Ticket to Ride - Tips & Strategies

This was the first grown-up game that I was able to get my youngest daughter, Anna, to enjoy. She was only 6 years old and had some trouble keeping track of the destinations. We made two modifications that really made her fall in love with the game.
1) Open destinations. Keep the destination cards face up. Anna had a hard enough time keeping track of her multi-colored train cards, let alone the destination cards. Keeping them face up in front of her made it easier.
2) Use colored markers on the map to indicate each player’s destinations. This really helped my daughter go beyond the typical linearity of most kid strategies and consider a network instead.

I would also urge any parent using this variant to avoid exploiting a blocking strategy until your kid figures it out for themselves. Fewer tears that way.

What’s a linchpin? It’s the most important route in your plan. After deciding which destinations you want to connect together, you’ll probably find that there’s one spot where you NEED a particular route in order to avoid a huge detour around the map.

Now, most people tend to get route after route in order, slowly building their strip of trains as they go, but it’s more important to figure out where the ‘hot spots’ on the board are, and grab them early!

For example, the connection between New Orleans and Houston is a very popular one, so I’d grab it early. Another important route is Las Vegas, which only has two routes connecting to it. Finally, be sure not to get cut out of Alaska.

In some groups I play with, the malicious may choose to stop players from completing certain destination tickets if the victim has made it obvious where they are trying to get to. At the start of the game, this doesn’t happen as much considering players will be busy focusing their efforts on their own destination tickets before moving onto slyly eliminating the possibilities for others.

With this in mind, I usually focus my attentions on the first batch of Destination Tickets given at the start of the game. Once completed, I shift my focus to the ‘Longest Route’ objective. with around 10 carriages remaining, a rather efficient network has spread through the US bragging your colour like some sort of virus.

At this point, it’s a good idea to start asking for Destination Tickets’ once again. Every time you ask for Destination Tickets, it’s a gamble, but at this point in the game your sporadic network should reach far and wide. With three tickets to choose from, there’s a very strong chance that certain routes have already been completed, banking you very easy points heading into the end-game. Should the unlikelihood of no automatic completions be apparent, you still have a decent amount of carriages to help aid you in any that need completion.

In games I’ve played, this usually not only bags a nice amount of points, but confuses the more malicious players. Whenever someone asks for Destination Tickets, a collective ‘OOOOOOOOHHH!!!’ is murmured around the table, giving some people the idea they should start getting a bit more aggressive when it comes to your train placement. Here, you can confuse them by stringing together multiple Destination Ticket requests or even completely de-rail their tactics altogether!

That’s right…de-rail…

I’ve played dozens of games of Ticket to Ride and I have observed that choosing routes wisely in the first round is critical to winning the game.

– Always choose routes that are grouped together, so it doesn’t take many turns to complete all of your routes.

– Try to choose routes that will form into the longest route possible (The ten points are critical at the end).

– Try to choose as one of your first two routes, a cross-country route. This will make it easier to add new routes on without much effort.

– Try to avoid routes with critical choke points (2-3 trains long) that fill up early.

Every T2R board has Key Cities. These are cities that either serve as a major hub or crossroads geographically, or that appear a little more often than others on that game’s Destination Tickets (the two are usually related).

Choose your opening routes to allow yourself to cross thru 3-5 of those Key Cities and finish a long, continuous path (helping win the Bonus Pts, too, if your game is using that card/rule). Then, if you’ve “played your cards right” (snicker), you’ll be in a position, with plenty of time/turns left, to draw aLOT more Destination Tickets (maybe baffling your opponents).

It is very likely that with each draw you will have already completed at least one of those routes = free points! Even if you have to “swallow” a loss of points once/twice, you’ll more than make up the difference in longer, already connected, routes!

Figuring out what the Key Cities on each map isn’t difficult, just takes some observation and repeated play. And, HEY! That’s what we’re all here for, right?

It is usually a good idea to build up a very large hand before laying down trains, but how do you know when to play? Just consider these things:
1) Is a route ‘key’? How long will a detour take you?
2) Is the route colored or wild? If possible, wait to play on wild (grey) roots, claim routes that are confined to one color first.
3) Are there cards you need face up in the draw area? If there are, take them, they are more likely to be taken by other players than the route you might otherwise play on.

Of course, each of these things has to be taken one case at a time, but generally they are sound.

Take time at the beginning to map out the best way to complete your routes that will also take your trains through multiple key cities. Drawing a large number of train cards will give you multiple ways to complete your routes which will enable you to select key cities to travel through.

New players don’t pay much attention to what you do, but more experienced player is more he/she seeks to hinder your progress.

I have noticed that people who I play TtR with (the experienced lot) seem to tend to collect proper hand before playing, as in sizing up others and reacting after first play rather than rushing to tracks.

Collect your first route(s) and lay one of them, it comes fast evident who is ready to play and who seeks to delay others. By this time you have numerous cards to help you lead the opponent on wrong tracks. Play your route to wrong direction and see how opponent reacts. Next time you can start on the other end of the route as if it would be the other route of yours, but make sure they’re not too close to each others or your game will be called.

In best case you can delay his track by letting him think he slowed you down and he probably paid more on it than you. In worst case you opened an avenue for detour in case your original path get blocked.

One strategy I really enjoy using is hoarding a particular color. Early in a game I will pick a particular color that I don’t need and pick it up whenever there is not something I need. I then sit on this color for as long as I can then use them for the gray (any color) routes towards the end. This causes problems for other players that might desperately need more of that color, but since you can still use them for the gray routes it doesn’t really hurt you. It is important to not let this strategy get in the way of getting cards you need, though.

I think the America map is a bit broken, for this strategy have NEVER failed me to win the game.

1. At first, out of the initial destination cards, grab one or two that can use partially the same route and preferably a route with many 7 step passages.

2. Hoard cards! Locomotives are not that important, getting MANY cards is much more important, sooner or later you’ll find the use for them anyway.

3. Complete your destination cards as quickly as you can

4. Build as many long routes as you possibly can. There are two reasons for this: A) Building a long route cost you one move, building two shorter ones cost you two moves, you lose precious time when you don’t claim as long routes as possible, B) You have a limited number of trains and the long routes willgive you most vp/train cart.

5. Don’t bother trying to stop the other players. It may annoy them, but it’s hard to really deny someone the access to a particular station, and it’s not really worth the effort.

A bonus is of course that if you build the long routes you will deny your opponents vp for all their trains since the game will end before they have the chance to place them on the map.

So, it works, but the strategy may also ruin the fun with this map. I sincerely think this kind of strategy is the reason they tweaked the european map, where thist does not work nearly as good (and I also prefer the european map for those reasons).