Ticket to Ride: Game Review

In 2004, Days of Wonder published a board game called “Ticket to Ride.” Since its debut, dozens of expansions have been released all over the world. The version I have played is the North American version, but there are others based all over the world. There is even, unsurprisingly, an app for it. The game is fairly simple in concept, but can be much more difficult in execution. 

I quite enjoyed the times I have played it. On group game nights, when asked what I want to play, my answer is always “Ticket to Ride.” I usually do a fairly good job at it, too. At the beginning of the game, you pick up 3 tickets that you may choose 1 to 3 from. These tickets give you connections you have to make, be it Los Angeles to New York or Duluth to Miami and many other combinations of city connections. Each connection is worth points from about 5 to 20. If you fail to make a connection, then those points count against you at the end.

After picking your routes you pick up 5 colored train cards. Each card is colored matching to possible routes on the board. There are also Locomotive cards, which are wild. Connections between 2 towns can cost 1 card or 6 cards. All the cards you spend for a connection must be the same color. For example, if you have a 6 car connection, then you can play 5 black cards and a wild, or 6 black cards (as long as the track you are trying to buy is black). There are also grey tracks that can be any single color you have. For example there is a 4 car track and you have 4 yellow cards you can buy this track. A track is worth more at the end of the game if it has more cards required to buy it. This means a 6 car connection is worth more than a 5 car connection.

The last beginning-of-game process is picking which color you’d like to designate for your tracks. You’ll then be given a bag full of little plastic trains of said color (I always go for blue). There is also a small wooden ticker that keeps count of points along the edge of the board. Each color of train has a matching ticker. My group of friends usually doesn't worry about the ticker until after the game is over, but you can keep track of how many points you've accumulated as you play. I don’t recommend counting the connections made, though, because then everyone knows what you've completed and it is always more fun to surprise the group at the end with your connections.

As the game progresses and you finish your connections, you can take up more connection tickets. This is recommended as long as there are enough trains in your pile still. You must keep at least one of the connection tickets if you do this, so be careful! Eventually someone runs out of plastic trains to put down and the game finishes with one last hurried round of putting down trains.

Points are awarded for several things: Making the connection cards, length of tracks laid down, and one person is awarded 10 points for longest continuous train. Continuous being the operative word here. You may have put down the most trains, but that doesn’t mean you’ve got the longest continuous track. If you have more than two connections to a city you’ve nearly always lose this award.

Everyone counts up their finished connections and moves the ticker accordingly. A perfect game is over 300 points and I’ve never seen it. My friend who owns the game played with his fiance on the app version to figure it out. 

It is even possible to end up in the negative numbers, which last time I played I came perilously close to such an outcome. This was due to one of my friends continually cutting me off from making my connection. My 20 point card that connected New York and LA was useless and now worth negative 20 when it came to point counting. The other connections I made were washed out by the negative and my only points came from the tracks themselves, none of which were very long. Usually my group doesn’t intentionally do this, but this friend had decided that rather than make long connections he would spider web out from the center of the board. Nearly everyone was blockaded. This may have been retribution for the prior time when he was 1 set of tracks from completing his connection and someone laid down their cars there knowing he needed the connection. He then had no way to complete the connection because it was so late in the game.


All in all, I am a huge fan of this game and love playing it. My friends all enjoy it as well. It isn’t the cheapest game on the market, but it is easy to find and a great family game. There are, like I said, versions for all over the world so if you’d like to teach the little ones some geography this might be a great find for you. If you have Steam you can even buy it on there for less than the physical copy. I have yet to play it online so I can’t give you a good comparison. Nonetheless, I do recommend playing this game at least once.