Max Crowe: Me, You, and a Passel of Tiny Plastic Trains

Ticket to Ride versus blueberry pie? Too easy.

For starters, Ticket to Ride is social. You wanna meet new people? Maybe the pretty red-haired girl whom you have a crush on, but suspect you don’t have much in common with? Or perhaps the vaguely-frightening bald guy with the tattoo on his head? With Ticket to Ride, you can seat these disparate folks around a table (plus two more: let’s say a lavender haired librarian, and a man with a feather boa) and voila—you all have something in common. A few games later, tattoo-head is on your speed dial, and you’re meeting up with lavender hair and feather boa after work for drinks. No kidding. Games let you become friends with people you might not ordinarily even meet.

Does pie do this? Let’s see, a conversation built over pie goes like this: “Is this pie good <crunch, crunch, crunch>?” “<crunch><crunch>Yes. Give me more. <crunch crunch>”

Not exactly a conversation you’ll remember years later.

You know what else is great about Ticket to Ride? It’s a game that perfectly rides the sweet spot between consistency and unpredictability. Every game of TtR is different: You have different routes, different players, folks with different play styles (aggressive, defensive, social, intense), and every game plays out with its own unique charm. With the expansion sets there’s a fantastic amount of diversity in the game—and yet it’s never too far astray of what you want a game of Ticket to Ride to be. This is the mark of a great game design, to be sure. It is not the mark of blueberry pie.

Not to call out the white elephant in the room, but just how is Linda’s blueberry pie, anyway? I mean, sure, she’ll tell you it’s great, but who knows? As far as I’m concerned it’s mystery pie. Think of all the the goddawful pies you’ve had over the years. Overcooked, undercooked, too much sugar, “you’ll never guess it’s vegan"—my mom made blueberry pies that were like the unholy union of blueberry mush and wallpaper paste. Here’s the key question: Are we going to get good pie?

There’s really no way know. Pie is like that. Ticket to Ride, on the other hand, was engineered by Alan Moon to be different but the same, every time. A mystery pie from a person you’ve never met? Let’s just say it ain’t gonna win the Spiel des Jahres.

My last point: inclusiveness. Oh, I imagine Linda went on about how inclusive pie is. “Anyone can eat pie,” I can imagine her disembodied imaginary head saying, and to that disembodied imaginary head I say “Phooey.”

Pie is not for everyone.

Old people, diabetics, children—just for starters, these are people for whom blueberry pie is a less than perfect idea. Oh sure, you can make workarounds—seedless pies, sugarless pies, pies that cannot be thrown—but that brings me back to my earlier point: bad pie.

Ticket to Ride, in contrast, is incredibly inclusive. It plays a wide range of ages, and everyone can enjoy it. Yeah, okay, there’s an age at which kids are probably too young to play, but you know what? You play Ticket to Ride with kids who are too young and you know what you get? Smarter children. You give blueberry pie to kids who are too young to eat pie and you know what you get?  Pie on the walls.

Ticket to Ride is so inclusive, in fact, that it’s a gateway game. People who say “I can’t possibly enjoy playing a German board game!” give Ticket to Ride a whirl and not only do they enjoy it, they soon find themselves playing other Eurogames—Carcassonne, and Settlers, and even (years down the road) Die Macher.

Have you heard heard anyone call blueberry pie a gateway pie? A conversation like: “You know, I always thought I didn’t like pie, but then I tried blueberry. Now I’m eating apple, and strawberry, and rhubarb—it’s like a whole new world of pie has been opened to me!”

Of course you haven’t.

Linda Formichelli offers this rebuttal:

This is complete B.S. All hail pie!

