Ticket to Ride: New York is Ticket to Ride on a Smaller Scale.

A much, smaller scale…

Ticket to Ride: New York features the familiar gameplay from the Ticket to Ride game series — collect cards, claim routes, draw tickets — but on a scaled-down map of Manhattan that allows you to complete a game in no more than 15 minutes.

Ticket to Ride: New York Game Play

The game plays the same as Ticket to Ride but I’ll give a VERY brief overview anyway, just in case you’re one of the few that haven’t played it.

You draft cards to play Taxis onto routes on the board. There are a number of cards available and you draft them from a face-up selection or face-down from the top of the deck.

You collect sets of coloured cards to put your Taxis on routes of that colour. You not only score points for these routes but you also work towards completing Destinations.

At the end of the game, you score for the routes you placed depending on how long they are. Meaning, how many spaces it is, therefore how many cards of the same colour you need to complete that route. There is a handy chart on the board to show you how much they’re worth.

You also score points for the Destinations you’ve completed, and lose points for those you have, but didn’t complete.

Some routes have a Penny at the end of them. You score a point for each of your routes that touch one.

Most points win.

Theme

Well, it’s New York that’s for sure. The map is New Yorkish with New York things on it.

It’s abstract, but no one really cares 🙂

Setup & Rulebook

This is a true gateway game. Setup takes no time and the rulebook is a comprehensive well-written “leaflet”.

Not much more to say.

Components & Artwork

The board is nice and easy to read, as are the cards.

There is detail on the board but it plays background to the important routes which is the bit you need to see. They’re very clear.

The taxis themselves are nice and look good on the board.

The box is smaller than the standard ‘Ticket to Ride’ box which is good. I wouldn’t want a TTR game taking up too much shelf space.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

Just like the setup and rulebook, this is not a complex game. Teaching is easy with the ‘new’ player at the table the one learning the game from the rulebook.

Don’t ask how that situation occurred, it just did and it worked out for the best 🙂

There are symbols for each colour which will help with colour distinction.

As I mentioned earlier this is a true gateway game.

Ticket to Ride: New York Summary

I guess I could compare this to Ticket to Ride, that seems to make sense. This is smaller with a tighter board and more importantly, quicker.

The tickets are generally 1-3 stops and a lot of the routes are single tracks. Apart from that, it’s pretty much the same.

Before this, my favourite version of the game was Legendary Asia. There, you play as teams of two but can’t communicate about what plans you have for the cards you’re collecting.

It’s fun to see a n00b and a pro play on the same team and see the pro get angry. (Well, as the n00b I found it funny :))

The next game would be Ethnos. This has a similar way of drafting cards which you use to control areas on the board. This game has a more appealing theme and ‘area control’ is more appealing to me than route building.

Placing the taxis around the city is tense. The routes are so small and few in number that you can easily lose out on a Destination very quickly.

There is only 1 route of 4 spaces on the board, the pink one between Chelsea and Soho. It’s worth a whopping 7 points too so if you can get it, go for it!

There are also bonus points around the board to score. So you can build routes to score points and block opponents if you can’t build towards a Destination Ticket.

This is a lot of fun. It’s a game I don’t really like boiled down to a size and timescale I can live with. So I enjoyed it.

Jesta ThaRogue