As a member of the ‘Blogger Board Game Club’ I have the opportunity to review and to share a board game each month. This month we were sent ‘Ticket To Ride First Journey’ (The European Edition), a beautifully designed board game suitable for two to four players.
With dozens of international awards and over 3 million games sold, The Ticket Ride franchise/ series is the most popular new board game of the last ten years!
Ticket To Ride: First Journey
Produced by ‘Days Of Wonder‘ and designed by Alan R Moon, Ticket To Ride: First Journey (The European Edition) takes the gameplay of the Ticket To Ride series and makes it accessible for a young audience ideally aged six years and over. However, this game is also accessible for younger players with supervision and guidance.
The board itself is designed much like a map with each city linked by train tracks. Players are to collect train cards then claim routes on the map whilst trying to connect the cities shown on their tickets.
Rules & Gameplay
Each player begins the game with four coloured train cards and two tickets. Upon their turn they can either draw two train cards from the deck or discard train cards to claim a route between two cities.
If you wish to discard train cards then you must rid your hand of the matching colour and number of spaces required on that route (eg two blue cards for a blue route would be two spaces long). Players can also use a turn to discard tickets and draw two new tickets should they wish.
Once the route has been completed, players may turn over their ‘ticket’ displaying it to the other players and draw a new ticket.
If players manage to connect one of the West Coast cities to one of the East Coast cities then they can also claim a ‘Coast-to-Coast’ ticket
It’s not as easy as it sounds though given that other players will also need to use the same routes/ tracks and throughout the game many destinations will become inaccessible thus forcing players to discard tickets, refreshing their hand with new tickets thus losing turns for play.
The aim of the game is to be the first player to complete six tickets in total. Alternatively, if a player has used all twenty of their train markers on the game board then whoever has completed the most tickets at that point in the game wins.
With adults, the game can played in as little as ten minutes whereas younger children may require further time (perhaps twenty to thirty minutes) to plan and proceed with gameplay.
Contents Of The Game
Included within the Ticket To Ride: First Journey board game is:
- 1 x Game Board
- 1 x Golden Ticket
- 4 x Coast-To-Coast Bonus Ticket Cards
- 32 x Ticket Cards
- 72 x Train Cards (colours)
- 20 x Yellow Train Counters
- 20 x Green Train Counters
- 20 x Blue Train Counters
- 20 x Red Train Counters
- 1 x Instruction Sheet
Playing The Game
We played ‘Ticket To Ride First Journey’ whilst hosting a sleepover for our son and his friend. We sat around the table together as a group, read through the instructions with the children which they seemed to understand fairly easily although our four-year old daughter played along with my husband for guidance.
We each took turns collecting train cards and completing tickets/ journeys. After almost thirty-minutes it became apparent that one of the players had used all of their train pieces/ counters which technically ends the game. However, at this point it became apparent that two players both had the same number of tickets completed and for this reason we ended the game on a drawer simply to keep arguments at bay.
The children seemed to really enjoying playing the game and when I asked each of the children whether they would wish to play it again in the future the response was a unanimous ‘yes’.
I personally enjoyed the game, I felt that not only was it fun to play but also rather educational for the children as they built reading skills through looking at their tickets and knowledge upon cities around the World through using the board.
Although there was a little frustration displayed at times when players were unable to complete tickets due to routes already being used this is part of game play and teaches children the concepts of patience and problem solving.
Pricing and Purchasing Information
Ticket To Ride My First Journey is available from £21.99 upwards from a wide range of high street and online retailers including 365 Games and Amazon.
Our Final Thoughts
Prior to playing ‘Ticket To Ride My First Journey’ I hadn’t actually encountered this series of games or anything similar before. I was really impressed with the design and the setup of the game, the children certainly seemed happy and engaged within gameplay and as a family we all enjoyed playing ‘Ticket To Ride My First Journey’.
I would certainly be interested in adding a few more versions of this game to our collection in the future and would certainly recommend ‘Ticket To Ride My First Journey’ to other parents, children and families.
For further information upon ‘Ticket To Ride My First Journey’ or other games within the ‘Ticket To Ride’ series visit https://www.daysofwonder.com/tickettoride/en/
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Product Rating
Disclosure: We were sent the above product for the purpose of this post however all opinions are my own.
1 comment
I like a good board game and will admit that I have never come across this one, will now buy it for my grandchildren for Christmas