Build railroads in France and the Old West with the newest Ticket to Ride

Last week at Gen Con 50 Alan R. Moon had a very nice announcement, a new game in the Ticket to Ride family: Ticket To Ride: France & The Old West. This expansion contains two new boards to play on: one for France and another set in the Old West. Each board also has a set of new and special rules that make the game even more competitive.

Just like in any other Ticket to Ride game, on the French board you use trains to connect cities and complete routes, but the first problem you will notice is that there are almost no colored routes on the board. Every time a player takes a new train card, this player also has the opportunity to place a tile on the board. These tiles contain two to five squares that depict one of the colors of trains. The player can now place this tile on a route of the same size, now any player that has the required cards in that color can claim the route on his turn (if it hasn't been claimed yet by then).

There are also routes between cities that overlap. When a tile is placed on one of these routes, the other routes are no longer available for the rest of the game.

The new game boards in Ticket To Ride: France & The Old West

 

To start building roads in the Far West, every player starts by choosing a city as their starting location. The first route built by any player now has to start from this starting location and every next route you want to build somehow has to touch one of your existing routes. You are not allowed to build routes in the middle of nowhere. Players can also use three more cubes to place on cities they pass on their routes. At the end of the game, all points for tracks that start in this city will now go to this player instead of the player who built them. So you might want to avoid these cities.

Ticket To Ride: France & The Old West will be available for buying for the first time at Spiel '17 in Essen. Because we are big fans of the Ticket to Ride games, we are really looking forward to trying these and find out if the new rules make the game even better.

Posted on 25 Aug 2017 by Jerodev

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