Ticket to Ride is a popular board game where players collect and match train cards in order to claim railway routes across North America, Europe, and other locations around the world. The idea of the ticket to ride game is to connect cities to score the most points by completing routes specified on destination cards.
Ticket to Ride Cards
The game is played with a set of 96 train cards in eight different colors, with 12 cards for each color, 30 destination ticket cards, and 14 locomotive wild cards. Players can score points by claiming routes, completing destination tickets, and having the longest continuous path. The game is played out on a map of the United States and includes 240 colored train cars.
Ticket to Ride Rules
Ticket to Ride is an exciting board game that involves collecting and playing matching train cards to claim railway routes and earn points. The goal of the game is to score the most points by connecting cities and completing routes shown on destination cards. Players can earn more points for longer routes, connecting distant cities, and building the longest continuous railway.
Game Components
- The game components include:
- A game board displaying the railway routes
- Colored plastic trains for each player
- Train car cards in various colors and locomotives
- Destination ticket cards representing two distant cities
- Scoring markers and scoring track
- Bonus cards for completing the longest continuous path
How to Play Ticket to Ride Board Game
To set up the game, players shuffle the train car cards and place five face-up cards on the table. The players may decide on one person to shuffle the destination ticket cards and deal three cards to each player, who must keep at least two of them. Then, place the remaining destination tickets at the bottom of the deck.
Starting the Game
In this game, the player with the best traveling experience starts, and players take turns playing one of three actions: drawing train car cards, claiming a route, or drawing destination tickets. However, each person can draw for first place and proceed clockwise.
Taking Turns
On their turn, a player must perform one of the following three actions:
- Drawing Cards: The player may draw two train car cards and take any of the face-up cards or draw the top card from the deck. When they draw a face-up card, they directly draw a replacement card face-up from the deck. Wherever the player draws a face-up wild card first, their turn is done. When they draw any other card, they cannot draw a face-up wild card as their second pick. Wherever they draw a face-down card, first and/or second, it doesn’t matter if they are wild.
- Claiming Routes: The player can claim a route on the board by playing a set of train car cards that match the color and length of the route, and then place one of their colored trains on each space of the route. They then record their score by moving their scoring marker to the appropriate number of spaces along the scoring track on the board.
- Destination Tickets: The player can pick up three destination tickets from the top of the deck when he takes his turn. The players must keep at least one of them, but they can either keep two or all three if they want to. When the returned cards are picked up, they can be laid out at the bottom of the deck.
Claiming the Longest Route
The player with the longest complete chain of cars in their color on the board at the end of the game wins the bonus card for completing the longest continuous path. The number of loops can be counted, and the route can pass through the same city multiple times, but not each train car can be counted twice.
Scoring
In Ticket to Ride, players earn points for each route they have completed, and with longer routes, they get more points. Additionally, players earn points for fulfilling their destination tickets and for having the longest continuous path.
End of Game
When one player’s inventory of colored plastic trains gets down to only 0, 1, or 2 trains left at the end of their turn, each player, including that player, gets one final turn. The game then ends when a player has left two or fewer train cars, and then players calculate their final scores.
Ticket to Ride Winning
The player with the highest points at the end of the ticket to ride play wins. In cases where two or more players match for the most points, the player who has completed the longest continuous path wins.
