Tag: Open Drafting

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 7 – Japan & Italy includes a double-sided game board — the longest yet in the Map Collection series — that features Japan on one side and Italy on the other.

In the Japan half of the expansion, some routes are reserved for the Bullet Train network, and once such a route is claimed, it can be used by all players to complete destination tickets. To claim such a route, discard a number of cards equal to the length of the route with all the card being the same color, then mark the route with a single Bullet Train miniature; instead of scoring points for such a route, advance your marker on the separate Bullet Train track as many spaces as the length of this route. At the end of the game, whoever has contributed the most to this shared project receives the largest bonus, with the player who contributes least being penalized.

This game board also has a small inlay for the Tokyo subway system, so players are effectively working on two networks at once. You might have a ticket that lists a city outside Tokyo and a station with Tokyo, and you need to complete a route from that other city to Tokyo, then from the central Tokyo station to that particular subway station.

In Italy, the game board is divided into regions, and players score bonus points based on how many regions they connect in their network, with three regions — Sardegna, Sicilia, and Puglia — counting as two regions in your tally. If you have separate networks, then you score each one separately.

The board also introduces a new type of ferry route. On this game board, all gray routes are ferry routes, with these routes having 1-4 spaces marked with a wave symbol. To cover a wave symbol, you must play a locomotive or a ferry card from your hand (in addition to the other cards needed to claim this route); a ferry card is a special type of card that can be drafted on its own on your turn, and it contains two wave symbols, so it can be used on its own to cover two symbols on a route.

The player trains and game cards from Ticket to Ride or Ticket to Ride: Europe are needed to play this expansion.

Days of Wonder’s Ticket to Ride Map Collection is a series of expansions for Alan R. Moon’s Ticket to Ride, with each expansion including a double-sided game board and destination tickets and rules for those locations.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 2 – India & Switzerland presents players with two scenarios:

• India from Ian Vincent – On this game board for 2-4 players, in addition to scoring points for claiming routes and completing tickets, a player can also score points in two other ways. First, the player with the longest continuous path of trains receives a ten point bonus. Second, each player scores bonus points for connecting the cities on one or more tickets with two distinct routes. The first two such tickets earn five additional points each, and the next three earn ten points each for a maximum bonus of 40 points.

• Switzerland from Alan R. Moon – This is a reprint of Ticket to Ride: Switzerland, first published in 2007. This game board is for 2-3 players only. Instead of connecting only cities, some destination tickets connect a city to a country or one country to any of those surrounding Switzerland; a player who completes such a ticket scores the highest point value for which they qualify. Unlike most other TtR games, discarded tickets are removed from the game instead of being returned to the ticket deck. Also, Locomotives can be used only to build tunnels.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 6 – France & Old West includes a double-sided game board that features France on one side and the western half of the United States on the other.

In the France half of this expansion, 2-5 players collect train cards and claim routes in order to complete tickets in hand, but most of the tracks on the board aren’t colored! Each time that you draw cards, you must take a colored tile that’s 2-5 train cars long and place that tile on an empty track bed. Once you’ve done this, any player can claim that route by discarding the appropriately colored cards from hand, as in any other Ticket to Ride game. (Single-length routes are already colored, and the map contains a number of gray-colored ferry routes.)

Multiple track beds on the game board overlap, and once a tile has placed on the board, any track beds crossed by this tile are off-limits and nothing can be built on them. At the end of the game, players score their tickets, with bonuses being awarded for longest continuous route and most tickets completed.

In the Old West half of the expansion, 2-6 players start the game by choosing (in reverse player order) a starting location for one of their three city pieces. The first route that a player claims must have this city as one of the route’s two endpoints, and each subsequent route claimed must connect to that player’s existing network.

After claiming a route, a player can place one of their remaining cities on either end of that route by discarding a matching pair of train cards. Only one city marker can be in each city. Whenever a player builds a route that connects to a city owned by another player, the owner of the city claims the points for the route, not the player placing the trains. If both endpoints of the route have cities, then the owner of each city scores these points. Whoever completes the most tickets in this expansion scores 15 bonus points.

As a variant, you can play Old West with Alvin the Alien. No player can start the game in Roswell, and the first player who builds a route into Roswell scores 10 points, then places the Alvin marker in any city that they control. The next player to connect to this city scores 10 points, then moves Alvin as before. Whoever controls Alvin at the end of the game scores 10 bonus points.

Set in the vast wilderness of Africa at the height of its exploration by intrepid explorers, missionaries and adventurers, Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 3 – The Heart of Africa, a single-sided expansion map for Ticket to Ride or Ticket to Ride: Europe, focuses on the central and southern “heart” of the continent displayed in a vertical format.

This expansion introduces 45 new terrain cards, divided into three different terrain types. Each type is associated with different route colors: Desert/Savanna cards for yellow, orange and red routes; Jungle/Forest cards for green, blue and purple routes; and Mountain/Cliff cards for black, white and grey routes. Players can draw terrain cards just like train cards and they may use these to double the value of the routes they claim, under certain conditions.