Ticket to Ride Board Game: Rules, Maps and Editions

What the Ticket to Ride board game is

Ticket to Ride is a route-building game designed by Alan R. Moon and published by Days of Wonder. The board is a map. Cities are dots, and between them run routes made of colored spaces. You claim a route by playing a matching set of cards and covering it with your own little plastic trains.

The catch is the tickets. Each one names two cities and a point value. Connect them with your own trains by the end of the game and you score the ticket. Fail and you lose those points. Nobody else sees your tickets until the end, so half the game is guessing why your neighbor just built a line into Montréal.

Here's the box, as the classic rulebook and the listings state it:

• Players: 2 to 5 (USA and Europe)
• Age: 8+
• Play time: 30 to 60 minutes
• Kind of game: competitive, no teams
• Expansions: map packs that need a base game, listed separately below

My one opinion for this page: get a base game to the table a few times before you buy a map pack. More than half of the Ticket to Ride listings in our data are add-ons that say they need a base game. A map pack changes the rules a little on each map. That's a lot of new rules on top of a game the table hasn't learned yet.

How Ticket to Ride plays

This section follows the Days of Wonder rulebook for the original USA map, the 2015 reprint. I'm describing it in my own words. The Europe changes come right after.

Setup

Each player takes 45 trains in one color and a scoring marker. You get 4 train cards. Five more train cards go face up beside the board, and the rest form a deck. Then everyone is dealt 3 tickets and must keep at least 2. Returned tickets go to the bottom of the pile.

The rulebook says the most experienced traveler goes first. That rule has started more arguments at our table than any route. Somebody always brings up a layover.

A turn

On your turn you do exactly one of three things:

1. Draw train cards. Take 2, from the face-up row or blind from the deck.
2. Claim a route. Play cards that match its color and length, then place a train on every space.
3. Draw tickets. Take 3, keep at least 1.

The locomotive is the wild card, and it has a price. If you take a face-up locomotive, that's your whole draw for the turn. A locomotive you pull blind from the deck counts as a normal card. And if three locomotives ever sit in the face-up row together, all five cards are discarded and replaced.

Gray routes take a set of any one color. Some cities are joined by double routes. One player can't take both lanes. With only 2 or 3 players, once one lane is claimed, the other one closes for everyone.

Points along the way

You score a route the moment you claim it, and long routes pay much better than short ones:

Route length	Points
1	1
2	2
3	4
4	7
5	10
6	15

Two 3-space routes use six trains and score 8. One 6-space route uses the same six trains and scores 15. That table is the whole strategy argument in six rows. Long routes are worth waiting for, if nobody takes them while you wait.

How it ends

When any player ends a turn with 2 or fewer trains left, every player, that one included, gets one final turn. Then you reveal tickets. Completed ones add their value. Unfinished ones subtract it. The longest continuous path of trains earns a 10-point bonus card, and ties for it all score the 10. Most points wins. A tie goes to whoever completed more tickets.

The end comes with a warning, which I appreciate. When someone counts their last few trains out loud, everyone suddenly remembers the ticket they've been ignoring.

Ticket to Ride vs Ticket to Ride Europe

These are the two full base games on Amazon US right now. The listings in our data say both are 2 to 5 players, ages 8+, 30 to 60 minutes. The difference is in the rules, and Days of Wonder's Europe rulebook lists exactly three new features.

• Train stations: each player has 3. A station lets you use one route a rival owns, for your tickets only. The first costs 1 card, the second 2, the third 3. Each station you never build is worth 4 points at the end.
• Ferries: gray routes over water that need a locomotive card for each locomotive symbol printed on the route.
• Tunnels: after you lay down your cards, the top 3 deck cards are flipped. Each one that matches your color, locomotives included, costs you one more card. If you can't or won't pay, you take your cards back and the turn ends.

Europe also deals every player one long-route ticket at the start, from a separate set of six.

Marisol read the station rule over my shoulder and approved: "A route you don't finish is an open traverse. A station closes it for you. It isn't pretty, but it closes." She means a survey loop that doesn't come back to its starting point. I took her word for it.

