by Whaleyland
I just finished my first campaign as a 2-player game the entire time through. Some of the concerns expressed above have happened: more of the routes are blue and red than any other color, the ticket pile was huge at the end, and the only company cities were ours and Mama O'Connell's. However, neither of us felt the game underperformed. It was fun and most everything worked to our satisfaction.My main complaints were:
* Florida: It felt like a wasted area with only three stops and short routes. We brought it in on our 10th game and I was the only one to build a route there, and only to Jacksonville. The circus mechanic was fun but because we brought it in so late, it was used up in one game and weren't sure if we should retire it immediately or play through the rest of that specific game. Just because we felt we didn't get much out of the mechanic, we kept using it until the game was over and then retired it. We also misread the rules and awarded the gold prizes immediately by accident, which may have given me the win that game when it should have gone to my opponent.
* California: As a Californian by birth, I really didn't like what they did with my state. Why wasn't California the Gold Rush plot? Like, seriously?! There was never a goldrush in the Cascades. If something in this game felt uninformed, it was that. And the bridges were ahistorical—the Golden Gate Bridge and other suspension bridges like it wouldn't be erected until the Great Depression. Earthquakes were on point, but again, not until 1906 for any that really mattered in California. The whole California thing felt like uninformed garbage.
* Haunted Wastes: I sort of agree with @klurejr about the Ghost Train and curses. I mean, I don't hate the concept but it also felt a little lazy, especially since the mechanic was restricted to just that one map piece. I think something more realistic like Saboteurs could have had the same impact and maybe parallel the real life history of Mormon vigilantes in Utah during the railroad age.
* Tickets in general: While the ticket pile was huge by the end of our game, one thing was very obvious: these tickets all went East-West or stayed within their tiles (rarely). Because the board grows organically from the East Coast and you can meander their placement however you want, it makes it almost impossible to create tickets that go to regions that are not yet revealed. I think this is a fundamental problem with this game and perhaps its replayability in the 1901 mode. I had hoped that after game 10 or 11, when the last map board had been revealed, a bonus deck of Tickets would appear that includes 20 or so Tickets connecting north-south destinations. The fact that this didn't happen really was disappointing to me and an oversight in the game's design.
All that being said, I still enjoyed it and would probably play again if offered, though I'd also like to see a version of this maybe set in Europe.