Linda Formichelli: Nothing You Could Say Could Tear Me Away From My Pie

Objective analysis shows that blueberry pie rocks out over Ticket to Ride. According to the totally unbiased US Highbush Blueberry Council, “Everybody loves blueberries.” Ticket to Ride can make no such claim. Here’s why:

• Blueberry pie is fiber-full. The current fiber intake guidelines are about 25 grams per day, but our actual average daily intake is a paltry 12 grams. Blueberries, with 4 grams of fiber per cup, can help us meet that goal. Wanting to give Ticket to Ride a fair chance to prove itself on the fiber front, I looked up the fiber content of cardboard and plastic trains on the USDA National Nutrient Database, but these components weren’t listed, which leads me to believe that they are not good sources of any nutrients—and even if they did have fiber, those little trains don’t go down easy.

• Blueberry pie has no screwage factor. In Ticket to Ride, you can purposely place your trains in such a way that they cut off another player’s track. Blueberry pie lacks this potential screwage. It’s true that someone can cut the slices unevenly or snitch the last piece, but that’s nothing compared to spending precious locomotive cards to connect two cities only to have some yahoo cut off the future growth of your track for fun.

• Blueberry pie serves more. Ticket to Ride is playable by only two to five people, while the typical blueberry pie easily serves from one to eight. A sixth person shows up at the game table? Sorry, Charlie. A ninth person shows up at the pie table? We’ll just cut the pieces a little smaller! Truly a flexible feast.

• Blueberry pie protects your brain. It has been said that games help keep your mind sharp. Where are the studies, particularly those relating to train games? On the other hand, blueberries are chock full of antioxidants such as anthocyanins and phenolics, which keep your brain healthy. In my exhaustive search, I found no studies showing that Ticket to Ride protects the cells against oxidative damage.

• Blueberry pie goes with ice cream. If my husband Eric is any indication, gamers do not let people eat drippy, melting foods while playing their precious games. So even if ice cream did go well with Ticket to Ride—which it doesn’t—we would never find out.

• July is National Blueberry Month. Ticket to Ride Month is when? Oh, you mean it doesn’t have its own national holiday?

• Blueberries are the entire reason some of us are alive on Earth right now. According to the esteemed US Highbush Blueberry Council, blueberries—one of the few fruits native to North America—were an important crop for the Pilgrims in the 1600s. Without blueberries, many of us Americans might not be here today. Is Ticket to Ride an American treasure? Has this game saved anyone from starving and helped ensure the success of the American people?

Max Crowe responds:

Oh noes! Blueberry has a month on the calendar! I’ve been defeated!!!!

In case you couldn’t detect, that was sarcasm. When National Blueberry Month (narrowly beating out Erectile Dysfunction Awareness month as America’s most obscure month) is your trump card, it’s a sad day for Team Blueberry. (Aside from which: Blueberry Month does not equal Blueberry Pie Month. If it did, I could just mention that January is National Hobby month, and we’d be even, right?)

What else? Well, Linda’s lead argument is that, ahem, pie has fiber. Not to be graphic, but this is a double-edged sword at best. I think you all know what I mean. When it rolls around to October (National Toilet Tank Repair month), I’m just guessing that you won’t be bragging about fiber content.

Linda’s best argument is the flexibility of pie in serving more people, but the way I see it: nine people = two games of Ticket to Ride. What’s the big deal?

It kills me to say it, but my counterpart’s arguments are, like so many pies, half-baked.

Very entertaining piece--kudos to both writers.

But seriously, why must we argue, when a slice of pie goes so well together with a game or two of Ticket to Ride.  I’ll have my pie/game and eat it/play it too!  And please give me another slice...of this special feature on BGN, that is.

Mmmmm.... pie....

The whole discussion is bogus.  If you’re going to have a throwdown between any game and pie, it has to be San Marco!

See, THIS is why I miss you guys. :)

This is a great Friday column. Thank you!

Come on Linda, you totally forgot about the money argument. You cannot buy a single slice of Ticket To Ride to play solo.
Blueberry pie rulez + pwns the n00b trainz!

I thought this was a great column last Friday. I just reread it and was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes once again. Thanks for a real treat!