So which one? If your group has never played, the USA map is the shorter teach: three actions and no exceptions. If you already know the USA game, or your group likes a safety net, Europe's stations make a blocked route hurt less. The Europe listing in our data is the 2026 Refresh and lists a map, 225 plastic trains, 15 stations, 110 train cards, 46 tickets and 5 scoring markers. The USA listing is the 2025 Refresh. The listings don't say what the refresh changed, so I won't guess.

Editions and versions on Amazon US

The table above shows every Ticket to Ride listing we track, all listed under Asmodee. Players, age and time come from each listing. Here's how they group.

Base games

• Ticket to Ride (2025 Refresh): 2 to 5 players, 8+, 30 to 60 minutes
• Ticket to Ride: Europe (2026 Refresh): 2 to 5 players, 8+, 30 to 60 minutes

Stand-alone games with their own rules

• Rails & Sails: 2 to 5 players, ages 10+, 90 to 120 minutes. The longest box in the family, and the only one listed above 8+ besides the legacy game.
• Northern Lights: 2 to 5 players, 8+, 60 minutes, listed as stand-alone
• Legends of the West (Ticket to Ride Legacy): 2 to 5 players, 10+, 20 to 90 minutes, listed as a legacy campaign. In a legacy game the box changes as you play through it, so it suits a steady group that meets again and again.

City games

Ticket to Ride: New York lists 2 to 4 players, 8+ and 10 to 15 minutes. Days of Wonder sells it as part of its Cities line of short, stand-alone games. It's the box I'd hand to a group that likes the idea of Ticket to Ride but not the hour.

For younger players

• First Journey: 2 to 4 players, 6+, 15 minutes on the listing
• Ghost Train: 2 to 4 players, 6+, 15 to 30 minutes

The First Journey rule sheet trims a turn to two choices: draw 2 cards from the deck, or claim one route. There's no face-up row and no points to add up. You hold 2 tickets, and when you finish one you flip it up and draw another. The first player to complete 6 tickets wins and takes the Golden Ticket card. Connecting the two far sides of the map earns a bonus ticket that counts as one completed ticket. The Ghost Train listing gives the same 6+ and 2 to 4 players, with a slightly longer 15 to 30 minutes.

Map expansions that need a base game

Map pack	Players	Needs
Asia	2–6	Ticket to Ride
Iberia & South Korea	2–6	Ticket to Ride or Ticket to Ride: Europe
USA 1910	2–5	Ticket to Ride
United Kingdom & Pennsylvania	2–5	Ticket to Ride
Japan & Italy	2–5	Ticket to Ride

All five list ages 8+ and 30 to 60 minutes. USA 1910 is a little different from the rest: its listing says it holds 181 large-format cards and 35 more destination tickets, not a new map. Asia and Iberia & South Korea are the two listings in the family that go up to 6 players.

Read the "needs" column before you buy one as a gift. Most of these packs need the USA base game, and only Iberia & South Korea also lists Europe. A Europe household with a USA map pack has a very nice box of cardboard and nowhere to put it.

Who should skip Ticket to Ride

Skip it if your group wants to work together. Ticket to Ride is everyone for themselves, and the main way to hurt someone is to take the route they needed, often without knowing it.

Skip the classic box if your youngest player is under 8. First Journey and Ghost Train start at 6+ on the listings. Under that, wait. The trains are small parts, and the classic rulebook counts on a player adding up a score track and holding secret goals.

And skip it if two people is your usual table and you want a tight fight. It works at 2, and the rulebook handles it by closing double routes. But the map feels roomier than at 4 or 5.

Check the age label on the listing. Toys with small parts are a choking hazard for children under 3.

If you like Ticket to Ride, look at these

Pages picked by what they share with Ticket to Ride in our data: 2 to 5 players, a one-hour box, and building on a shared board.

• Catan: build on a shared map, trade for what you need
• Carcassonne: lay tiles, claim roads and cities, about the same length
• Strategy board games: the wider shelf of planning games
• Family board games: shorter boxes for mixed ages
• Travel games: pocket-size games for the road

Say "two trains" out loud when you get there. The rulebook doesn't require it, but your table will thank you.