Ticket To Ride and Why You Need to Play It

Ticket to Ride turns 20 this year and in its 20 years of existence, has become a pretty popular board game. As of 2024, Ticket to Ride has sold over 18 million units and it's not that hard to see why. The game is a good mix of an easy gameplay concept while also having more depth to it than games like Sorry or Life. If you haven't tried Ticket to Ride yet then here's hoping this article can convince you to try it out on your next board game night.

Ticket To Ride Celebrates Turning 20

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Ticket to Ride turned 20 this February and the fact it's still remembered fondly after 20 years shows how popular of a board game it is. Considering Alan R. Moon was the one who designed it, it's no surprise why it's remained popular for the past two decades. Not only did he win the Spiel Des Jahres (Game of the Year) for Ticket to Ride, but he also won it in 1998 for the game Elfenland. The board game publisher Days of Wonder also deserves credit as well for publishing the game and making sure it had the right marketing campaign to end up in people's homes.

Gameplay

One of the reasons why Ticket to Ride is so popular is because of how it's easy to pick up and play but also contains more depth than meets the eye at first glance. The game can support up to five players with each player trying to claim different train routes on the board. A player makes a train route by putting the matching color train cars on the matching color route. To do so though, they need to have the corresponding cards of that color or a wild card.

Players also can't claim incomplete routes so if a route requires six red train cars and a player only has three red cards, they can't discard those three cards. While saving up to claim a route can score some serious points, it also means the player might miss out on claiming early routes. Nothing feels worse in Ticket to Ride than when you just need one more card and someone else claims a route you were going for.

There's no hand size in Ticket to Ride which means players can have as many train cards as they want. Players are however limited to what they can do during their turns. They can either draw two train cards, claim a route as explained above, or draw destination tickets. If a player chooses to take a locomotive card from the face-up pile, it's the only train card they're allowed to take. Locomotive cards are considered wild cards and can be matched with any color train. So if you need a fifth orange card to claim a route, a locomotive could count as the fifth orange card.

Destinations, Strategy And Final Thoughts

Destination cards in Ticket to Ride are also how you score points besides claiming routes. In Ticket to Ride, destination cards are kept secret until the end of the game at which point they're revealed. The way destinations work is by connecting cities between different routes. Where the depth and strategy really come into play in Ticket to Ride is when to risk trying to complete a destination without telegraphing that's what you're doing. If another player suspects you're trying to complete a destination, they can claim a route and cut you off.

If you get cut off, you either need to figure out a different way to complete the destination, or else it remains incomplete. Incomplete destinations deduct from your points so while it's tempting to have multiple destination cards, the odds of completing them can be slim. That's Ticket to Ride in a nutshell. Overall, it's a fantastic board game and a good stepping stone to getting people to try out board games with more depth and mechanics. If you haven't tried Ticket to Ride yet, hopefully, this article did a good job of getting you to try it out.

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The article was originally written by Shawn Simpson