Ree@ng's Game ReeView # 04 - TICKET TO RIDE BOARD GAME

When Ingrid, a classmate, introduced me to the board game titled ‘Ticket to Ride’, all I can remember is the song sung by The Carpenters in the early 70s. I was told that the game is fun to play and popular among those who enjoy playing board games.

So on Friday, 21 August 2009 a group of us (see a nice photo of us) met at The Mind Café along Purvis Street around Bugis area. That’s the start of my whole ‘exploration’ or I would call experiment of this game plus some other board games. As someone who is a hands on person, I would not understand any game by just reading the guide or manual. The polite and accommodating staff there usually will try their best to ‘brief’us, upon request, on how to play the game. Still the best way to learn playing any games for me is play straight away with assistance of course along the way. Kind of learning the hard way. Yuku, his colleague, Devi (my new friend) and I board the first train and had a wild ride across North America…

The Goal of this board game is simple– to build connections between various cities in North America. Each city is connected to 2 to 7 other cities across the continent by routes. A route has between 1 and 6 spaces. And each route is distinguished by different colours, 8 to be exact: purple, white, blue, yellow, brown, black, red, and green plus gray – a special free building colour. Popular paths have two routes. All these are already imprinted on the board. Only playing cards are in players’ hand.

Generally, at the start of the game, you'll keep two of your original three Destination Cards, and these will give you a general indication of initial cities that you want to connect.

Players claim routes using Train Cards of appropriate colour; 18 Wild cards may be used as any colour. 5 train cards and face-up are positioned next to draw pile.

Destination Cards: list 2 cities each and a score eg .you have to contiguously connect 2 cities with your trains to score pts, and will be penalized if you don’t (hence discard)

On Each turn you either take one of the following 3 actions:

Draw Train Cards

Claim a Route or

Draw Destination Cards

If you draw train cards - take 2 cards from face-up cards of draw pile. Replace 2 taken cards face-up from draw pile. If you take face-up colourful card engine, that counts as two of your draws.

If you claim route - lay down as many cards of appropriate colours to complete route (1, 2 or up to 6) depending what is on board. If light gray route is chosen, lay down number of matching cards of any colour. Place your trains in the route spaces on board. Others cannot claim same route unless those cities connected with 2 routes.

Competition is a real issue, as other players can purposefully or accidently steal routes you want to take. This can force you to take much longer, more round about paths to complete connections. Or else you can give up on them entirely. You’ll probably get to complete most of your connections in a game through careful playing.

Scoring points goes like: 1pt for a length of 1 route, 2pts for 2 routes, 4 pts for 3 routes, 7pts for 4 routes, 10pts for 5 routes and and 15pts for 6 routes ….longer routes are more valuable…erm …Yuku, my ‘opponent’ succeed in claiming the longer routes, and not just once, but a couple of times. Perhaps my Destination card is not among the good ones to build …if you are by chance lucky; you will get a better destination cards. Better luck next time…the rest part of the game depends on your strategy, what’s your next move so as to block your opponent from completing the routes before you… I found out that choosing more Destination Cards throughout the game is key to winning, both to direct you toward more building, and also to give you bonus points at the end.

You may finish up one set of Destinations before drawing more. You may also draw a number at the start, to give you more idea about how you want to expand. Each method has its own dangers.

You can only claim one route on each turn.

If you draw Destination Cards: you can draw 3 Destination Cards and choose 1 and return 2.

Game ends when Yuku finished his turn with no trains at all in hand (in other case, 2 or less trains in his stock)….At this point Devi and I got to complete our one last turns following Yuku’s successful ride. The game is done…and we start counting scores.

Everyone has points for their routes.

If a player successfully completed a Destination Card by forming a contiguous route between the two cities, he adds the points from the card to his score; else he subtracts them (ouch!) I had to do that…

Whoever has the longest continuous path of routes gets +10 points.

The player with the highest score wins. And that’s Yuku! Devi second and me, bronze…hee3.

Two & Three Player Games: If you play with two or three players there's one slight change: for the double routes, where there are two routes between a pair of cities, only one can be used. This help keeps the game very tight.

Ticket to Ride is overall quite a quick, enjoyable game and plays well.