Here are seven Ticket to Ride rule variants Laura and I have come up with. These are all variants we've used only when playing together, in a two-player game, but some of the variants might work in a game with three or more players.
Rule variant #1: Players can't hold more than fifteen car cards in their hands at any time.
By canonical rules, there's no limit to how many cards a player may hold in their hand at any time. But Laura and I have noticed that in our two-player games, the strategy of hoarding cards tends to win over the strategy of playing cards soon after they're drawn. Probably the success of hoarding has something to do with allowing the hoarder to keep their destinations a secret longer and not tip off the other player too early in the game. In any event, hoarding becomes overplayed.
This rule variant prevents hoarding. It restricts the maximum number of cards a player may hold to fifteen, thus forcing players to make routes sooner and risk exposing their destinations earlier in the game. The variant also makes it harder to collect a lot of cards of the same color—necessary for completing longer, more rewarding routes.
Overall, I've observed that this variant brings more balance to the game.
Rule variant #2: Players start with zero car cards.
By canonical rules, players start with four randomly drawn car cards; the cards may or may not be of colors useful to the player. This rule variant changes that by allowing the player to better control their hand at the beginning of the game.
This variant has the least impact of any of the variants described here, though it's well suited to being paired with rule variant #1 (no more than fifteen cards in hard).
Rule variant #3: Players may discard two destination cards at the beginning of game.
By canonical rules, players must keep at least two of the three destination cards they are dealt at the beginning of the game. This has the effect of sometimes forcing a player to try to connect two unrelated pairs of cities. An example of this is connecting longitudinally oriented Duluth–Houston and connecting latitudinally oriented Vancouver–Montreal. Connecting one pair of those cities doesn't help with connecting the other pair.
This rule variant lets a player start the game by keeping only one destination card, thus allowing the player to better avoid having to complete unrelated destinations.
Overall, I've observed that this variant brings more balance to the game.
Rule variant #4: Players may draw an extra destination card.
By canonical rules, when a player draws destination cards—including the cards dealt to the player at the beginning of the game—the player draws three cards and must keep at least one (or two if at the beginning of the game and not using rule variant #3 (players may discard two destination cards)).
This rule variant allows a player to optionally draw a fourth destination card. However, if the player draws a fourth card, then that player must keep two cards, not one (or keep three if at the beginning of the game and not using rule variant #3).
This variant has the effect of letting a player see more destination cards but at the risk of being more likely to get stuck with unrelated destination cards. I've found it's usually better to draw four cards early on in the game, when the benefit of drawing four outweighs its risk, and to draw three later on in the game, when the risk from drawing four outweighs its benefit.
Rule variant #5: Custom destination cards.
Sometimes Laura and I make our own destination cards and add them to the ones that come with the game. We each make up a small number of destinations—say, five from each of us—and write each destination on an index card. The destinations are worth as many points as is the length of the shortest possible route between the two cities. No player can use the same city twice on any of the destinations they make up. (So, for example, one player can't make both the destinations Phoenix–Helena and Phoenix–Pittsburgh.) Players don't see the custom cards the other player creates.
When players draw destination cards, they draw two cards from the canonical deck and one from the deck of custom index cards. (In a variation on the variant, the opposing player decides how many from each deck to draw from.)
This variant prevents a player from memorizing the entire deck of destination cards. Thus, players are less likely to know what destinations their opponent is trying to complete. This has the effect of bringing more balance to the game. It also makes the game less predictable and more fun, as players find themselves connecting cities they rarely connect when playing with only the canonical deck.
Rule variant #6: Remove from the deck all destination cards worth more than X points.
By canonical rules, the destination cards range from 4 points (Denver–El Paso) to 22 points (Seattle–New York). This rule variant causes all destinations worth more than X points, where X is, say, 13, to be removed from the game.
Laura and I have noticed that the strategy of keeping long destinations tends to win over the strategy of keeping short destinations. However, the strategy of keeping long destinations is available only by luck, as it requires a player to draw at least one of a few cross-country destinations.
