First off, I need to start this review with a confession. Ladies and gentlemen I, Joee Zellweger, self proclaimed board game guru, have shamefully never played this game until this week. This week GSBC cracked open a copy of Ticket to Ride from Days of Wonder.

This game is probably one of the simplest games to learn. You draw cards that are different coloured train cars and then use the different colours to connect routes between different cities. On your turn you can either draw a card from the face up cards and one from the deck, or draw 3 route cards and choose at least one of them to keep, or connect two cities by using the appropriate coloured cards. The more train cars you use on the route the more points you get and at the end of the game you either add or subtract points if you do or don’t connect the route that is on your route card. That is literally the rules in a paragraph minus some minor details.

Our game was a 3 player game with myself, Kim and Ryan. The route cards I started with were New York to Seattle for 22 points and Duluth to Houston for 5 points. I couldn’t have gotten a worse start with cards so most of my turns for the first little while consisted of drawing cards to get the right cards needed for the routes. Ryan shot off right away getting points for making his way from Vancouver on track to Montreal. Kim did a little of both starting with some small routes and drawing cards.

Halfway through I realized that Ryan was taking off with the lead. Unfortunately by the time I even started my routes he was half way across Canada. I eventually made the track from Seattle to New York but Ryan had pretty much circled the entire continent by then. Kim had pretty much kept on track with me.

Ryan ended up winning the game by a landslide with Kim and I around the same amount of points. The game went by quickly and didn’t seem to drag on like many others do.

All in all I would say that this game is definitely a staple for any gamer to have. It’s simplistic with the option to add a lot of strategy. Obviously the more players the better and Ticket to Ride can be played with up to 5 players. So make sure to grab a copy or come down and try ours!

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