Tips tickettoride

Know the facts

The board

• Each color has 27 spaces.
• Each color has one 6 route.
• 6/8 colors have one 5, two 4, two 3 and one 2.
• White and green have an extra 5 and 2 and one less 4 and 3.

27 spaces per color

White and Green	Black, Orange, Red, Yellow, Purple and Blue
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The Destination Ticket deck

30 Destination Tickets

From	To	Points
Boston	Miami	12
Calgary	Phoenix	13
Calgary	Salt Lake City	7
Chicago	Santa Fe	9
Chicago	New Orleans	7
Dallas	New York	11
Denver	Pittsburgh	11
Denver	El Paso	4
Duluth	El Paso	10
Duluth	Houston	8
Helena	Los Angeles	8
Kansas City	Houston	5
Los Angeles	New York	21
Los Angeles	Miami	20
Los Angeles	Chicago	16
Montréal	New Orleans	13
Montréal	Atlanta	9
New York	Atlanta	6
Portland	Nashville	17
Portland	Phoenix	11
San Francisco	Atlanta	17
Sault St. Marie	Oklahoma City	9
Sault St. Marie	Nashville	8
Seattle	New York	22
Seattle	Los Angeles	9
Toronto	Miami	10
Vancouver	Montréal	20
Vancouver	Santa Fe	13
Winnipeg	Houston	12
Winnipeg	Little Rock	11

Strategy

Destination Tickets

• Destination tickets with nearby cities need fewer train cars
• Tickets are risky! Be sure you can complete your tickets with your remaining car pieces before taking more.

Train Car Cards

• If another player takes a color that you want, you can use multi-color locomotives to complete them (e.g. a 6-car route with only 5 matching cards and one multi-color)
• Draw face-down train car cards to draw up to two multi-color cards per turn
• Avoid face-up multi-color unless:
  • it's an emergency or
  • you would hold more cards than your remaining car pieces

Train Car Pieces

You only have 45 train cars. Generally speaking, that means you can only go horizontally across the country once and Vertically once. Very efficient routes can go vertically twice, but that means there are few detours and/or branches.

For reference, Los Angeles to Vancouver to Montreal to Miami is 44 trains if you hit the absolutely most efficient route. (Exact same count for the Southern route). Any detour that makes the train more than 1 car longer and the whole route is impossible.

• Claim longer routes to:
  • gain more points per car
  • play more cars per turn

Choose your timing wisely

• Without opponents, you would first draw 45 train car cards of the colors you want and only then play your 45 cars.
• With opponents, some of the routes you want will be claimed before you can claim them, so you need to balance claiming routes early with using cards efficiently.
  • Build too late, and your opponent may lay claim to critical routes and block you (or worse, end the game before you build!)

Competition

Other than maximising your points, you can also limit your opponent's ability to collect points by:

Ending the game quickly

• The last round is triggered when any player has less then three car pieces remaining.
• Play more cars per turn by claiming longer routes.

Claiming routes to 'block' your opponent

• Claiming routes early may allow you to claim your preferred routes, leaving your opponent to take inconvenient detours.
• To avoid being blocked yourself, identify critical choke points in your route, and claim them early.
  • N.B. Some players, as in any other game, consider deliberate blocking - when you take a segment that interferes with your opponent without actually helping you - to be unsporting, but it can be considered a crucial strategy in a competitive format.

Drawing train car cards of a color that you opponent needs

• Where an opponent is collecting cards of a certain color (for example for a 6-length route), or there is a gap in their route of a certain color, you can draw that color so that your opponent has to:
• Use more turns to draw the cards they need.
• Use any multi-color cards they hold.
• Make it harder for them to complete their routes.

In higher level games, the typical strategy is to draw a lot of face-down cards to collect as many multi-color as possible and complete as many long routes as you can to connect your destinations and claim the longest route bonus. With this strategy it is often possible to win with only 2 low scoring tickets.