How to play: Ticket to Ride

Ticket to Ride is a euro-style train building game for 2–5 players.

The main object of the game is to have the most victory points at the end of the game. You get victory points through two main ways:

The first and main way is by completing mission cards. A mission card will have two cities and a point value on it. If at the end of the game you have a continuous route between the two cities, you get the points. If you were unable to complete the route, then you get those points subtracted from your score.

With this mission, if you have a continuous route from LA to New York at the end of the game, you get 21 points. Otherwise, 21 points are subtracted from your score.

The second way is simply by playing trains. Whenever you put down a line of trains between two cities, you get points depending on how many train pieces it took.

1 train piece: 1 point

2 train pieces: 2 points

3 train pieces: 4 points

4 train pieces: 7 points

5 train pieces: 10 points

6 train pieces: 15 points

Since this took 5 train pieces, it is worth 10 points.

On a single turn you can do one of three things:

You can draw train cards: There will be 5 face-up train cards as well as a face-down deck to draw from. You can draw 2 cards from the deck, 2 non-wild face-up cards, 1 non-wild face-up card and 1 card from the deck, or 1 wild face-up card.

If there are ever three face-up wild cards, discard all the face up cards and draw five new face-up cards.

So one option with these cards would be to take the orange and blue cards straight up. Another would be to take the white card, wait to have it replaced, then possibly take a card from the top of the deck. A final option would be to take the face-up, multi-colored wild card.

You can draw more mission cards: If you want more mission cards you spend your turn to draw three missions from the mission deck. You have to keep at least one mission card from your draw, but you can keep two or all three if you want. Your mission cards are kept secret until the end of the game so don’t show anyone what missions you have, even if you have completed the route on it.

An example mission draw. You have to keep at least one of these but can keep up to all three. A good strategy is to look for missions that look like they can overlap.

Place trains: Using the cards in your hand you can place trains on one city-to-city section. You have to play one card for every train spot on that section. If that section is a specific color than your cards all have to be that color. If that section is grey than all your cards simply need to be same color.

For example, if I wanted to claim the route between Montreal and New York I would need to play 3 blue cards. I would put my three trains on those spots and now I own that route.

Another example would be if I wanted to go from Montreal to Toronto I would have to play three cards of all one color, in this case I have three orange cards so I could place them down and claim that route.

Remember: you can only claim one city-to-city route each turn.

So just a recap: On your turn you can either draw train cards, draw mission cards, or place trains.

And now you’re ready to play! When setting up the game, deal four trains cards to each player to start with. Each player is also dealt three mission cards, of which they need to keep at least two. Put each player’s score tracker at zero. You will keep track of the points each player has as they lay down trains. You don’t score missions until the end, even if you complete them before then. If you lose track of someone’s score, do not fret! Someone’s score is calculable at all times. Just go through each train segment they have placed on the board and calculate the score that way.

The end of the game starts when someone has two or fewer trains left. When that happens, everyone gets one more turn then the game ends. Scores are tallied, mission values are added or subtracted depending on if they were completed.

The card representing longest path does a good job of showing how it works. It is, simply, the longest continuous route out of all of the players.

A final 10 points are added to whoever had the longest continuous train (you can only use each part of track once for this calculation so no “I made a circle so my length is infinite”.) Whoever has the most amount of points wins.

And that’s Ticket to Ride! Enjoy your game and let me know if this tutorial helped you!

Board Game Brother review of Ticket to Ride

Brother Rating

Ticket to Ride is one of the easiest games to teach someone even if their experience with board games is limited to games like Sorry or Monopoly. The rules are simple and intuitive and it is very possible for a new person to end up winning on their first game. It’s run time rarely exceeds 90 minutes and is much more likely under an hour.

This is one of the two games (the other being Settlers of Catan) that got me into the more advanced board game world. It is also one of the main games that I end up playing with my brothers all the time. Not only do I never have any concern getting them to play it but it was actually one of them that introduced it to me and taught me how to play it many years ago.

This game is constantly touted as a “gateway game”, one that can be an easy entrance and introduction for someone into the ever-growing world of board games.

Overall, I would give it both brother’s approval, a full 100% on the teachability scale.

Fun Rating

Ticket to Ride is one of my absolute favorite games. It’s rules are blissfully simple but I’m constantly evolving my strategy and having to play different ways depending on the missions I get and the people I’m playing against.

It’s simple and relatively quick but it has a lot of strategy packed into it and it let’s the tension slowly build throughout the game as more and more segments and routes are taken and it becomes more difficult to complete your missions.

Overall, 5 out of 5 stars, one of my all-time favorite games, especially in the “gateway game” category.