Ticket to Ride: Europe - Alan Moons follow on from Ticket to Ride, the game is for 2 to 5 Players, ages 8 and up, takes a few minutes to learn, 45 to 60 minutes to play but many games to unravel a variety of successful tactics. Ticket to Ride is not required to play this game.
Objective
The object of the game is to score the highest number of total points. Points can be scored by:
- Claiming a Route between two cities on the map;
- Successfully completing a Continuous Path of routes between two cities listed on your Destination Ticket(s);
- Or by completing the Longest Continuous Path of routes.
- Points are lost if you do not successfully complete the route given on your Destination Ticket(s).
NB: Changes from Ticket to Ride will be highlighted by the text being in Bold and experienced players may only want to review these details.
Components
One Game Board representing Europe
240 Coloured Trains, 45 plus 3 spares in each of the 5 Colours (Black, Blue, Green, Red and Yellow)
5 Coloured Scoring Discs (one of each Black, Blue, Green, Red and Yellow)
110 Train Cards (12 of each Box, Passenger, Tanker, Reefer, Freight, Hopper, Coal and Caboose plus 14 Locomotives, each type with a different colour)
46 Destination Ticket Cards indicating Routes and the Points awarded if they are completed, of these 6 are Long Routes and 40 are Regular
1 European Express Bonus Card for the longest continuous path
1 Summary Card
1 Rules Booklet
Setting Up
Place the Game Board centrally then each Player chooses a colour and takes the Scoring Disc and 45 Trains of that colour.
Shuffle the Train Cards and deal each Player 4 cards, then deal 5 cards face up next to the Train Card Deck, more are uncovered whenever one of these 5 is drawn.
Shuffle the 6 Long Destination Ticket Cards, each Player is then dealt 1. Shuffle the 40 Regular Destination Ticket Cards and each Player is then dealt 3 cards. The players then look at these cards and may keep all 4 of them or may discard up to 2! Discarded cards are placed beneath the Destination Ticket Card deck. The discarded tickets may be either Long or Regular routes.
The Destination Ticket Cards are not revealed to the other Players until the end of the game so remember to look at them and either hold them in your hand or place them face down.
The value of a Destination Ticket Card is printed on it, but remember that amount is subtracted from your score if you do not complete the Route shown!
Now choose a Player to start using a method of your choosing.
Game Play
Starting with the 1st Player and continuing clockwise each Player has a choice of 1 of 4 actions to perform:
- Draw 2 additional Train Cards
- Claim and pay for a Route
- Draw additional Destination Ticket Cards
1. You may draw up to 2 additional Train Cards either from the 5 face up cards or blind from the Train Card Deck. If you pick up a Train Card (acts as a wildcard) from the face up cards then you may only select that card and no other that turn. Once a card is picked up from amongst those face up it is replaced by the top card from the deck.
2. To claim a Route you need to discard the right number of Train Cards from your hand to build the complete route, for example, if we look at the map below we see that Montreal and New York are linked by 3 blue spaces so you must play a combination of 3 Blue or Train (wildcard) Train Cards. In this instance you would then play 3 of your 45 Coloured Trains, 1 on each of the spaces.
On some routes there are designations that were not seen in Ticket to Ride and these require particular actions:
- Ferries - to claim a ferry route you must pay 1 Locomotive Card for each symbol shown on the route.
- Tunnels - to claim a tunnel you pay for the route as normal and then the top 3 cards of the Train Card pile are turned over and if the same Colour Train Card or a Locomotive is drawn an additional card of the same colour or a Locomotive must be paid. If you can't then you take your cards back but your turn is finished.
Claiming a route enables you to claim points, how many depends on how long a route you have built as shown below:
- 1 space = 1 point
- 2 spaces = 2 points
- 3 spaces = 4 points
- 4 spaces = 7 points
- 6 spaces = 15 points
- 8 spaces = 21 points
Remember to add the Points on each time you claim a Route! Though you can do this later on it is much easier to do it as you go along and that way you can keep track of how your opponents are doing.
3. If you want additional Destination Ticket Cards then you draw 3 cards from the Regular Destination Tickets, now you have to keep at least 1 of these cards and may discard none, 1 or 2 of these back beneath the draw deck.
