Game Review: Ticket to Ride

Days of Wonder, $40

Ticket to Ride is a game where two to five players ages 8 and up compete for the highest score for by connecting cities across the United States with train routes. To start the game, each player picks a color and takes the 45 train car pieces and scoring marker of that color. Each player also draws three ticket cards and must keep two of them. The tickets define a pair of cities and a point value. If you can connect the cities on your ticket before play ends, then you get the number of points on the card. If you do not connect the cities, you lose that many points.

Play is simple. On each turn you have three options. You may either draw three tickets – keeping at least one in your hand, or you may draw 2 cards (either from four face up cards or “blind” from the deck), or you may claim (“buy”) a route – a path between two cities. Routes vary in their requirements (“cost”) from one card up to seven cards, either of a specific color or any single color. The longer a route is, the more points it scores. For example, a one card route scores 1 point, a three card route scores 4 points, and a six-card route scores a whopping 15 points. Some city pairs have two connecting routes, but most only allow one, so there
will always be competition for key routes.

Scoring for individual routes happens throughout the game, but ticket scoring only takes place at the end of the game. The game ends when a player is down to 2 or less train pieces. All tickets are then scored, and the player with the longest continuous route gets 10 bonus points.

The production values are fantastic. Days of Wonder strives to provide top notch game components, and it shows. The box, board, and playing pieces are all nice, attractive, and have the look and feel of quality. They even include a bag of extra playing pieces of each color knowing that with 45 required per color, it’s highly likely that you’re going to lose some over the years. The game is ready to play as soon as you open the box. No breaking pieces off of plastic “trees” or other such set up – just unfold the board, pick your colors, shuffle the cards, and play. Even the 45 train pieces you need to play for each color are already separated into their own bags. The spares are in a bag by themselves. I, for one, appreciated not having to count 45 pieces of each color before playing. Also included in the package is a code allowing you 6 months of free play on Days of Wonder’s web site. Here they have several of their games, including Ticket to Ride that can be played on-line with people from all over the world.

Ticket to Ride is one of the games our whole family will play. It’s simple and lighthearted enough for those who want a casual game, but there is plenty of strategy for those who want a deeper game. A typical game takes 30 to 60 minutes. Competition is always fierce (in a friendly way) as well. In our first game as a family, my wife and younger daughter (the more casual gamers in the family) tied for the win, and 2 of the other three of us also tied for second (or was that last?). The most recent game we played, I ended the game the turn before my oldest daughter would have scored a 21 point route. That made for a 42 point swing – she would have crushed us – leaving me with a win (for a change)!