Ticket to Ride

Every year I buy my daughter at least three board games: one for Christmas, one for Three Kings Day and one for her birthday. It has become a tradition we both enjoy. I purchased TTR after reading excellent recommendations from other gamer parents on Boardgamegeek. I was not disappointed.

The game components are well made and beautiful, and the box is designed to store them well. This is very important, as the game has lots of pieces: cards, colorful plastic trains and wooden marker tokens.

Each turn lets you make decisions, play is never merely mechanical. Each time you play you will be able to choose one of three different actions: claim a train route, collect train cards or gather destination tickets. Each of those actions implies further decisions: Do you take a red train or a blue train? The short Duluth or Phoenix? Risk the big payoff tickets or keep only the safer, smaller points destinations?

The instructions are simple enough for non-gamers and children, but game play is engaging for all levels of play. The game accommodates both laid back and cutthroat gaming styles.

If your family games you should add this to your collection. If you are new to gaming and need a place to start, this is a fine first buy.
This is an excellent game for 2-5 players, and especially for kids. I was initially put off by the theme and the mentioning of winning the $1 million dollar prize on the advertisement. I immediately thought there would be paper money involved and it would be like Monopoly where I would have to be a banker,,,and yech. But no, I was WRONG. There is no fake money involved! Just little cards with different colors. Easy, but challenging. It is a game where you can be nice and not mess with your opponents supposed destination, or you can try and block them. You get points according to the tracks you lay and connections you make.
But please, I love Amazon, but their Days of Wonder games are all overpriced. You can get this and their other games much cheaper on designated game sites. Do a search, read other reviews, boardgamegeek is a wonderful place to look and compare games. This was one of the first games I bought and I just keep finding more neat games to buy that you can't find here.