Microsoft Tries to Sell Computers By Admitting They Aren’t Cool - Bizarre marketing. I'm sure they think it's a pejorative, but would you ever in your own advertising want to imply that a competitor is cooler than you? Doubly bizarre since Apple is a hardware company, and Microsoft a software company.

Ticket to Ride

I love board games.  In me pre-teens I started playing Avalon Hill strategy board games, at the time renowned for their 100 page rule books and potential for 8+ hour long games.  I quickly came to the realization that few people shared my taste, and would much prefer Outburst, Scrabble, or Phase 10.  I’ve wanted to play Settlers of Catan for years, but knew I did not have the minimum 3-4 players who would suffer through learning it.  Today I saw that Amazon has it on sale, along with the 5-6 player expansion set.  After failing to convince myself that I could get my wife and friends to play it, I came across a different game in some of the reviews for Settlers: Ticket to Ride.

The goal of Ticket to Ride is to score points by claiming railway routes between cities, the longer the route, the more points.  At the end of the game, whoever has the most points (there’s a score track on the perimeter of the board making it easy) wins.  Unlike many other intellectual board games, the goal for victory is very straightforward, making the strategy component much more subtle, such as trying to fulfill "destination ticket" cards, or deciding whether to lay a short route now, or save up for a longer route later.

As described by one avid fan of the game on YouTube, this is a "serious" board game that is as easy to get your friends to play as UNO, with people even asking for a rematch if they lose.  Perfect!  I’m hoping that Ticket to Ride will be a gateway board game that I can use as a spring board to Settlers of Catan.  Someday.