Ticket to Ride rules: how to play and how to score

Ticket to Ride quick rules

The goal

The board shows cities in North America connected by routes, made of small colored spaces: you claim them by placing your train cars on them. Each route you claim scores right away, and your Destination Tickets, kept secret, ask you to connect two cities: completed, they score their points, failed, they take them away. The Longest Continuous Path is worth 10 points, and the highest total wins.

Your turn

On your turn, you do one action, and only one, out of three: draw Train Car cards, claim a route, or draw new Destination Tickets. You never combine two actions in the same turn. You may hold as many cards in your hand as you like.

Drawing Train Car cards

You draw two Train Car cards, each one from the five face-up cards or blind from the top of the deck; a face-up card you take is replaced right away. Locomotives, multicolored, are wild: a face-up Locomotive counts as two cards and can never be your second card, but a Locomotive drawn blind counts as a normal card. As soon as three of the five face-up cards are Locomotives, discard all five and turn five new ones face up.

Claiming a route

Discard as many Train Car cards as the route has spaces, all in its color: Locomotives replace any color, and a gray route can be paid in any one color of your choice. Place one train car on each space and score right away: 1, 2, 4, 7, 10 or 15 points for a route of 1 to 6 spaces. One player can never claim both tracks of a Double-Route, and with 2 or 3 players, only one of the two tracks can be used.

Destination Tickets

A Destination Ticket names two cities and a point value: to complete it, connect them with a continuous path of your own train cars, whatever the detour. With this action, you draw 3 Destination Tickets and keep at least one; the ones you return go to the bottom of the deck. A ticket you keep counts until the end: failed, it costs you its points.

Game end and scoring

When a player has 2 train cars or fewer left at the end of their turn, each player takes one final turn, including that player. Everyone then reveals their Destination Tickets: add the completed ones, subtract the failed ones. The Longest Continuous Path earns the Longest Path bonus card and 10 points, to each tied player on a tie; if the totals are tied, the most completed Destination Tickets wins, then the longest path.

Beginner pitfalls

Don’t keep too many Destination Tickets: each failed ticket takes its points away. A route you want can be claimed by someone else at any time: don’t wait too long on the key links. Long routes score much more, and watch the other players’ train cars: the end can come fast.

USA 1910

The expansion replaces all the cards with large-format cards and adds 35 Destination Tickets marked 1910, with three ways to play. In 1910, the Globetrotter card (15 points for the most completed Destination Tickets) replaces the Longest Path card. The Mega Game shuffles all 69 Destination Tickets and uses both bonus cards; Big Cities uses the 35 tickets that show a city written in red. In those two, you draw 4 Destination Tickets during the game and keep at least one.

How to score Ticket to Ride

Routes (scoring track)

Your score on the scoring track of the board: 1, 2, 4, 7, 10 or 15 points per route of 1 to 6 spaces, scored when you claim it.

Completed Destination Tickets

The total points of your Destination Tickets whose two cities are connected by a continuous path of your train cars.

Failed Destination Tickets

The total points of your Destination Tickets left unconnected, subtracted from your score.

Longest Continuous Path

10 points for the longest continuous path; on a tie, each tied player scores them. It may loop and pass through a city several times, but each train car only counts once.

Number of completed tickets

Scores nothing: it breaks ties, before the longest path.

Globetrotter (USA 1910)

15 points for the player who completed the most Destination Tickets, in the 1910 and Mega Game ways to play.

Worked example

Mia has 62 route points on the track. She completes two Destination Tickets (11 and 8) but fails a 9: 62 + 11 + 8 − 9 = 72. With the Longest Path bonus: 72 + 10 = 82 points.

Common mistakes

• Trusting the scoring track without recounting: one missed move mid-game and everything is off. Recount routes at the end.
• Forgetting to subtract failed Destination Tickets: they cost exactly what they would have earned.
• Counting a train car twice in the longest path: loops are fine, but each train car only counts once.
• On a tie for the longest path, giving the 10 points to only one player: each tied player scores them.
• With USA 1910, in the 1910 way to play: keeping the Longest Path card. The Globetrotter card replaces it.

How to set up Ticket to Ride

A game takes about 1 hour. Follow the first three parts; the last one is only for the USA 1910 expansion.