Ticket to Ride (thing)

Ticket to Ride is also a renowned and elegant board game published by Days of Wonder and designed by Alan R. Moon. Winner of the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award in 2004, it is a classic example of the 'German school' of board game design, joining such well-known games as Carcassonne and The Settlers of Catan. Though it is easy to learn, quick to play, and light on rules, it remains a deep and strategic game for both beginning and experienced players.

The original game board shows a map of the United States and southern Canada with cities and train routes marked upon it. Players construct routes between cities in an attempt to get the highest score. Each segment of track is worth points, but the core of the scoring depends of Destination cards. These each have a pair of cities, and a point value, and are kept secret from the other players. Those points are gained if the player connects the cities by the end of the game, and lost if the player fails to connect them.

From this simple setup, a variety of strategic options open. Segments of track between cities are given a length between one and six, and a colour. Claiming a route requires spending a number of cards in the colour of the route equal to the length of the route. Only one player may claim a given segment, so there is competition for the best and most valuable connections (for the longer segments are worth many more points than short segments).

Although claiming segments and completing routes are the ways to get points, most of the game turns are spent gathering cards. The cards come in eight different colours plus multicoloured wild cards, and the colour is their only distinguishing factor. Five cards are placed face up, and players can draw from these known cards or from the top of the deck; two cards per turn or one face-up wild card. The decision of when to accumulate and when to commit is the core of the game's strategy.

Each player is given a fixed number of train tokens, which when they run out signal the end of the game. Players are given up to three routes to complete at the start of the game and may draw more at any time, but may never discard them. At the end of the game the routes are scored and added to the points from the track segments themselves. Games generally take less than an hour, and often around forty-five minutes.

The depth of the game comes from the interplay of a few interrelated elements. The card system for building routes is random enough to make the game unpredictable, but is not so random that luck will outweigh skill in the long run. The strategy involved in devising a network that feasibly contains all the necessary routes is woven against the tactics in claiming the needed segments and blocking off opponents. That everyone's goals are secret adds an additional layer; are those disconnected pieces of track related or are they part of completely separate routes?

The success of the original Ticket to Ride has inspired new editions of the base game, rather than expansions as with many games. 2005 saw the release of Ticket to Ride Europe, which adds some new rules as well as importing the map of Europe. The different geography of Europe would change the game enough for a new strategic challenge, but the new rules complicate things further.

In the Europe game, some routes require a wild card to be part of their cost, which mitigates the 'poison-pill' effect of wild cards in the initial game due to their higher cost of acquisition. More deeply changed are the 'tunnel' segments, whose cost may increase upon attempting to build them depending on the top two cards of the deck; if any match the colour of the cards used to build the tunnel, an additional card must be added or the attempt fails.

The overall effect of the changes in the Europe version is widely debated among board gamers. Some maintain that the rules tweaks and map designed to encourage more agressive play make the Europe version superior, while others prefer the elegant simplicity and wide-open geography of the original North American version. Ultimately, though, both are games of the highest caliber.

Ticket to Ride is widely available through game stores and hobby shops, usually for less than $50 Canadian. In addition to the two board versions (and the upcoming Marklin Edition), there is also a CD-ROM version for Mac OS X and MS Windows.