Funny story about why the game attracted me so much last year :)
My dev team
In my former company, SpaceOS, we organized biweekly game sessions (1 hour) as a team icebreaker.
Our team played games like:
- 2 truths and 1 lie
- Gartic Phone
- Tixid
- Saboteur
- CodeNames
- LLama
- Among Us
- Bang!
A few teammates particularly enjoyed board games, which led them to shift to online play on BoardGameArena (BGA) during COVID times.
So, we started playing together there during game time, mainly Llama, Saboteur, and eventually Bang!
BGA is a quite popular platform, using more than 12 servers for free and paid online games.
Currently, BGA states that they are 11M players competing in over 1K games.
My curiosity around BGA
I discovered that BGA was a well-developed platform with clear instructions for each game. I explored its game portfolio and eventually found Ticket to Ride.
I had played this casual board game a few times during New Year’s Eve and longer holiday breaks.
The game seemed simple—you grasp the rules in five minutes. But my friend consistently beat everyone.
So, I decided to play online to prepare for our next meeting.
Skill advancement in BGA
After winning a few games, I looked into the ELO ranking system (similar to chess).
The numbers revealed that the game wasn’t as random as it seemed—there were champions who rarely lost, except against other top players.
I joined an online tournament open to everyone (20 games, one per week in async mode—five months of playing! 😲).
Then, I played Arena games for more advanced players.
After reaching a higher ELO, I joined strong player tournaments, which taught me how to play at a high level.
I started understanding the game engine better and scoring well.
I developed blocking tactics, ticket management strategies, and learned to adjust the game pace in 1v1 matches, which are much more competitive compared to 3/4/5 player games.