Ticket to Ride Board Game: Rules and Instructions for How to Play

Objective of Ticket to Ride

The objective of Ticket to Ride is to score the most points by claiming Routes, completing Destination Tickets, and creating the longest path of connected routes.

Setup for Ticket to Ride

Place the gameboard in the middle of the table.
Each player chooses a color and takes 45 trains and the Scoring Marker of that color.
Each player places their Scoring Marker on the Start space.
Shuffle the Train Car cards and deal four cards to each player to start their hand. Players can look at their own cards, but shouldn’t show them to the other players.
Turn over the top five Train Car cards and place them face up on the table near the board. The rest of the Train Car cards form the draw pile.
Place the Longest Path Bonus card face up near the board.
Shuffle the Destination Ticket cards and deal three cards face down to each player. Each player will look at their Destination Ticket cards. They will choose which of these cards they would like to keep. They can either keep two or three of the cards. Players will keep secret what cards they decided to keep until the end of the game.

Dealt Destination Ticket Cards — One of the players was dealt these three Destination Ticket cards. They can choose to either keep two or three of the tickets. As the three tickets work well together, the player has decided to keep all three tickets.

Return any Destination Ticket cards that you don’t want to the bottom of the corresponding deck. Place the Destination Ticket card deck near the gameboard.
The player that is the most experienced traveler goes first. Play proceeds clockwise throughout the game.

Playing Ticket to Ride

The players will take turns throughout the game. On your turn you will choose one of the following actions to take.

Draw Train Car Cards
Claim a Route
Draw Destination Tickets

Draw Train Car Cards

When you choose to draw Train Car cards, you will get to add two cards to your hand. You can choose Train Car cards from two different areas.

Near the board there are five face up Train Car cards. You can choose one of these cards to add to your hand. If you choose one of these cards, you will reveal the next card in the draw pile in order to replace the card you took.

Choosing A Face Up Train Card in Ticket to Ride — This player needs yellow Train Car cards for a route that they want to claim. They will take the yellow face up Train Car card for one of their two cards.

Your other option is to take the top card from the draw pile.

Choosing A Train Car Card — For their second card this player decided to take the top card from the draw pile. They ended up drawing another yellow Train Car card.

When choosing which two cards that you would like to take, you can choose to take two cards from the same area or you can choose one card from both areas.

If you choose to take a Locomotive card (see below) from the face up area on the table, you will only get to take one card on your turn. Should you draw a Locomotive card from the draw pile (it was face down before you drew it), you can draw a second card.

Taking A locomotive Card — This player has decided to take the face up Locomotive card. Since they chose to take this card, they will only take one card on their turn.

Should the draw pile ever run out of Train Car cards, you will shuffle the discard pile in order to form a new draw pile. If there are no cards left to be shuffled (the players are hoarding them), you cannot draw Train Car cards on your turn.

Ticket to Ride Train Car Cards

There are two different types of Train Car cards in Ticket to Ride.

Regular Train Car Cards in Ticket to Ride

Most of the cards are considered regular Train Card cards. These cards come in various colors including purple, blue, orange, white, green, yellow, black, and red.

Locomotives are multicolored cards. These cards act as wilds in the game. When you play these cards they can act as any other color when claiming routes.

If at any time three of the five face up cards are Locomotives, you will discard all five of the face up cards. You will reveal five new face up cards.

Discarding the Face up Train Car Cards — Three of the five face up cards are Locomotive cards. The players will discard all five face up cards and turn over five new cards.

There is no limit to the number of Train Car cards that you can hold in your hand at a time.

Claiming A Route

Much of Ticket to Ride’s gameplay is built around claiming routes. Between each city on the gameboard are colored rectangles. The rectangles connecting one city to another is called a route.

When a player wants to claim a route they can use their current turn’s action to claim one route.You may choose any route on the board. You do not have to connect to a route that you previously claimed.

Normal Routes

To claim a route you count up the number of spaces between the two cities. You must play a number of Train Car cards from your hand equal to the number of spaces between the two cities. These cards must match the color of the route that you are trying to claim.

Claiming A Route in Ticket to Ride — This player wants the yellow route between San Francisco and Los Angeles. They use three of their yellow Train Car cards in order to claim the route.

Gray Routes

You can use any color Train Car cards to claim a route consisting of gray spaces. All of the cards that you play though must be the same color.

Using A Locomotive Card

You can use Locomotive cards as a card of any color when claiming a route.

Placing Your Train Cars

When a player claims a route they will discard the cards they played from their hand. They will then place one of their plastic trains on each space of the route that they claimed. This player now owns this route for the rest of the game.

Double Routes

Some cities have two routes connecting them. These are called Double-Routes. Each player may only claim one of the Double-Routes for each connection. You must leave the other route for another player to claim. If there are only two or three players in the game, players may only claim one of the two routes in the Double-Route. Once the first route is claimed, the other route is closed to the other players.

Claiming A Double Route in Ticket to Ride — The yellow player has claimed one of the two routes between Denver and Kansas City. The yellow player cannot claim the orange route between the two cities. If there are only two or three players, no one can claim the orange route.

