Learn how to play Ticket to Ride
Quickly learn how to play Ticket to Ride with our fast and easy to read summary of the rules.
What is the goal of Ticket to Ride? #
Ticket to Ride is a 2-5 player cross country train adventure game that is set in the USA. Players compete to score the highest points by: #
-
- connecting key destination cities
- claim and control railway routes between cities
- completing the longest rail routes
Game setup #
Each player takes their trains and scoring track by
- taking a set of 45 coloured trains
- placing their scoring marker on 1 on the scoring track
Distribute Train Cards: #
- Shuffle train cards and hand out 4 per player
- Place remaining deck next to the board and turn top 5 cards face-up
Distribute Destination ticket cards
#
- Shuffle cards and deal 3 cards to each player
- Players decide which to keep 2 or all 3 cards
- Returned cards placed under the deck and placed next to the board
- Destination Tickets kept secret until the end of the game
Destination Ticket
Gameplay #
- Oldest player starts first
- Play proceeds clockwise around the table
- Each player takes one turn at a time until the game ends
- On each player\’s turn, they choose one of the following actions:
Turn Action: Draw Train Car Cards #
- Colours of train car cards match the route colours (There are 8 different colours)
- Locomotive car cards are MULTI-COLOURED
- Train Car Cards are used to claim a route of a particular colour
- Locomotive car cards are WILD CARDS which can be used to represent any colour
The player may draw 2 train car cards. For each of the 2 cards, the player may:
- draw blindly from the deck (if you draw a LOCOMOTIVE card, you may still draw your second card)
- or take any one of the face-up cards
- immediately draw from the deck and replace the face-up card
- if a player draws a LOCOMOTIVE Card from the face-up cards, the player draws 1 train car card instead of 2
- if the replacement face-up card is a LOCOMOTIVE Card, the player cannot take it
IF AT ANY TIME, 3 of the 5 face-up cards are LOCOMOTIVES, all cards are immediately discarded and five new ones are turned face-up to replace them
When the train car card deck is exhausted, discarded cards are reshuffled into a new deck.
If there are no discarded cards, players claim routes or draw destination tickets only.
Locomotive Card
Turn Action: Claim a route #
To claim a route, the player must:
- play a set of cards equal to number of spaces in the route
- set of cards must be the same type
- Blue route must be claimed using blue-coloured cards
- Gray coloured routes can be claimed using set of cards of any one colour
When route is claimed, players place one of their plastic ratins in each of the spaces of the route.
Cards used to claim routes are discarded.
Claiming rules
- Players may claim any open route
- Player may only claim maximum of one route on their turn
- Some cities are connected by double routes – a player can only claim one of the routes, NOT both
In 2 or 3 player games, only one of the Double-Routes can be used. If one of the routes is claimed, the other is closed.
Points scored when claiming routes
Claiming a route
Ticket to Ride Scoring Table
Turn Action: Draw Destination Ticket cards #
- Destination Ticket cards contain the names of 2 cities.
- Successfully connect the 2 cities by claiming the routes between them and add the points indicated on the card during the end of the game
- If you do not connect the 2 cities, the number of points indicated on the card are deducted during the end of the game
Players can choose to draw Destination Ticket cards
- Players draw 3 Destination Ticket cards from top of Destination Ticket deck (if there are less than 3, draw whatever is left)
- Players choose cards they wish to keep, they must keep at least 1 card, (they can choose to keep 2 or 3 as well)
- Returned cards are placed under the deck
Cards are kept secret until final end game scoring.
End of Game #
When one player’s set of coloured trains gets down to only 0,1 or 2 trains left at the end of his turn:
- each player, including that player, gets one final turn.
- The game then ends and players calculate their final scores.
How do you win in Ticket to Ride? #
At the end of the game, players do the following:
- players calculate scores by referencing their score on the score track
- reveal all their Destination Tickets and add (or subtract) the value of their Destination Tickets depending on whether they are succesfully connected
- The player who has the Longest Continuous Path of routes receives this special bonus card and adds 10 points to his score
- When comparing path lengths, only take into account continuous lines of plastic trains of the same color
- A continuous path may include loops, and pass through the same city several times, but a given plastic train may never be used twice in the same continuous path
- In the case of a tie for the longest path, all tied players score the 10 point bonus
Player with the highest score wins
