Review: Ticket to Ride

I hadn’t thought much of the description of Ticket to Ride when I first read it (drawing cards to build train routes), but every review I read raved about it.  All but the most hardcore gamers loved this game and said they played it often with their friends and family.  It had been the top selling game on TimeWellSpent.org for a good year and according to several gamers I’d talked to, it was one of the quintessential introductions into German style board games. With all that good press, we finally decided to give it a shot.

I am so happy we took everybody’s overwhelming advice.  This game really is good wholesome fun.  The board depicts the United States with a series colored “train routes” between different cities, varying in length from one to six spaces.  Players start out with 43 train pieces, two or three “trip tickets” and four train cards, which are colored to correspond to the various spaces on the board.  On each turn, players can either draw cards, draw trip tickets, or claim a route.

You earn points by claiming routes with your trains.  The points go up exponentially as the route’s length increases.  For a route one space long, you get a single point.  For a route six spaces long, you get fifteen.  Players claim routes by laying down enough cards of the appropriate color for the route in question.  To claim the five-space green-colored route between San Francisco and Los Angeles, a player would lay down five green cards (or three greens and two wild “engine cards”) and then place one of their train pieces on each space in the route.  Obviously, with the way the points are tallied, it’s in a player’s best interest to claim longer routes, the obvious caveat being that it takes longer to draw six cards of one color than, say, two—especially when it seems like the cards you need never come up when you’re actually looking for them.

At the beginning of the game players draw trip tickets showing two cities that they have to connect with a continuous line of their trains by the end of the game.  Each trip ticket has a certain point value, with the longer routes obviously giving you more points than the shorter ones.  At the end of the game, you gain the given number of points for each ticket you complete and lose the number of points for whatever tickets you leave unfinished.

The game is played until one player runs out of trains, at which point you tally up the points for each route and trip ticket.  An additional bonus is given to the player who has the longest continuous route.  The player with the most points wins.

I finally understand all the fuss surrounding this game.  It has exactly the right amount of complexity and options for strategy so that you can feel challenged yet still have a nice relaxing game that doesn’t make you think too much.  Part of the excitement comes from the fact that you really don’t know who’s going to win until the very end of the game when all the points are tallied.  The rest of the excitement (and tension) comes from the fact that since nobody can see the other players’ trip tickets they can end up inadvertently (or on purpose if they’re particularly perceptive) blocking somebody’s route, forcing the other guy to take the long way around.

My only beef with Ticket to Ride is that it involves very little direct competition with the other players.  By and large, you’re concentrating so much on completing your own trip tickets that you don’t really have time to worry about blocking your opponent’s route or otherwise messing with their progress. But other than that one small gripe, it’s a great game that we’ve managed to sell the entire family on. It gets pulled out frequently whenever all the siblings-in-law get together.

Additional Note 1/5/09: We have also tried the Europe version of this game and found it to much less fun for several reasons. First of all, unlike the America version where converging train routes cause you to frequently clash with your opponents who are making trips through the same geography, the Europe trips often go way off by themselves, further alienating you from competing against the other players. Beyond that, since I’m not as familiar with European geography as I am with the United States, it was a lot harder (and not in the fun way) figuring out and remembering exactly where my trips were supposed to be taking me.

VITALS: This is a 2-5 player game which generally takes anywhere from 30-60 minutes to complete. I originally thought the designation of ages 8 and up was a tad too generous but our niece started learning to play at 8 and while she may not be as competitive as the 30-year-olds at the table, she does just fine with it.

OVERALL FUN FACTOR: It’s fun and not too taxing on the brain, though I find that as time goes by I am less and less excited to play it. I think it all goes back, again, to the lack of direct competition. But maybe that’s just me. It’s still a good game and worth having in the collection nonetheless. 7 out of 10.

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