Scoring A Route

When you claim a route you will score points from it. The number of points that you score depends on the length of the route.

1 Train – 1 point
2 Trains – 2 points
3 Trains – 4 points
4 Trains – 7 points
5 Trains – 10 points
6 Trains – 15 points

To keep track of the points you earn in the game, you will move your Scoring Marker along the Scoring Track around the edges of the gameboard.

Scoring A Route in Ticket to Ride — The red player claimed a route consisting of three trains. They will score four points from the route. They will move their scoring marker the corresponding number of spaces around the scoring track.

Draw Destination Ticket Cards

The last option you have is to draw Destination Ticket cards. When you choose this option you will draw three new cards from the top of the Destination Ticket deck. You do not have to complete all of the Destination Tickets that you already own in order to take this action. If there are less than three Destination Ticket cards left in the deck, you will only draw the cards that are remaining.

You will look through the three cards to see which of them you would like to keep. You must keep at least one of the three cards, but you can choose to keep two or all three of the cards though.

Add the cards you decided to get rid of to the bottom of the Destination Ticket deck.

Choose New Destination Tickets in Ticket to Ride — This player has decided to draw new Destination Tickets. They must keep at least one of the tickets, but they can choose to keep two or all three of them. Based on the other Destination Tickets they have, they choose to keep the Dallas – New York, and Montreal – Atlanta tickets. The Duluth – El Paso ticket is returned to the bottom of the Destination Ticket deck.

Destination Ticket Cards

Each Destination Ticket card features two different cities on it and a point value. The goal is to create a path of routes that connect these two cities together. When connecting these two cities you don’t need to take a direct path. As long as the two cities are connected in one continuous path, they are considered connected.

Destination Ticket in Ticket to Ride — For this Destination Ticket the player has to connect San Francisco and Atlanta. If they successfully connect the two cities they will score 17 points at the end of the game.

If you successfully connect the two cities on a Destination Ticket card, you have completed the card. At the end of the game you will score points equal to the number printed on the card. You will not score the points for the card until the end of the game though as you should keep your Destination Ticket cards secret from the other players.

Completing A Destination Ticket in Ticket to Ride — The red player has successfully created a continuous path of routes between San Francisco and Atlanta. They have successfully completed the Destination Ticket.

Should you fail to connect the two cities on a Destination Ticket card by the end of the game, you will lose points equal to the number printed on the card.

A player may take as many Destination Ticket cards as they want. You should try to limit the number of cards you take though as you will lose points from any that you fail to complete.

End of Ticket to Ride

The end game for Ticket to Ride triggers when one of the players only have 0-2 plastic trains left at the end of their turn. Each player including the player with only 0-2 plastic trains gets one last turn. The game then moves onto final scoring.

Triggering the End Game — The green player only has two green trains left. This will trigger the end of the game. Each of the players will have one last turn.

Final Scoring in Ticket to Ride

To determine who wins Ticket to Ride each player will tally the number of points they earned in the game. You can score points in three different ways.

Scoring Routes

First you will score points for each of the routes that you claimed. At the end of the game this total should be reflected in the current position of each players’ Scoring Marker. To make sure no mistakes were made though, you may want to recount the number of points each player earned from the routes they claimed during the game. If there are any mistakes you should adjust the scoring marker to the correct total.

Final Map in Ticket to Ride — The game has ended and this is what the final gameboard map looks like.

Scoring Destination Tickets

Next each player reveals all of the Destination Tickets they took during the game. Each player will add or subtract the amount of points that they earned from each of the cards that they took. See the Destination Ticket Cards section above for more details.

Scoring the Longest Continuous Path

Finally the players will determine who created the Longest Continuous Path. Each player finds their longest connected set of plastic train cars and counts up how many trains are in it. Your longest path can loop and pass through the same city multiple times. You may not use the same plastic trains multiple times though when determining your longest path. The player that created the Longest Continuous Path receives ten points. If there is a tie for the Longest Continuous Path, all of the tied players score the ten points.

Longest Continuous Path Card — Looking at the final board above, each players’ longest path are as follows: blue – 37, green – 23, red – 37, and yellow – 25. Blue and red tied for the longest continuous path so they both will score the ten bonus points.

Determining the Winner

Each player compares their point totals. The player that scored the most points wins the game. If there is a tie, the tied player that completed the most Destination Tickets wins. If there is still a tie, the tied player with the Longest Continuous Path card wins.

Ticket to Ride

Year: 2004 | Publisher: Days of Wonder | Designer: Alan R. Moon | Artist: Cyrille Daujean, Julien Delval

Genres: Family, Set Collection, Network and Route Building

Ages: 8+ | Number of Players: 2-5 | Length of Game: 45-60 minutes

Difficulty: Light-Moderate | Strategy: Moderate | Luck: Light-Moderate

Components: gameboard, 240 plastic trains (45 of each color plus some extra replacement trains), 110 Train Car cards (12 of each color and 14 Locomotives), 20 Destination Ticket cards, Longest Continuous Path Bonus card, Summary card, 5 Scoring Markers, instructions

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