A cross-country train adventure in which players collect and play matching train cards to claim railway routes.
Originally published in 2004 and designed by Alan R. Moon, Ticket to Ride has won numerous awards and sold over a million copies. Why is it so popular? Probably because it’s the perfect ‘gateway’ game. This means it is the kind of game that is perfect for playing with people whose previous experience with boardgames has been mainstream games such as Monopoly and Scrabble. The rules are easy to learn, the theme is straightforward, it’s a nice blend between luck and strategy, and it’s always a hit with new players.
Basically, Ticket to Ride is a game of set collection. Players try and collect sets of matching coloured cards, which they can then trade in to place rows of their train carriages on the board, connecting routes between cities and scoring points for doing so.
Highly recommended for gamers and non-gamers alike. The Europe version adds ferries, tunnels and stations to the mix, and the Swiss version is especially good for two players. The Marklin Edition is played on map of Germany and introduces Passengers and Merchandise to the gameplay; plus every one of the 118 train cards features a different image of a Marklin model train car or locomotive. Train hobbyists can tell you that Marklin has been around for over 140 years and is the world’s leader in the miniature train hobby. Nordic Countries takes the train routes through Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and is especially designed for 2-3 players.
There are also dice, card and digital versions available.
Note the original game rules summary here includes the variants given in the 1910 expansion.
Thank you for the great resources. All 3 links for TTR are broken. Please let me know if/once they are fixed or if they are off for good. Thanks.
Links fixed. My apologies, with the entry of almost 200 games at once, there was bound to be a few errors. But dead links will not be tolerated at the EOG!
Link for Europe is broken.
Sorry – got broken in the site revamp. Fixed!
Thanks for the awesome guides. They are awesome. I found the tiniest of typos in the Ticket to Ride: Europe guide:
“Only one can be built be a player per turn, and only 3 per player for the whole game.”
It should be:
“Only one can be built by a player per turn, and only 3 per player for the whole game.”
Sorry to be a stickler. The rest of that guide is perfectly made.
I like sticklers – fixed! Kept the same version number as it was such a small change.
As you like sticklers 😉 The sentence “If there are less than 3 Tickets left” should be “If there are fewer than 3 Tickets left”.
All updated. 🙂
Any chance of updates for Europa 1912 or Marklin?
No current plans, sorry.
I’m interested in Ticket to Ride and mainly play games with my wife and 9 yr old daughter. Which version of TTR would you recommend for us?
I must admit there are so many versions these days I’ve completely lost track of the differences. But if you’ve never played before, just grab the original version, you can’t go wrong – it’s a classic.