The game has you in a constant balance of deciding what is urgent and what you can delay, and then having to adjust for the inevitable disaster that follows the wrong choice. You need that green train card for a later turn so you should probably take it now before someone else does… but that means not claiming that five carriage track on the board you’ve been saving up for for ages, and what if someone takes that? Which one is safer? Unlike other games where you can have multiple actions on every turn, Ticket to Ride offers you only one. The beauty of this game is in how that simplicity – a choice of three actions – becomes agonising. On each turn you have three options claim a route by putting down little coloured train markers and gain further points, collect two of the multi-coloured train cards that will enable you to claim a route in the first place, or pick a new ticket (although in practice people almost never do the last one). A longer route is a Schrodinger’s cat of a card that can mark the difference between victory and defeat and should only be picked with care. Meaning that your choice is largely about risk/reward balance.
But should you fail to complete these routes, that same number is deducted from your final score. These routes have a point score based on their distance and difficulty – complete a long route by the end of the game and you get a high score, complete shorter ones and you get barely anything. At the start of the game you draw tickets that name two places on the board you have to connect: Destination tickets. Ticket to Ride is a game of building train routes between cities (and in some cases countries). The Rules of Ticket to Rideįirstly, if you’re unfamiliar with the regular game – crazy as this may seem - a brief explanation of the rules. The Switzerland map is ideal for two players, and the Great Britain set allows Brits to build railways to their own home towns.īut my favourite expansion map – by far – is the first, Ticket to Ride Asia, and that’s the one I’m going to talk about now. Multiple base game sets – straight Ticket to Ride, Europe and Nordic Countries – give you options from the get go, and double-sided expansion map sets multiply this variety tenfold.
It’s a game I often forget to bring to the table, but whenever I do, I have a fantastic time. An evergreen gateway classic, it plays well with young and old, new and experienced, casual and hobbyist alike. Ticket to Ride is quite possibly the most essential board game in any gamer's collection.