interesting new quirks introduced to the family line.
Something old
If you’ve not played Ticket to Ride before, the premise is thus: you have plastic carriages (or boats, buses, taxis etc, depending on version) that you’re wanting to lay on a map depicting a particular part of the world (or the whole world in TTR: Rails & Sails) to complete routes shown on the ticket cards you have in front of you. To lay these carriages you have to collect train cards that match the colours of the routes you need to complete. This is the same across every TTR variant I’ve played and is usually the main way of scoring points (the longer the route, the more points you score).
At the start of the game you’re dealt a number of train cards as your starting hand, as well as a number of tickets, with a minimum number you have to keep, tho' you may decide to keep them all (a tactic I'd only recommended for advanced players or fools). As the game goes on, you can choose to draw more train cards (allowing you to lay carriages), discard train cards to lay carriages (completing routes) or draw tickets (if you’ve already completed the ones you’ve got or need to expand your network elsewhere). All this still holds true for TTR: Iberia & South Korea, but there are a few spicy additions to the gene pool as there are extra ways to stack the scoring in your favour and the method for choosing your starting tickets (and subsequent tickets) isn’t simply down to the luck of the draw...
Something new
What’s entirely new to TTR isn’t actually new as a concept, as countless games have used this mechanic over the years, but it can have a sizeable impact on the way you might choose to play this version of TTR. The mechanic I’m referring to is card drafting. When you’re dealt your tickets at the start of the game (for both maps) you have to decide which one ticket from the hand of six you’ve been dealt you want to keep and then pass the remaining five to your left. You then do the same with the new hand of five tickets that have come from your right and carry on in this manner until you have a hand of six tickets; depending on the number of players, you’ll end up with either two or three tickets from the initial six you received. From the final six you now have, you must discard down to exactly four cards; no more, no less. If you’re playing the Iberia map, there’s a special card that gets put into the train cards deck that makes you repeat this drafting process in the reverse direction to gain another four tickets, and it’s only after this second draft that you can draw new tickets. With the South Korea map, you can draw new tickets from the start, as in other TTR games.
In addition, the South Korea map features three 'Express Train' cards per player that can be used to increase the number of train or ticket cards you draw or boost your position on the Province mat (more on that later) by 1, 2 or 3, but each card can only be used once per game.
Something borrowed
This is map expansion #8 (in number: the reality being it’s the 9th map expansion as TTR: Poland was numbered 6½ - perhaps they have plans for a Harry Potter Hogwarts Express version that they'll number 9¾), so while the following two mechanics are technically new, they are very reminiscent of other mechanics already present in the world of TTR.
Firstly there are the ‘festival’ cards for the Iberia map. Put simply, when these come out in the train cards deck they are placed around the outside of the board closest to the city whose name they bear; if you complete a route into that location you can claim all the festival cards that are displayed for that place (if you join two locations with festival cards present, you have to choose which one set of cards you’re going to take) and at the end of the game, you’ll get bonus points for the number of festival cards you have in your possession. This mechanic has a similar feel to the ‘shares’ cards that are present in other TTR games, tho' their method of acquisition is different and there isn’t a scoring tie break like the ‘shares’ cards (you just get a number of points according to how many festival cards you have).
The second ‘borrowed’ element is for the South Korea map and is called the Province mat. Unlike other TTR maps, South Korea is divided into provinces, with each province containing routes of a single colour (eg: all orange); there are only two ‘colourless’ routes across the whole map, one being 5 carriages long, the other being 6! When you place carriages on a route in a province you can also choose to place a carriage on the matching space on the Province mat, so if you laid a route of 3 carriages in the yellow province, you could place another carriage on the ‘3’ space of the yellow track on the Province mat. There are nuances to placing carriages on the mat, and the Express Train cards can help you to improve your position so you're in with a greater chance of scoring the most points at game end, but I’ll let you play it to discover those... Again, the scoring feels similar to the ‘shares’ cards and to my mind there are shades of the Bullet Train scoring from TTR: Italy & Japan, but that could just be me.
Something blue
I found my plays of this expansion (particularly the South Korea map) to be brutal, no matter how many players there were, so the thing that is blue is my mood and sometimes my language, especially when my chances of securing a high scoring ticket go out the window when another player lays the 2/3-carriage route I need to complete it. With that in mind, I wouldn’t recommend the South Korea map for new or relatively new players of TTR. I've fewer qualms about the Iberia map, particularly if all players are of a similar experience level.
You may now kiss the [insert noun here]
Like with other TTR games, I think there are two ways you can play both of these maps: the traditional (possibly fairer) way of trying to complete the tickets you get and making shrewd decisions when it comes to laying the routes you need (to maximise festival card/province scoring potential), or the tactical (probably meaner) way of simply focusing on getting as many bonus points as possible and sabotaging other players by splitting up the board with disconnected routes. Most of the time I’m a traditionalist, but on the odd occasion I’ve been known to put others into the ‘blue’ zone when making very selfish choices! Ultimately, I’d recommend this expansion for players who have a good grasp of the core mechanics of TTR and have probably played a few other expansions previous to this. Like with any TTR game, it could be played by anyone, but beginners may struggle with the tactical decision making that is needed to not fall fantastically behind in the points race. And, of course, this is an expansion, not a standalone game - it has all the cards and other components but it doesn't include the plastic carriages you'll need for claiming routes; for those you'll need any other copy of Ticket to Ride (Days of Wonder).
(Review by Andy Page)