Ticket to Ride

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When we went on our cruise to Alaska last August we spent a few days visiting with relatives in Vancouver.  We stayed with my aunt and uncle and my cousins brought over a game to play called “Ticket to Ride”.

This was our first experience with the game and it really only took one game for us to grasp the concept of it, so it’s a fairly easy game to learn.

Ticket to Ride is a game based slightly on luck and a bit of strategy in which you are trying to complete train routes from one place in North America to another.

Two to five people can play at a time and each gets train pieces in a certain color to claim their routes.

At the beginning of the game everyone is given three route cards worth different point values.  The longer the route the more points it is worth.  You can keep all three or just one or two of them, but if you don’t complete the routes you have by the end of the game, you get those points taken off your score.

Scoring is integrated around the game board edge so you can update as you place your trains on your routes.

The luck of the game comes in with the cards you pick up from the pile, which allow you to claim a route on the board.  You have to have all the spaces in a route to claim it and you need matching color cards to those on the board to place your trains on it.  There are rainbow cards that are wild cards which help you fill out those you need.

The strategy comes in because of how you claim routes and how long you can make a connecting route.  If you can block others by claiming a significant route on the board or make the longest continuous route going from one end of the board to the other, you have a better chance to win.

My husband is a strategist, me not so much (LOL!) – so it’s actually a great game for us to play as a family because it involves a little of both.  We’ve played Ticket to Ride a number of times since our original introduction to it, and have always had a fun time with family and friends.  I have yet to win though, so I have to up my strategy I guess!

Ticket to Ride is available on Amazon.com and will be available in Target stores this spring.  It has an msrp of $49.99, and is suitable for ages 8 and up.

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