Ticket to Ride

In Ticket to Ride, up to four players compete as rival train barons as they play the classic board game. During each turn, you can choose one of three actions; select a new Destination card, draw train cards, or place trains on the map. The game ends when one player has only two trains remaining to play (out of an initial 45); then, the scores are tallied up to decide the winner.

Claiming tracks require a certain amount of coloured train cars to fill. So you will need to draw train cards and plan ahead. There may be multiple routes leading from one city to another of various lengths and colours, so you need to decide which option is most beneficial based on the cards you have. You can draw cards from the shared pile which are visible to each player, or take a chance from your deck which are face down. You can draw two cards from the deck or the shared pile, or you can opt to take a single Locomotive (wild cards and can represent any colour) from the shared pile.

As you place trains on the map, you are awarded points, but your aim is to complete the set routes on the route cards you possess which net you bonus points once completed. This means you won't know who is winning until the final scores, although you can have a rough idea.

The game mechanics are quite simple but they allow a fair bit of strategy as well as luck. You will want to focus on completing your route cards, not only to get bonus points, but failing to complete them incurs a penalty. Due to this, it is also a good idea to try and work out which Destinations your opposition may be trying to complete, in order to play a defensive game and block them from taking the routes. Since your opponent's Destination cards are hidden from you, you are essentially going off which routes they take on the game board, and which cards they draw from the deck.

Surprisingly, the online community is thriving, so games can be found instantly. You can play games against the computer opponents but they are very easy in comparison and the difficulty cannot be tweaked. The games take 15 minutes or so to complete so it's a great pick-up-and-play game.

The menus have voice acting which instantly gets annoying when you want to select something and the characters are chipping in with information. The basic package has a single map, but there are expansions with various extra rules; USA 1910, Europe, and Switzerland should you decide to pay the extra cost. Even with the basic package, you can easily get 4 hours of so out of it before you may start getting bored, but if you are a fan of the board game, then there's no reason why it shouldn't last you longer.