While at Gencon, I got the chance to talk with a few of the guys over at Days of Wonder (Ticket to Ride and Smallword) about their new game Five Tribes and the gorgeous anniversary edition of Ticket to Ride. Check it out here:

Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala is a new take on a few old and new mechanics. It evokes old school Mancala in more than name, the main action of each turn is to pick up all the meeples on one tile and drop them one at a time until you drop the last one and score accordingly. The game also toys with current worker placement schemes by flipping the game from 'where to place your workers' to 'where can I afford to let workers be'. The game has a lot of pieces and many paths to score, but it feels manageable because the play of the game is constantly reducing the pieces out there and you don't need to calculate every turn super heavily to be able to play.

The 10th Anniversary Edition of Ticket to Ride is a great balance of fancy and usable. I hadn't got to fiddle with the train cars yet, but when I walked by them the first time I was stopped in my tracks. The whole set is of the same quality, but it is affordable enough that you wouldn't feel bad taking those wonderful cars out of their tins and using them regularly. Few games stay so popular for so long to deserve a reprint like this, but Ticket to Ride has proven its worth and I'm glad to see it treated so well.