Ticket to Ride: London

Up until recently when I started playing the Legends of the West legacy version of Ticket to Ride, this was my favourite variant of the game. The addition of ships and harbours make it a more challenging and strategic version, but it still retains all of the TTR trademarks of simple gameplay. Pick up cards, claim routes, complete destination tickets: simple and brilliant fun. Rails and Sails just gives players more to think about, more ways to complete routes, more strategy and options. It's fantastic.

Another excellent installment in the ticket to ride series. Quicker to play than the main game. Good for teaching children. Not too complicated.

The Ticket to Ride series has be one of, if not, the best board games out there. A game that can be both simple in play yet complex in strategy. We started playing games with my girlfriends family and of all the ones we've played so far, Ticket to Ride is the most requested.When Days of Wonder announced Rails and Sails, it was immediately added to the 'Must Buy' list, especially with the fact that this was basically, a larger 'Base Game'. On the first play last night, myself and my girlfriend realised something.....It's much more complicated. Not so complicated that we wont be returning to it, but we now doubt whether it will satisfy the family. The addition of boats play the exact same say as trains do. You play the right number of coloured boat cards and place them on the relevant routes. Some of the boat cards are 'Double Boats', meaning you could play 1 Red Double Boat card to claim a two block red boat route. The addition of Harbours adds an interesting new depth to the game. Playing two train card and two boat cards of the same colour (both featuring the anchor symbol) allows the player to place a harbour in a port where they have a route connected to. This allows a huge amount of possible points to be gained at the end and forces to player to plan out their routes and tickets more carefully. Rather than drawing coloured cards from the available 5 (plus the blind deck), you now have the choice of 3 train and 3 boat cards. Once drawn, these can be replaced by either, meaning all 6 available cards could be trains or boats or a mixture of both. This gives a slightly better chance of the card you need being available. The last 'major' addition is the 'Tour' tickets. Some destination tickets involved multiple stops along a route. The one card I had involved starting in one port and making my way through 3 other before reaching the final destination. If the route is completed exactly how it is displayed in the ticket, you gain maximum points although if you still complete the ticket but vary the route slightly, you gain a fraction the total points. Failure to complete still minuses points and boy! Do these seem to hit you harder than before. -36 on mine! We have not had chance to play the 'Great Lakes' map on the reverse of the World Map but from what I have been reading, can take less time to play through. On top of learning the new rules, new mechanics and actually playing the game, it took a total of approx 2 hours. With all these new mechanics, we found the final scores to be much higher than what we've been used to in the normal Ticket to Ride. A score over 100 was the norm. With Rails and Sails, 200 is not out of the ordinary. Especially with the Harbour scoring possible adding 60 points to your total. The reason for me deducting a star from my review is Rails and Sails seems to have taken away some of the 'Elegance' from the standard game. That's not saying that after a few breakthroughs, you wont have mastered the game. It just seems as though the addition of boats etc, was not needed to improve an already excellent game.

Excellent game brought for Xmas lots of fun had playing this game.

We’re big fans of the original and this did not disappoint. This expands on the original game but not in a way that over complicates it unnecessarily. The sails aspect is great fun in addition to the rails part. Our games usually take between 45-60 mins and as a family of 5 it’s great we can all play together. Great quality pieces and well packaged. Highly recommend

Great board game Bought in sale so good value at sale price Hours of family fun Really good series of games

Fun game

Brilliant