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

Get Ready

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

Lay out the board

Place the game board on the table

Select player colors

Each player chooses a color and takes all 45 dumpsters of that color

Position point trackers

Place each player's point tracker token next to the "1" on the score tracker

Prepare garbage deck

Shuffle the garbage cards and place the deck on the table

Deal trash routes

Deal each player one trash route card face up

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

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.

Choose one action

On your turn, you may either collect garbage cards OR collect garbage dumpsters from your route

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

Collect Garbage Dumpsters

Discard garbage cards matching the color and quantity of dumpsters between two cities on your trash route

Use Rainbow Pride Dumpster Cards

Instead of matching colors, turn in rainbow-colored pride dumpster cards to collect dumpsters

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