Review 1: Ticket to Ride

I didn’t want it to be too long before I issued my first review, however a holiday was needed so after a brief break so here it is.  I’ve thought long and hard over what the first review should be and it was difficult to know how best to pitch it.  Too strategy orientated and people might just think that the reviews will be made up only of war games; too specialist and people might decide that these reviews are just not for them.

So I decided to pick a game that felt right and a number of people won’t have played or heard of before.  ‘Ticket to Ride’ was one of the first games that I got later on in my gaming life but really kick started the move away from the mainstream games that are all well-known and love.  So here goes.  I would like my reviews to follow a similar format and therefore they’ll all be set out as it appears below:

 

 

Name: Ticket to Ride

Players: 2-5

Playing Time: 45 minutes

Suggested Ages: 8 and up

Awards: Numerous – most notably 2004 Spiel des Jahres Winner

Game Setting:

The game is set on a map of northern America, and players attempt to connect cities by laying their chosen colour carriages along pre-determined routes.  Points are scored in different ways and the winner is the person who scores the most amount of points.

Game Play:

Each player chooses a colour and takes the carriages that match that colour.  The players then receive ‘ticket’ cards.  These are secret to the player and are scored at the end of the game.  The tickets show two cities that need to be connected to score the points.

The game progresses as the players take it in turns to carry out one of 3 actions: take two cards ‘carriage cards’ which enable a player to claim a route, take more ticket cards or claim a route.  To claim a route between two cities players lay matching ‘carriage’ cards that match the colours of the route.  

When a player claims a route between two connecting cities the score is applied straight away unlike the ‘tickets’ that are scored at the end of the game; the longer the route the between the two cities the higher the score.  This is also true of the ‘tickets’, the further away the two cities are (i.e. the more interconnecting routes that will have to be laid) the higher the score that can be claimed at the end of the game.  However any ‘tickets’ that are not achieved results in a minus score.

At the end of the game the person who has laid the longest route with the most carriages scores an additional ten points.

The game ends when a player reaches only 2 carriages remaining in their supply, every player then gets one final turn.

My Score:

Game Play:  4/4
Components: 2/2
Replayability: 2/2

Theme: 2/2

Total: 10/10

My Comments:

Ticket to Ride is a fantastic game and one that I would recommend to anyone. 

Ticket to Ride is a good example of not judging a game by its box.   I’ve played it with a number of different people of a number of different ages and they’ve all really enjoyed it.   The great thing about this game is that on any turn there are only 3 things that player is going to be  able to choose to do.   This means that playing the game is picked up really quickly.  However the simplicity is balanced extremely well with the planning that takes place whilst people are trying to get the best score possible.

Ticket to Ride is less about trains and train routes but more about making colour connections and joining destinations.  The trains give the game a context.  The game is design in such a way that only the very experienced players would be able to make strategic placements to stop other players getting the ‘ticket’ routes they need.  Having played it a number of times now I think that this really is only applicable for people who have played it so much that they know all of the ‘ticket’ cards.

I have given Ticket to Ride a 10/10 and it is well deserved and well loved by those who I’ve introduced to it.  Easy to learn and relatively quick to play means that it is a family favourite and in my opinion well deserving of it’s award in 2004.  It has, in recent years even started to make appearances in more mainstream shops and I think it will continue to do well.

Give it a try; it’s a fantastic first game for those of you looking for something new.