This rule variant eliminates that luck factor by removing those long destinations altogether, forcing all players to connect a greater number of short destinations.
Rule variant #7: Players can complete multiple routes in one turn.
By canonical rules, players can make only one route per turn—by connecting two adjacent cities. Long routes are harder to complete than short routes because long routes require more car cards of the same color, but long routes are worth geometrically more points than short routes, and long routes allow a player to span more distance in fewer turns.
Despite the trade-off between long and short routes, Laura and I have noticed that the strategy of completing long routes tends to win over the strategy of completing short routes. But some destinations make it hard to avoid short routes while other destinations make it easy to use long routes. For example, the most direct path connecting Duluth—Houston (8 points) comprises five routes, three routes of length 2 (6 more points) and two routes of length 1 (2 more points), while the most direct path connecting Los Angeles–Miami (20 points) comprises only four routes, three of length 6 (45 more points) and one of length 2 (2 more points).
But the destinations a player ends up with is largely based on luck. This rule variant counteracts that luck by allowing a player to make multiple short routes on the same turn, thus saving turns and earning more points. For example, a player could connect Houston–Kansas City (length 5: 10 points) in one turn and Kansas City–Duluth (length 3: 4 points) in the next, earning more points in fewer turns than if the five routes were completed individually. (Houston–Kansas City is another destination card, too, which can provide a further bonus.)
Here are the conditions that allow a player to make multiple routes in one turn.
The routes must together form a contiguous path.
The combined length of all routes is less than or equal to 6.
- All routes must be completed using car cards of the same color. For example, a length-2 red route and a length-3 light gray (any color) route may be completed at the same time by playing five red cards. A player may not play 2 red cards and 3 blue cards to complete those same routes.
When completing multiple routes in one turn, the player is awarded points for the combined length of the routes. For example, if connecting Houston–Kansas City, length 5, then the player is awarded 10 points as though completing a single route of length 5.
This rule variant has the most impact of all the variants described here. Firstly, it increases the value of some of the game's short destinations. For example, Denver–El Paso and Houston–Kansas City can each be completed in one turn. That means more points in fewer turns, as well as not tipping off the opposing player before completing the destination.
Secondly, this variant allows some cities to become fully blocked in one turn. Vancouver and Las Vegas each have only two short routes, and so a player may block, say, Vancouver, by completing both of that city's routes in one turn. That prevents the other player from being able to connect any destinations including Vancouver, including the coveted Vancouver–Montreal destination worth 20 points. (Las Vegas doesn't have any destinations, unless possibly so if playing with rule variant #5 (custom destination cards)).
12 comments:
I support using rule #1 with rule #7.2 to even up play. Up to a third of your cards can be played on a turn.
Rules 7.1 & 7.3 should be struck.
With the limit of cards in hand and the preset number of color cards in the deck you are changing the game play by undermining the value of my grey cards that I am not using to block you.
Rule #5 is should be adopted by everyone, every where, now.
The other rules are just sour grapes.
The game is about managing resources and risk, stop mitigating the risk and let it ride.
Anonymous— Thanks for the feedback. I wish you gave more of it.
These are interesting rule variations.
We have stopped tracking individual's points around the board perimeter. Disadvantage being loss of seeing who is "winning" at given time. Advantage is game can go faster (because none of us seem able to track everyone's points in efficient and reliable Laura-style!).
Grubby— Laura and I played countless games by the official rules before we began making our own rules. Our inspiration was boredom; we realized that some destination cards were worth a lot more than others and that—and this is the big problem—a player could realize they had probably lost the game before even completing their first route—all because of the destination cards they drew at the beginning of the game. So Laura and I made up rules to increase parity.
As for keeping track of the score as you play, there's no good way to deal with that.
