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Box art via BoardGameGeek
Ticket to Ride
Claim train routes, hoard cards, and quietly ruin someone else's plans.
Designed by Alan R. Moon · 2004
About as close to a perfect family game as it gets. Three minutes to teach, room for everyone.
Best for: Mixed-age tables and total beginners
What it is
If someone wants one game to build a family collection around, this is the easy answer. You collect colored train cards and spend them to claim routes across a map, racing to connect the cities on your secret tickets. That's the whole thing, and it's plenty.
The catch
What makes it sing is the long route, the ambitious coast-to-coast ticket that needs one specific stretch of track nobody else can be allowed to grab first. Quiet players turn surprisingly ruthless over a single length of rail between Seattle and Portland. That's the moment the game has you.
Who it's for
Play it enough and you'll outgrow it a little. That's fine. Its job is turning someone who says they're not a games person into someone asking for one more round, and not much else does that so reliably.
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