| Designer(s) | Alan R. Moon |
|---|---|
| Publisher(s) | Days of Wonder Κάισσα |
| Players | 2–5 |
| Age range | 8 and up |
| Setup time | <5 minutes |
| Playing time | 45+ minutes |
| Random chance | Medium |
| Skill(s) required | Set collection Connecting |
Ticket to Ride is a railway-themed German-style board game designed by Alan R. Moon and published in 2004 by Days of Wonder. The game is also known as Zug um Zug (German), Les Aventuriers du Rail (French), Aventureros al Tren (Spanish), Wsiąść do pociągu (Polish), and Menolippu (Finnish).
The game won the 2004 Spiel des Jahres, the Origins Award for Best Board Game of 2004[1] and the 2005 Diana Jones award and As d'Or, and came 2nd in the Schweizer Spielepreis for Family Games. Ticket to Ride: Europe won the 2005 International Gamers Award. As of August 2008, over 750,000 copies of the game have been sold according to the publisher.[2]
Contents |
| Card color | Car depicted |
|---|---|
| Black | Hopper car |
| White | Reefer |
| Red | Coal car |
| Green | Caboose |
| Blue | Passenger car |
| Yellow | Boxcar |
| Purple | Freight car |
| Orange | Tanker |
At the beginning of the game, players choose a number of destination cards showing a pair of cities on the map. These become goals, representing two end-points which players are secretly attempting to connect. Each player is dealt a number of destination cards (how many, depends on the variation of the game), of which he/she must keep at least some. Once kept, a destination card may not be discarded during the entire game.
Each turn, players collect railway car cards in various colors (including wildcard Locomotive cards), draw additional destination cards, or use railway car cards to claim routes on a map of the United States and southern Canada thereby earn points. The routes are of varying lengths (requiring varying numbers of matching coloured cards), and each discrete route marked on the board can be claimed by only a single player. Some cities are connected by two parallel routes that can each be claimed by a different player. The same player may not claim the same route twice. Longer routes are worth progressively more points than shorter routes, e.g., a route of length four is worth more than two routes of length two.
On his or her turn, a player can claim any route anywhere on the board that has not already been claimed, regardless of whether the route is part of any of his or her destinations. The routes score points by themselves, as mentioned above, but routes not connected to a player's destination do not help him or her in reaching the destination / completing her route.
The game ends when one player has exhausted or nearly exhausted his or her supply of coloured train pieces. When this occurs, every player then plays one additional turn, after which they each reveal his or her previously hidden destination cards. Additional points are awarded for having successfully completed the routes on the cards, whereas points are subtracted for any incomplete routes. A ten-point bonus is awarded to the player who has the longest continuously connected set of routes.
The Mystery Train expansion was released in 2004 as a free giveaway in the December edition of Game Trade Magazine and at the Spiel 2004 game festival in Essen, Germany. The expansion cards are also available as a free download from the official site, or may frequently be purchased on eBay. Mystery Train includes a total of twelve cards:
The new destination and character cards are shuffled into the destination ticket deck after players have drawn their initial destination cards. While the destination cards simply function as normal destinations, the characters each have special rules associated with them. Engineer cards can be played to allow the player to search the entire destination ticket deck and select a desired destination. The remaining character cards provide various score bonuses at the end of the game if certain conditions are fulfilled.
The second expansion, Ticket to Ride: USA 1910, contains large format reprints of all the cards from the original deck, including 4 routes with revised point values. Additionally, the expansion adds 35 new destination tickets (with the 1910 logo in the upper right hand corner), a new 15 point Globetrotter bonus card for the most completed tickets, and the 4 destination tickets from the long out-of-print Mystery Train expansion. Released at the 2006 Essen game festival, it also includes three new ways to play Ticket to Ride with the USA 1910 expansion, in addition to using the original deck as described in the game's standard rules.
On September 9, 2009, Days of Wonder announced that the Ticket to Ride Europa 1912 expansion was expected to be released on October 22 in Europe and October 28 in the USA. The expansion includes 101 destination tickets - the 46 original tickets, plus 55 new ones that enables 3 new variants to the Ticket to Ride Europe map:
Europa 1912 also introduces Warehouses and Depots - two new game elements that brings a new layer of strategy to all versions of Ticket to Ride. During the game, train cards are added to the warehouses. Players who build a route to a city that includes a depot can collect those cards, making them an important part of any strategy.[3]
Ticket to Ride: Switzerland, originally released as part of the computer game, was released as a board game expansion in 2007. The game features several changes. The first is that it only uses 40 train markers (instead of the usual 45). The second is that 'Locomotive' cards may only be used for tunnels (instead of as general wildcards). Lastly, some routes end at specific national borders rather than cities. To play this extension, one needs to have either the original game Ticket to Ride or the spinoffs Ticket to Ride: Europe or Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries. The spinoff Ticket to Ride: Märklin may not be used as a foundation for this extension, because it does not contain the same amount and distribution of wagon cards; however, the Dice Expansion and Ticket to Ride: Märklin can together provide a foundation for Ticket to Ride: Switzerland, since the dice replace the cards. Using Ticket to Ride: Europe as the sole foundation for the Ticket to Ride: Switzerland extension produces one minor omission from the scoring rules because Ticket to Ride: Europe contains no train route lengths of five. The original Ticket to Ride rules and those of Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries provide that a train with five cars scores ten points. Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries also has the additional advantage that players already associate the different-looking locomotives of that game with the rule that they can only be used for tunnels or ferries, the same rule that exists in Ticket to Ride: Switzerland (although it has no ferries).
