Designed by: Alan R Moon
Ticket to Ride: The Card Game is a spin-off from the hugely successful Ticket to Ride boardgames. Whereas the former use a board and pieces, in this iteration everything functions via the cards.
Players are dealt a hand of Train cards and some Ticket cards too. The ticket cards have coloured dots on them, and during the game you’ll be trying to ‘complete’ the tickets by playing matching-coloured Train cards to the table.
The game moves through two steps – in step one, any cards you previously played to the table are turned face-down into your On-the-Track stack: this is the deck that will score you points at the end of the game. In step two, you either play cards to the table, pick up more tickets, or pick up cards from the available display (or from the top of the Train card deck). Locomotive cards can function as any colour.
With 2 or 3 players, the game ends after the Train deck runs out – with four players you play through the deck a second time. The rules are simple, but what makes the game tricky is you’re not permitted to look through your On-the-Track stack at any time, so you have to remember what cards you’ve played there and what tickets you’ve completed.
At the end of the game there are also points bonuses for going to certain cities the most times – and any incomplete tickets in your hand count against you.
It's not really a combative game - you don't know what Tickets anybody else has - so the only Take That is from circumstance; when someone takes a card you have your eye on.
It's a fast-moving game when you know it, but there may be the odd short lull while someone comes to a decision.
Pretty low - you're only trying to get cards of a certain colour. The main brain-burning comes from trying to remember what's in your stack.
Cards do give a lot of variety in replay - assuming you like the game in the first place.
2-4
Players
8+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
I can see how the game came about - for Ticket to Ride enthusiasts who want their fix on the go, when they simply don't have room for Ticket to Ride in their luggage maybe. In fairness I'm not that person - but I do think the original Ticket to Ride is a very good family game. This card-based alternative seems to take away what was fun about it - the visuals of the board with its routes, the tactile nature of the track-laying, the very obvious way of keeping track of how everyone is doing - and in their place is a slightly fiddly remember-the-order-you-played-cards-in mechanic. Subjectivity alert - I (and my son) found it rather dull. Play the original!