Ticket to Ride

Overview

Ticket to Ride is published by Days of Wonder. It is in many similar to Trans-America, and an improved version.

Game Components

The game components are of high quality, consisting of:

• Map showing 36 cities connected by train routes of 8 different colors. In addition, severeal routes are grey, which means that they can be any colour. Each route may be 1 to 6 spaces in length.
• Destination tickets showing two cities and a point value. For each destination ticket he holds at the end of the game (a player may never discard his destination tickets, once they are in his hand), a player gets the points shown if he successfully connects the two cities with his train markers; otherwise he loses the stated points.
• 45 train markers each in 5 different colours, one each for a player.
• 144 train cards, 12 each of 8 different colors matching train routes on the map and 14 multi-coloured locomotive "joker" cards that can represent any colour.

Game Mechanics

At game start, each player is dealt 4 train cards. In addition, he is dealt 3 destination tickets, out of which he must keep at least 2. 5 train cards are turned over to form an open pool.

On his turn, a player may do one (and only one) of the following three actions:

1. Draw New Train Tickets - A player draws 3 new train tickets from the deck, and must keep at least one of them. He may keep two or all three of them if he wishes.
2. Draw train cards - A player may draw two cards from either the 5 open train cards or from the deck. If he draws from the open pool, the card is immediately replaced by one from the deck, such that there is always a pool of 5 open cards. An open locomotive "joker" card counts as two cards drawn, so a player may only draw one card if he choses this card to bring into his hand.
3. Claim a Route - A player may claim a route by playing a set of train cards from his hand. The cards played must match the colour of the route shown on the map, and the number of cards played must equal the length of the route of the map. The player places one of his plastic trains on each space on the route he is claiming. A player may claim only one route per action. Once a route is claimed by a player, no other player may claim the same route.

Game End. When any player's stock of train markers drops to 2 or below, each player, including that player, gets one final turn. The game then ends.

Scoring

A player gains points immediately for claiming a route between two cities, depending on the length of the route. This is accumulated on a scoring track to give players an idea of who is in the lead (and thus everyone should gang up against.)

At the end of the game,

• players gain/subtract points for destination tickets held in their hand, depending on whether they have claimed routes connecting the specified cities.
• the player with the longest continuous path of routes gets an additional 10 points.

The player with the highest score at the end of the game wins. Simple!

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