The Ticket to Ride Dice Expansion, compatible with any map (although the 9-train route in Nordic Countries is unclaimable with this expansion), was released in 2008. Instead of drawing train car cards, players roll dice and use them to claim routes, take destination tickets, or perform other actions. Tunnel dice are used instead of drawing cards when players try to build tunnels in maps that include them.
In late 2011 two further board game expansions were released, each containing two maps on a double-sided board.
Map collection 1 featured two different Asia maps; Legendary Asia, designed by François Valentyne, paired with Alan R. Moon's Team Asia.
Map collection 2 featured one India themed map, designed by Ian Vincent, with the reverse being a re-release of the now out-of-print Switzerland expansion.[4]
Fans of "Ticket to ride" have created their own board for this game, which can be printed for private use, and played with the original wagons and cards. Links to unofficial expansions can be found in the external links section.
Since the game's release in 2004, Days of Wonder has released three additional stand-alone board games, one card game and two computer game versions.
Released in 2005, Ticket to Ride: Europe takes place on a map of Europe as it was at the turn of the 20th century. The game includes two new types of route: 'Ferry' routes, which require 'Locomotive' cards to be played when claiming them, and 'Tunnel' routes, which add an element of risk and chance to the game.
Each player is also given three "Train stations", which allow a player to sacrifice points to use a route already claimed by another player.
The method of distributing "destination cards" is also different as compared to the base game.
Days of Wonder released Ticket to Ride: Märklin in 2006, based on a map of Germany. Märklin is a German toy company, best known for model railways and technical toys. Whereas railway car cards of each type in the previous games were identical, the cards in Ticket to Ride: Märklin each show a different image of Märklin rolling stock. While this has no impact on actual play, it provides additional theme and flavor.[5]
The game adds passengers and goods as a new point-scoring mechanism. This allows each player to place up to three passengers (over the course of a game) in cities when establishing routes between them. At any later point in time, players can then choose to move their passenger, causing the passenger to traverse a set of connected points, collecting available point tokens (or goods) at each city which is visited. Doing so consumes the passenger, which is then removed from the game. Because the point tokens themselves are removed as they're collected, doing this early in the game earns tokens of higher value, while doing so later in the game tends to traverse longer routes.
This version of the game also uses two different type of 'Locomotive' wildcards. In addition to the standard type, there are "+4" locomotives, which can only be used as wildcards on routes of at least length four. The upside of this is that these locomotives can be freely selected from the available face-up cards without counting as a double-draw.
In late October 2007, Days of Wonder released a local version of Ticket to Ride in the Nordic countries of Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway. While it was initially intended to be sold only in these countries, this version also became available in English, French and German.
The gameboard is located in the Nordic countries, including part of Russia and Estonia. It includes ferry routes and tunnels, like Ticket to Ride: Europe.
The card game was released in the summer of 2008 and includes a similar artistic style and theme, and general game mechanism of set collection. The card game is playable in 30-45 minutes and supports 2-4 players.
Ticket to Ride and most expansions can be played online at Days of Wonder's website. A four-game free trial subscription is available.
Days of Wonder has also released a computer game for Windows PCs and Macintosh, which allows players to play the original game, Ticket to Ride: Europe, and Ticket to Ride: Switzerland. The Ticket to Ride: USA 1910 expansion is available as a free downloadable enhancement to the game.
The Xbox Live Arcade version was released on June 25, 2008, and supports play with up to five people on Xbox Live or four people on the same console, and can utilize the Xbox Live Vision cam.[6]
The iPad version was released on May 18, 2011, and supports play with to five people using the Game Center or Days of Wonder own servers. Its offline mode originally only supported a single player with up to four computer players; however pass and play was added later.
This version was released with three additional extensions available for purchase and download: "Ticket to Ride: Europe"; "Ticket to Ride: Switzerland"; and "Ticket to Ride: USA 1910", which itself includes three separate game modes.
The iPad version of Ticket to Ride was named the 2011 Digital Game of the Year by the Danish Guldbrikken (The Golden Pawn) Awards, which referred to the game as “the exemplar of how a board game makes the leap to the digital world without compromise. The iPad version dazzles with its superb finish, easy availability and unparalleled expandability, as well as the ability to play on just the iPad or over the Internet.” [7]
The iPhone version was released on November 16, 2011, which is a simplified version of the iPad game. The iPhone version does not have online play, but users can play a multi-player game on a local network via WiFi or Bluetooth. The iPhone version also does not offer expansion packs. [8]
| Preceded by Alhambra |
Spiel des Jahres German "Game of the Year" Award 2004 |
Succeeded by Niagara |
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