Ticket to Ride is a game for 2-5 players. You compete to collect sets of matching coloured cards, which you use to claim routes on the board, linking up cities to score points. You score bonus points by connecting certain routes (determined by destination tickets) or by having the longest route at the end of the game.
It’s a simple game to learn, with only three possible actions in a turn it’s very quick to explain. It’s quite quick to play as well, each turn is only a few seconds long, with only the very rare turn taking a minute or more to play. As such, it’s a great introduction to gaming , and something that people who don’t think of themselves as gamers could probably be induced to play without great hassle.
It works well with only two players, something that many games fail with, but I feel the best number of players is 4-5. With only two players then it can be quite easy to complete your Destination Tickets, with more players it’s quite a lot harder.
Longer routes are worth more points, but are harder to complete. Certain routes can be claimed by sets of any colour, and some require specific colours. Locomotive cards act as jokers, making it easier to complete these long routes. You need to complete a number of the longer routes (five and six in length) to be in with a chance of winning.
In addition to claiming long routes, completing Destination Tickets is key to winning the game. If you fail to complete a ticket, it costs that many points from your final total. Some tickets are worth more than 20 points, the difference between completing on not is the same as scoring several long routes on the board.
There are a number of expansions and follow on games, Ticket to Ride: Europe is the most popular, ranking 47th on board game geek’s list of games. It adds ferries (require locomotive in the set of cards claiming the route), tunnel (harder routes to complete) and stations (allow you to count routes not yours to complete tickets). This evolution of the game appears to add some interesting new rules, which I’ll probably pick up at some point, to see how much of a difference they make.
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