4. You can Build a Train Station in any city that doesn't yet have one, paying one Train Card of any colour for the 1st, two of the same colour for the 2nd and three of the same colour for the 3rd. The train station allows you to use someone else's section of track when scoring though this cannot be counted as part of your longest route.
End Game
The game is brought to an end when 1 player has only 1 or 2 Trains left to place. At that point each player, including the player who has 2 or less Trains left, has one final go and then scoring is done for the Destination Ticket Cards.
Each player allocates his Train Station to one route from the City on which it is built, this shows that the Train Station only allows you to use 1 of someone else's routes.
If the player has Trains completing the entire route shown on their Destination Ticket Cards, including any routes completed by a Train Station, in the example above from Kobenhavn to Erzurum then they get the points shown on that card, in this instance 21. If the route isn't complete then reduce your score by that amount.
Once you have added or subtracted the Destination Ticket Cards points then you need to identify the person with the longest route, where a route is a continuous set of Trains which is not re-used and does not include any Routes borrowed from another player by use of the Train Station, the Player with the longest continuous route gets the Longest Continuous Path Card and with it 10 additional points. If there is a tie then all tied players receive the 10 points.
The Hooks
It's quick, it's easy to learn and it's suitable for everyone, your kids, your parents, everyone and we can't always say that about games produced for our hobby. On the other side of this it's a good gamers game too, there are plenty of things to watch, no dice to roll and you are mostly in control of how well you succeed though of course there are plenty of ways to try to hinder others progress.
The Planning in Ticket to Ride:Europe is fascinating, you don't want to be left with incomplete Destination Ticket Cards, that just costs you too many hard won points, you want to use longer pieces of track but that requires more cards but the return per card is better the longer the completed route.
Your Tactics
Knowing which Destination Ticket Cards to keep initially ?
- You have to keep 2 out of 4 (though you can keep all 4), the short ones are easier but are generally linked by shorter routes and so less points for linking them, though of course you don't have to take the most direct route. Look to see where the options for each route are, can you combine pieces of track to complete 2 or more of the Destination Ticket Cards.
Which Train Cards should I pick up ?
- Consider the following: do you need a specific colour to complete a route or is it a grey colour such as that from Paris to Marseille where 4 of any single colour will enable you to complete the route. Do you need a lot of cards of the same type, are the colours you are looking for face up ? Remember you can use the Train cards as wildcards, any colour but you can only pick 1 of them up a time.
When to convert ?
- Knowing when to exchange cards for Trains on the track is difficult. Lay your cards first and others may spot where your planned Routes will join up and they may want that space so keep in mind alternatives and identify your real crunch points. Sections of double track are less likely to be blocked so consider them as backups. On the other hand you can't afford to leave it too long or one or other of the players will lay their Trains instead.
The End Game
- There is one simple rule here, don't get caught with incomplete Destination Ticket Cards! If you are likely to then it may be worth a gamble in picking up an additional one to try to balance it out, but it is a gamble and won't always come off!
Conclusion
The introduction of Ferries, Tunnels and Train Stations make this enough of a different game to Ticket to Ride. It is still immensely enjoyable and suitable for a good variety of people though I would tend to bring out Ticket to Ride for beginners before introducing them to this game.
The Long Destination Ticket Cards worth 20 or 21 points are likely to come up in every game and that is may become quite predictable. There would also be a suspicion that they may not be equal in difficulty to complete with some mandating use of Locomotive Cards and some not.
The Short Destination Ticket Cards vary from 5 points to 13 points representing a range of difficulties and can take your journey around the map. There are 10 more than in Ticket to Ride giving more variety, I'm not certain whether this makes it statistically more or less likely you will find a favourable card when you draw additional routes.
The Board feels more congested than the American map, this helps add to the tension and is nicely balanced by being able to play Train Stations in order to use another players route.
The strategy of chasing all the longer scores isn't as easy in Ticket to Ride: Europe, there are less long routes and many of these are Ferries or Tunnels.
Additional Reviews
Details from Boardgamegeek