Here's another rule variation that I stumbled across simply by reading the rules wrong when I first started playing:
Instead of taking only one action per turn, a player MUST draw two train cards (or a face-up locomotive), MAY build a route if they choose, and MUST draw three tickets and keep at least one. (Basically, all three possible actions are combined into a single turn.)
The result of this is that the game is more stressful and arguably more strategic, since every single ticket card in the deck gets drawn by the time the game is about half over, and players have a LOT more tickets to fill, which forces them to choose very carefully which ones to keep and which ones to return to the deck. (Someone will eventually get stuck with that LA-Miami route that no one wants!)
It's a lot to keep track of, but now I can't imagine playing the game with only a small handful of tickets to fill. Part of the fun is figuring out which routes can easily be connected to each other and where to cut your losses and ignore certain cities that are too far out of your way or not worth enough points.
Unknown— Fascinating, thanks for the comment!
Your variant makes me think of the USA 1910 expansion pack Laura and I recently got as a gift. It replaces the standard ticket deck with a new deck that has about three times as many cards. If one used the new, bigger deck with your rule variant then they may never run out of tickets during the game and consequently finish with so many uncompleted tickets that they would have a negative score.
I have been batting around the idea of a rule that would allow each player to reteive one train from the game board per game. This is especially helpful with new players who make LOTS of mistakes.
Anonymous— Interesting idea! Ticket to Ride, like many games, is one that is very hard for a new player to win at when playing against experienced players. Unlike, say, Illuminati.
This is an interesting post. We picked up a copy of Ticket to Ride a couple of weeks ago and, in this Covid-lockdown time, we've been playing multiple games each day. Someone heard and gave us a copy of Ticket to Ride Europe, and we like that even better.
We almost immediately determined for ourselves we needed some version of your Variant #7. Otherwise, anyone forced by their tickets to build on the East Coast or down the middle was pretty sure to lose. Our version is two-fold: you can build up to 6 carriages (in Europe we allow an exception for the one 8-car route) anywhere, any colors, and score the normal points. E.g., if you build three 2-carriage routes, you get 6 points. If, however, you build contiguously and of the same color, then you score as if it was a single route. E.g., Omaha to Dallas via Oklahoma City using all reds would be 15 points instead of 6.
Another variant we play is that in addition to draw trains/draw destinations/build, we allow a fourth option for a turn: discard one destination card from your hand.
We also added a bonus for the player who connected the most cities into a single railroad, regardless of length. This helps the East Coasters and diminishes the overwhelming advantage of those who get those long West Coast and South runs.
We've been flogging Ticket to Ride Europe in two-player mode lately. We immediately found that there was not enough racing to secure connections quickly and there was limited use of stations.
To spice the game up: during the setup, we draw a ticket from the short ticket pile and use a neutral colour to block the shortest* path between those 2 cities. We've found this worked really well in forcing the players to fight over paths and also changed the landscape of the board each game. However, short tickets had minimal impact, so we keep drawing tickets and blocking track in this manner until we have a total of 12+ points worth.
* If there was a tie for shortest route, we draw from carriage cards until we reach a card of one the relevant colours to break the tie.
P.S. I am also thinking of a variant which makes the game more dynamic by allowing you to remove/replace an opponent's connection based on some trigger (maybe a triple-locomotive reset) and/or additional cost, but I'll post that once we've play-tested it.
Been playing ticket to ride for a long time now and I remembered when I first started playing we played you could get rid off a destination as a turn. Once I got older and got the game for myself and read the rules I found out that wasn’t a thing. So I was thinking about that and thought it had to come from somewhere so I found this post lol. While all these variation are interesting I’m a very by the book person if the game makers made it that way there has to be a reason. So I’m very against house rules!
Dear Unknown #1, been awhile, but thanks for the comment. I like the your version of variant #7 a lot. Thanks for sharing.
Dear Adam, that's a great idea for changing the board each game. I haven't played Ticket to Ride much (if any!) since posting this, but if I do I'll make a case for trying your variant.
Dear Unknown #2, I understand. Thanks for sharing.
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