The Thurn and Taxis game against myself is over. The Blitz player won in a tie score game, the tie being broken by the player to finish the game. I believe the Blitz strategy is strong but not overpowering. Lessons learned:

• Playing against myself is boring. Geez. I wouldn’t do it again.
• The Blitz strategy is strong no matter what, but even stronger the more people are in the game. In this one the Normal player only lost one point to getting to tiles late. In a regular game he probably would have lost more.
• For Blitz play, stay the heck away from the eastern side of the board. You need to ensure that you can either draw two cards or play two every turn. This game, I had to clear the draw pile with the Administrator twice to avoid having to throw away a partly-finished route. As a result, the Blitz player had a 6-city route bonus!
• Neither player managed to get all the cities in Baiern. If any player is hurrying doing this would take quite a bit of luck, to get the cities you need when you need them.
• If you’re not playing Blitz, it might be best to save Baiern for later in the game. Here’s why: Nowhere else is it so worthwhile to string many houses together, and nowhere else can you actually gain from adding just one more house. If another player is threatening to end the game, you don’t need to worry about only putting together short routes; you can put together one route and finish it at the last moment.
• If you can, focus on scooping up one bonus at a time. If you do several halfway, you’re likely to lose points by getting them after other players and are in danger of having to make silly routes later on just to finish up those bonuses or lose them entirely.
• I don’t believe the all-provinces-but-Baiern bonus is viable if any player unless everyone is dawdling. Also, I’d be really startled to see a player get this and not have at least one house in Baiern.
• I’d like to try a house rule where all players get a once-a-game ability to use any city card as a wild card. This would encourage players to go for long, complicated routes even if it would rely on having to draw one specific city. Putting together big routes that complete several objectives at once is a big payoff for me, and I suspect it might be for others, too.