When I first received my Expansion Set I was a little disappointed. Some descriptions online aren't very clear when they say that the set includes cards from the Mystery Expansion set (long out of print and no longer available). Well I'll clear it up for the newer game players like myself. The original mystery set was a giveaway at a show and came in a magazine back in 2004. It included 4 new tickets and 5 character cards. The cards were mixed into the ticket deck after the initial tickets were given out at the beginning of the game. The character cards were something special though! There were 4 different characters which granted the person that found them a prize/power of sorts. The Tycoon, gave the owner 10 extra points at the end of the game if they had a coast to coast connection. The Inspector, let the owner double the value of any card worth 10 or less points. The Station Agent, gave 10 points to the owner if they visited the most cities at the end. And the Engineer, in which there were two cards, let the owner dig through the ticket deck and pick out a ticket of his choice. Sounds fun right!? Well the 1910 pack includes the 4 tickets but NOT the character cards. But I have a solution for this at the bottom! First, the review!



I love this expansion for a couple reasons.



1. I really enjoy the new rule set, especially 1910 Mega, which throws a whole bunch of extra tickets in the mix. You get 5 tickets at the start (keep 3+) and it also throws in a the globetrotter card which gives the person with the most tickets at the end 10 more points.

I like the other two variants as well, Classic, which swaps the longest track with the most tickets card, and then the big cites variant that tosses both those cards out and only includes tickets connecting to Big cites. Like I said I enjoy all of them, but the Mega game usually gets crazy with people taking tickets left and right.



2. I love the new card sizes! The cards in the original game were annoyingly small but in the expansion the cards are the size of normal playing cards. And not just the new cards, the expansion includes new versions of all of the cards from the original game as well! So this expansion takes the place of the cards from the original. Much easier to shuffle and hold on to. I recommend this set for that reason alone.



So back to the Mystery Characters. I told you I had a solution and here it is!



I made my own custom Mystery Character cards! And you can too! The original character cards were the size of the original, small game cards and purple, so a player knew when one was up. Well I prefer a little more mystery in my mystery cards. ;) So I created a set which is the same size as the 1910 set and has the same back as well. I printed them on card stock and rounded the edges so it is really difficult to see if you're about to get a mystery character.



I've also set this up so that you can do it too! Unfortunately, Amazon won't let me link directly to my files but there are two ways you can find them. First, I made a post on the BoardGameGeek Ticket to Ride forum on 3/12/2012 which links to them (my screenname is FujiToast). Otherwise right now a google search of "Custom Mystery Characters" will also take you directly to the forum post.



Have Fun!