| German style board games are so named because of the influence of a few designers in Germany, and because of the popularity of some games in Europe. Luck is reduced. Planning and skill is increased. They can be short fun easy to learn games for a wide age range (Carcassonne; Bohnanza), or they can be harder more in depth games that take longer to play (Le Havre). Usually there's an element of competing against the game itself, not just against other players. Usually they avoid player elimination (unlike monopoly). Ticket to Ride is a great game. You have some destination cards. You draw train cards. You use the train cards with your train counters to build routes (for points) on the destination cards. Routes consist of a bunch of shorter routes, and these are limited so other players can claim them. The luck comes in drawing good destination cards, and what train cards come up. You can try to cobble other players by claiming their routes, but you really need to claim your routes. (This isn't a great description. See Board game geek for better.) Carcassonne is a 'simple' "draw a tile, place a tile" game. You need to build towns or farms or roads, while stopping your opponent doing the same. Monopoly gets harsh treatment among some people. I tend to agree. If you play it properly (with all the auctions, and with the intent to drive other people out of the game) it's okay, but vicious. |
You can either play with friends as pass-and-play, or with bots. Different maps are in-app payments.
We've killed time on some long train rides in Germany with it: http://www.daysofwonder.com/online/en/t2r/ipad/
Update: seems you could also play it between iPads online. We only have one iOS device so haven't tried.