Ticket to Ride Review

Intro

Ticket to Ride is the rare board game that manages to be both simple enough for your eight-year-old cousin and engaging enough to keep seasoned gamers coming back for more. This train-themed route-building game from designer Alan R. Moon swept onto the scene in 2004 and quickly became the gold standard for what we call "gateway games" in the hobby.

The concept is beautifully straightforward: collect colored train cards, claim railway routes across North America, and connect cities to fulfill your secret destination tickets. It plays with 2-5 players in about an hour, though it really shines with 4 people around the table. With a BoardGameGeek rating of 7.39 out of 10 and enough awards to fill a trophy case (including the prestigious Spiel des Jahres in 2004), this game has proven its staying power. The rules are light enough that you'll be playing within minutes of opening the box, but don't let that fool you into thinking there's no strategy here.

How It Plays

Each turn in Ticket to Ride boils down to one of three choices: draw train cards, claim a route, or pick up more destination tickets. That's it. No complex action selection, no lengthy rule explanations that make people's eyes glaze over.

The train cards come in eight different colors, plus wild locomotive cards that can substitute for any color. To claim a route between two cities, you need to collect the right number and color of cards. A three-space blue route from New York to Boston? You'll need three blue cards (or some combination including locomotives). Longer routes score more points, so there's always that tempting risk-reward calculation.

Your destination tickets are where the real strategy kicks in. These secret cards challenge you to connect specific cities, like Seattle to New York or Los Angeles to Miami. Complete the connection and you score bonus points. Fail, and those points get subtracted from your final score. It's this tension between committing to ambitious routes and playing it safe that gives the game its bite.

The game ends when someone gets down to two or fewer train pieces, triggering one final round. Points come from claimed routes, completed destinations, and a nice bonus for whoever built the longest continuous railway line.

Highlights

The biggest strength of Ticket to Ride is how it makes everyone feel clever without making anyone feel stupid. When you pull off a long route or complete a tricky destination connection, there's genuine satisfaction. When you get blocked by another player, it stings just enough to be exciting without being devastating.

The component quality deserves special mention. Days of Wonder went all-in on production values here. The board is gorgeous and massive, the little plastic trains are satisfying to place, and everything has that premium feel that makes the game feel like an event rather than just a way to kill time.

What really sets this game apart is how it creates natural drama without complicated rules. You're constantly watching other players, trying to guess their routes, deciding whether to risk drawing more cards or claim that crucial connection before someone else does. The push-your-luck element is perfectly calibrated.

The game also scales beautifully across player counts. With two players, it's more of a efficiency puzzle. Add more people and the blocking becomes deliciously cutthroat. There's something magical about watching someone's face when you claim the exact route they needed.

Perhaps most importantly, Ticket to Ride delivers on its promise as a gateway game. It's converted more people to the board game hobby than almost any other title. The rules explanation takes five minutes, but the game reveals new layers of strategy over multiple plays.

Criticisms

For all its strengths, Ticket to Ride isn't immune to criticism. The most common complaint is that it can feel too luck-dependent at times. Drawing the wrong colored cards or getting destination tickets that don't work well together can put you at a significant disadvantage through no fault of your own. Experienced players learn to mitigate this through careful play, but it can be frustrating for newcomers who feel like the game is playing them rather than the other way around.

The game also suffers from what I call "multiplayer solitaire syndrome" in some configurations. Especially with fewer players, you might find yourself just focusing on your own routes without much meaningful interaction. The blocking element that creates tension in fuller games can be almost absent with just two or three players.

Finally, while Ticket to Ride is excellent at what it does, what it does is fairly limited. Once you've played it a dozen times, you've essentially seen everything it has to offer. The strategies don't evolve much, and there's no hidden complexity waiting to be discovered. It's the board game equivalent of comfort food: reliably satisfying, but not particularly surprising after you know what to expect.

Conclusion

Twenty years after its release, Ticket to Ride remains one of the best introductions to modern board gaming you can find. It's perfect for families looking to graduate beyond Monopoly, game groups that want something accessible for newcomers, or anyone who appreciates elegant design that prioritizes fun over complexity.

You'll love this game if you enjoy light strategy with meaningful decisions, appreciate beautiful components, or need something that works equally well with your gaming buddies and your relatives at Thanksgiving. The fact that it's spawned dozens of expansions and variants speaks to both its popularity and its solid foundation.

Sure, it's not going to challenge veteran gamers looking for deep strategic experiences, but that's not what it's trying to do. Ticket to Ride succeeds brilliantly at being exactly what it set out to be: an accessible, engaging, and genuinely fun game that brings people together around a table. Sometimes that's exactly what you need.