In my last blog, I described how I broke down Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries into a statistical model that I could use in the design of Ticket to Ride: Iceland. In this one, I’ll look at how I started to build up the board and what the main challenges were.
The first thing I needed was a base layer that approximately matched the proportions of the Nordic Countries board. I found a very nice physical map on wikimedia commons, which did the trick. The nice thing about this particular map was that it was not really high contrast, and would allow me to easily put place labels and other imagery that would stand out.
Before I even started placement of cities or tracks on the board, I did some research. I needed to know what the major cities of Iceland were, where they were located, what geologic features I should keep an eye out for, and what some of the major roads were. I should call out that Iceland does not have an extensive rail network – I knew this going in, but instead envisioned a future where the Icelandic people had developed a mass-transit system with zero-environmental impact, had the capability to withstand the geologic stresses of the region, and looked like classic trains.