New Gaming Addiction
Last week, my brother-in-law introduced me to Ticket to Ride by Days of Wonder. It is a regular board game played with little plastic trains, a deck of cards and a board. You can read about how to play elsewhere. The short on this one is that I was hooked instantly.
I love turn-based startegy games as they allow time to properly think, and Ticket to Ride fit the bill nicely. I also found out that you can get it for iPad (the iPhone version is a seperate download), which is great for online play (or local wifi/bluetooth), playing by yourself, and playing without having to set up the board or manually track your score. The game also supports the "pass and play" or hotseat model for multiple players, but that is ackward as you have a hand of cards that your opponents aren't supposed to see. My wife and I have been playing on local wifi with two iPads, and that has been great.
The iOS versions are also a lot cheaper (especially if you are interested in the expansions available via in-app purchase) than buying the actual printed board game, but you do give something up playing on the screen instead of at a table. If you want to play, I'm soup.matt on Game Center.
And while we are on turn-based strategy games, another one I have been enjoying on the iPad is Neuroshima Hex. This one is a more complex military strategy game that is pretty easy to learn, but has very deep strategy that can take a long time to master. It is a universal app, so one purchase runs on your iPhone/iPod Touch as well as your iPad. It lacks online support (a bummer if your gaming buddies aren't local), but the game is well suited to "pass and play" (no hiding cards to worry about).
The main advantage of the iPad version over the printed game is that battles can take a long time to run and require a lot of bookkeeping, something a computer is much better at than a human, which means you get to focus on the startegy and game play instead of filling sheet of notebook paper with calculations. Neuroshima Hex also has a lite version if you want to try before you buy.
