Ticket to Ride

I am addicted.

We’ve been playing it non-stop.

It doesn’t hurt that we’ve recently discovered a couple of friends who also love this game.

What game you ask?

Ticket to Ride.

This is an x-box arcade game that comes from the roots of yet another board game. I LOVE BOARD GAMES turned in to video games!

Ok, so I have a confession…I also own this game in the original board game. But I prefer the x-box version (with the exception of playing with my parents because they are even worse at the controllers than I am – sorry dad).

Anyway, this game is great. It’s fun and challenging and apart from the annoying music there isn’t anything I don’t like…

Go back in time as you take on the role of the railroad builders. Select your destination tickets which tells you which cities you have to join – trying your best to select ones that follow a single path in hopes of getting that precious  bonus card for having the longest continuous route. Then collect train the colorful train cards for the corresponding tracks you need to build to connect your cities.

Each turn only affords you one type of play: select another destination, pull colored train cards or claim a route. The game can drag a bit here with newbs…but be patient, you were there once too.

Try it out on the four player mode with the AI’s set on easy to get you going but you’ll soon get the hang of it and graduate to the moderate AI’s.

One other issue is that there simply aren’t enough folks playing this game on x-box live so you are often forced to play the AI’s which is ok, but just not as fun. So let’s get the ball rolling out there huh?

Want a new challenge, download the 1910 extension and play the Mega Game which is my personal favorite. I wouldn’t bother with the Europe extension as I didn’t find it much fun at all and you’ll find absolutely nobody playing it online.

For a new AI challenge, try placing the AI’s on Hard and watch out for “out the cuts” gameplay. Then switch to a 2-3 player for a totally different game play focused on capturing your routes quick as second track of a double track disappears when someone plays on one.

It’s a great game, I just wish more gamers would leave those Halo screens for a quick trek to another time when getting access to the new areas of our country meant progress much like the points you’ll rack up when you build track after track.