Ticket to Ride

01Discover the game

The Adventurers of Rail consist of building a network of wagons between the cities of North America. You collect colour cards to take roads, while trying to make secret tickets connecting two remote cities. A short link can be indispensable to a long project; so you must observe the intentions of others without forgetting its own objectives.

We follow the USA board of the new French notice dated 7 May 2025. It contains 33 tickets and distributes four at the startThe old boxes with 30 tickets and three initial tickets use another note; do not mix the preparations. It is neither Europe, nor My First Trip, nor an extension USA 1910. The overall difficulty is Medium: planning, hand management and adaptation to the roads taken by the opponents. Two to five players participate, for 30 to 60 minutes.

02Equipment

It takes the North American network board, 45 plastic wagons per colour for five colors, five score markers, 110 Wagon cards, 33 tickets, a bonus card for the longest path and the booklet. Boxes can provide replacement cars: no more than 45 to each player.

The Wagon cards consist of twelve cards of each of the eight colours, 96 cards, and fourteen multicolor locomotives. The colours correspond to the roads. The tickets indicate two cities and one value; they return this value if the journey is made, but cause it to lose otherwise. The card of the longest path is a bonus reminder, not an individual objective distributed.

03The goal

Finishes with the most points. You win it immediately when you take a road, then at the end of the game with the successful tickets and the bonus of the longest continuous path. Missed tickets lose points: taking a lot increases both the possibilities and the risks.

You do not need to connect all your roads immediately between them. An isolated road can be built if it is free and you can pay for it. On the other hand, a ticket will only be realized by a continuous path of cars of your own colour between its two cities; the trains of an opponent do not serve as a connection.

04Preparing for the trip

Place the board in the center. Each player takes his 45 cars and sets his marker on zero. Mix the Wagon cards, give four to each and reveal the first five near the hidden Stock. If at least three of these five cards are locomotives, discard the five and reveal a new market.

Mix the 33 tickets and give four to each player. Each keep at least two, secretly, and can keep three or four tickets. Mix the rejected tickets together and place them under the Stock of the tickets. Place the bonus of the longest path next to it. Choose the first player by the method of your choice; notice 2025 does not require that you specifically designate the greatest traveller. Then play in the clockwise direction.

05One action at each turn

Taking Wagon Cards

You can take two cards, one after the other. Each card can come from the visible market or from the hidden top of the Stock. Immediately replace a visible card taken before choosing the next one. So you can take the card that just appears as the second choice if the restrictions allow.

A locomotive face up must be your first choice and occupies the entire action: you don't take a second map. You can't choose a visible locomotive as a second map. A locomotive drawn blindly costs only a normal choice; so you can still take your second map if you just started.

As soon as three of the five visible cards are locomotives, discard the entire market and replace it. The hand has no limit. When the Wagon Stock is empty, mix its waste to redo one. If no card is available, this action cannot be chosen: take a road or new tickets.

Take a road

Choose a free link between two nearby cities. Defaults as many maps as this road contains boxes, all of the color requested. The locomotives replace the missing colors. For a gray road, choose a single color of payment, supplemented if necessary by locomotives; you do not pay with a mixture of several ordinary colors.

Put your cars on all the blocks of the road. You must be able to fill it in full and have enough physical cars. You only build one road per turn, even if you have a lot of cards. It doesn't need to touch your current network.

Make its points immediately: length 1 = 1 point, 2 = 2, 3 = 4, 4 = 7, 5 = 10, 6 = 15. Count the length of this link, not the length of your entire network.

Double roads are two parallel routes between the same cities. One player cannot take both. At two or three players, as soon as one is taken, the other is closed to all. At four or five, two different players can each use one lane.

Pick up tickets

Take the first three tickets, or all those that remain if there are less than three. Keep at least one of these new tickets and put the others under the package in the chosen order. You cannot return a ticket that you had kept at a previous turn. This action does not allow any Wagon card picks or construction during the same turn.

There are no tunnels, ferries or stations on the USA board of this tutorial. Adding their rules because we know them from another box would be a variant error.

06An example of choice and score

Your hand contains three red Wagons, one locomotive and two blues. You can pay with the three reds and the locomotive, lay four cars and earn seven points. The blues stay in your hand. If you had only two reds, one locomotive and two blues, the blues would not complete the payment of this red road.

At a subsequent turn, you choose to take a visible green card and then a hidden card. If this hidden card is a locomotive, it is normally kept: the single choice rule concerns only a visible catch locomotive. An opponent who takes the locomotive directly from the market receives no other card during this turn.

On the final count, imagine 48 points of road, successful tickets worth 12 and 8, a missed ticket of 7 and the longest path. The total is 48 + 12 + 8 - 7 + 10 = 71. The missed ticket escapes even if you have connected almost all its cities: only the complete link counts.

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07The Last Round and Victory

When a player finishes his turn with zero, one or two cars in reserve, the last turn is triggered. Each person plays again, including the one who triggered it. Then stop the game and check the road points if necessary.

Reveal tickets and add successes; subtract failures. The longest continuous path earns ten points. It can pass several times in a city and contain loops, but the same car can never be used twice in this path. It is not the sum of all branches of the network. At equal length, all concerned receive ten points.

The biggest score wins. At the same time, the one who has managed the most tickets wins; if necessary, the possession of the bonus of the longest starting path still. If none of these criteria is set, announce a shared victory rather than invent a secret last minute criterion.

08Frequent errors

• Give three initial tickets while using the 2025 notice to four tickets.
• Take one locomotive visible as a second map or take another after it.
• Pay a gray road with several ordinary mixed colors.
• Build only part of a link.
• Use the two lanes of a double road to two or three players.
• Forget that the trigger is playing again on the last lap.

09Tips for starting

Choose tickets sharing part of the journey. Finds short connections without detours possible: they can become urgent before long income roads. Keeps a few locomotives for colors difficult to assemble.

At the end of the day, count the remaining cars in the other cars before taking tickets. A very interesting goal does not help if someone is about to finish. Do not advertise your tickets, but check regularly that your network actually connects the planned cities.