Collect train-car cards, claim railway routes between cities, and secretly connect the cities on your Destination Tickets to score the most points across a map of North America.

How to Play Ticket to Ride

Overview

Ticket to Ride is a route-building, set-collection game on a map of North America. Each turn you take exactly one of three actions: draw train-car cards, claim a route, or draw Destination Tickets. You score by claiming routes, secretly completing Destination Tickets (connections between two named cities), and earning the Longest Continuous Path bonus. Highest total score wins.

Components (what matters for play)

• 240 colored Train Cars — 45 each in Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, and Black (plus spares).

• 110 Train Car cards — 12 each of eight colors (Purple, Blue, Orange, White, Green, Yellow, Black, Red) plus 14 Locomotive (wild) cards.

• 30 Destination Ticket cards — each names two cities and a point value.

• 1 Longest Continuous Path Bonus card.

• 5 Scoring Markers (one per player) and the scoring track around the board edge.

Setup

1. Place the board in the center. Each player takes 45 Train Cars of one color and the matching Scoring Marker, placed on Start of the scoring track.

2. Shuffle the Train Car cards; deal 4 to each player. Place the deck face-down and turn the top 5 cards face-up beside it.

3. Place the Longest Path Bonus card beside the board.

4. Shuffle the Destination Tickets; deal 3 to each player. Each player keeps at least 2 (may keep all 3); returned cards go to the bottom of the deck. Keep your tickets secret until final scoring.

The Game Turn

Play proceeds clockwise. On your turn, perform exactly one of these three actions:

1) Draw Train Car Cards

Draw 2 Train Car cards. Each can be a face-up card or a blind draw from the deck.

• Locomotive (wild) cards are special: if you take a face-up Locomotive, that is your entire draw for the turn (you only get 1 card). A Locomotive drawn blind from the deck counts as a normal single card, so you may still draw a second.

• Whenever 3 of the 5 face-up cards are Locomotives, all 5 face-up cards are immediately discarded and replaced.

2) Claim a Route

Play a set of Train Car cards equal to the length of a route, all of one type matching the route's color (gray routes accept any single color). Place one of your trains on each space of the route, then advance your Scoring Marker by the route's value (see Route Scoring). Discard the cards used.

• You may claim one route per turn. Between two adjacent cities connected by Double-Routes, one player may claim only one of the two. In 2-3 player games, only one of each Double-Route may be used at all (claiming one closes the other).

3) Draw Destination Tickets

Draw 3 new Destination Tickets and keep at least 1 (you may keep 2 or all 3). Returned cards go to the bottom of the deck. Completing a kept ticket adds its value at game end; failing to connect its two cities subtracts that value.

Route Scoring

When you claim a route, immediately score by its length:

Game End

When one player's stock of trains drops to 0, 1, or 2 at the end of their turn, every player (including that one) takes one final turn. The game then ends and final scoring is calculated.

Final Scoring

1. Route points were tracked during play.

2. Reveal all Destination Tickets: add the value of each completed ticket; subtract the value of each ticket you did not connect.

3. The player with the Longest Continuous Path of routes earns the Bonus card worth +10 points. The path uses only continuous lines of one player's trains; it may loop and revisit cities, but no single train is used twice. On a tie for longest, all tied players score the 10-point bonus.

Winning and Ties

• Winner: most total points.

• Tiebreaker 1: the tied player who completed the most Destination Tickets wins.

• Tiebreaker 2: if still tied, the player holding the Longest Continuous Path card wins.

Scoring Guide (and How to Record a Match)

Ticket to Ride is a highest-score-wins game. A player's final total is the sum of several clearly separable buckets, so the total decomposes cleanly into components.

What you score

1. Route Points — earned immediately each time you claim a route, by length (1 train = 1, 2 = 2, 3 = 4, 4 = 7, 5 = 10, 6 = 15). Tracked on the scoring track during play.

2. Destination Ticket Points (net) — at game end, add the value of each ticket you completed and subtract the value of each ticket you kept but failed to connect. This bucket can be negative.

3. Longest Continuous Path Bonus — +10 points to the player with the longest single continuous path of their own trains (ties: every tied player gets +10).

Final Total = Route Points + Net Destination Ticket Points + Longest Path Bonus.

Recording Matches on Our Site

Minimum viable record (enough to rank the match)

• Variant played (Standard / Two-Player / Europe)

• Player list

• Final Total Score for each player (integer; can be low or even negative if many tickets failed)

That alone determines winner and placement.

Best record (great for analysis)

Record, per player:

• Route Points (sum of route values claimed)

• Completed Destination Tickets (count) and Destination Ticket Net Points (added minus subtracted)

• Longest Path Bonus (10 if held, else 0)

• Stations Remaining (Europe only; 4 points each)

Tiebreak data

The official tiebreak is most completed Destination Tickets, then Longest Continuous Path card holder. Record Completed Destination Tickets and who held the Longest Path card to resolve ties deterministically.

Common scoring mistakes to avoid

• Forgetting to subtract the value of incomplete kept tickets at game end.

• Double-counting route points (they are scored once, when claimed).

• Splitting the Longest Path bonus when not tied — only the single longest path holder scores it unless there is a genuine tie.

• (Europe) Forgetting leftover Station points — each unused Station is worth 4 points.

Record each player's Total Points (authoritative). Also record Completed Destination Tickets and Longest Path Bonus to apply the official tiebreak (most completed tickets, then Longest Continuous Path card) consistently.