Ticket to Ride Powergrid

That's actually two board game titles, Ticket to Ride Europe and Power Grid.

Ticket to Ride Europe

Ticket to Ride is a game about building a railway network from one city to another. Basically the aim is to build the longest linked railway network. For more info, just check out this BoardGameGeek link. Anyway, the game is not hard to understand, but I think it lacks sophistication found in other board games like Puerto Rico. Hardly any strategy needed as all you ever really do is to build your designated routes as quick as possible.

Power Grid

Ranked number 2 at BoardGameGeek, this game better be good. And in some respect, it is. The aim of the game is to provide the most electricity to most cities that are connected. You bid for a power station (coal, rubbish, oil, nuclear or eco-friendly), then buy raw materials, and connect cities. The amount of money you receive depends on the number of cities you can supply your electricity to.

The cycle starts again, this time with potentially more efficient power plants. Buy more raw material to burn off, connect more cities, etc. The game ends when someone connects a certain number of cities (depending on the number of players). The game is actually quite interesting. I think I still like Puerto Rico a bit more, because it involves a little more strategy. But Power Grid has its own appeal. The bidding war for a power plant could get quite heated sometimes.
But then players have to worry about buying material and connecting cities as well. Quite an interesting game. Better than the train ride.