How to Play

Ticket to Ride

2-5 players 30-60 min 7.4 Board Game Geek Rating

In Ticket to Ride, players gather train car cards to claim railroad routes across North America. Longer routes provide more points, with bonus scoring for completing destination tickets connecting distant cities and building the longest continuous track. Simple turn options—draw cards, claim routes, or take destinations—create strategic tension between collecting resources and securing critical paths.

Published 2004

Ticket to Ride

Get Ready

Setup the game with these step-by-step instructions before diving into your turn.

1
Lay out the board
Place the game board on the table
2
Select player colors
Each player chooses a color and takes all 45 dumpsters of that color
3
Position point trackers
Place each player's point tracker token next to the "1" on the score tracker
4
Prepare garbage deck
Shuffle the garbage cards and place the deck on the table
5
Deal trash routes
Deal each player one trash route card face up
6
Place initial dumpsters
Each player creates a path by placing their dumpsters on a route connecting the starting city and ending city shown on their trash route card
7
Determine turn order
The player with the longest trash route goes first, then the next longest, and so on

On Your Turn

What you can do during your turn.

1
Choose one action
On your turn, you may either collect garbage cards OR collect garbage dumpsters from your route
2
Collect Garbage Cards
Look at the number in the lower right corner of your trash route card and draw that many garbage cards from the deck
3
Collect Garbage Dumpsters
Discard garbage cards matching the color and quantity of dumpsters between two cities on your trash route
4
Use Rainbow Pride Dumpster Cards
Instead of matching colors, turn in rainbow-colored pride dumpster cards to collect dumpsters
5
Complete a trash route
Once you collect all dumpsters from your route, increase your point marker by one, draw a new trash route card, and place dumpsters on the board for your new route

Winning

How to claim victory.

1
Trigger game end
The game ends immediately when a player completes 100 trash routes
2
Claim victory
The first player to reach 100 points wins the game
3
Accept unequal turns
Not all players may get the same number of turns
4
Verify scores
Recount all completed trash route cards to ensure accuracy

watch & Learn

Let the pros teach you with these top videos.

Ticket to Ride: How to play

Ticket to Ride: How to play

Instructional

TICKET TO RIDE: Hướng dẫn chơi Board Game KINH ĐIỂN DỄ HỌC NHẤT (Luật chi tiết A-Z)

TICKET TO RIDE: Hướng dẫn chơi Board Game KINH ĐIỂN DỄ HỌC NHẤT (Luật chi tiết A-Z)

Instructional

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FULL rules

Looking for the full details? Grab the complete rulebook as a downloadable PDF.

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