How to Win at Ticket to Ride Every Time! | Simple Strategy #5

[@jud6ment]

There is a strategy that breaks the game. Literally a 100% win rate if no one copies your strategy. Draw cards until you have about 45-50 in hand. Then place trains on largest routes, they should not be connected to each other, just place on largest spaces. This is so efficient it ends the game before any player can finish a route ticket card. You completely destroy with a score at least triple anyone else. You are now banned from next game night as the group has banished you.

[@StrataGames]

That does sound effective, though not terribly fun.

[@rhoadesfarms3900]

You can’t lay down all the routes in one turn though?

[@sanimal.social]

Wow I love this idea! Especially as currently I keep losing whatever I do.

[@charflynn5]

For this strategy do you complete the routes on the destination tickets to get the destination ticket points? If not, why do the tickets matter? Can’t you claim the longer connections between cities (that yield more points per train) regardless of whether you have destination tickets that include them?

[@HollyRevell]

Just tried this in a two-player game, it sadly didn't work. Counting only train points, this strategy had more -- but once the other player's longest road factors in with their tickets (& your ticket is subtracted from your score), it flips the lead. Or at least it did for this game.

[@jonbecker6504]

Great tips and fantastic graphics, Jason! Way to go!

[@divinentd]

There is a counter strategy to playing longer routes that can have a much higher points threshold, especially if you're playing the 1910 version where you draw 4 tickets and keep 1. The idea is to play a number of medium to shorter routes connecting the biggest cities along the east coast, maybe as far west as the Mississippi, and down into that pit of despair that is Florida. Then, or more likely at the same time, you draw tickets, lots of tickets. You can get burned drawing 4 tickets that don't match your criteria, but in the games I've played there is almost always one player who spends turn after turn closer to the end of the game just drawing tickets they have already completed. This strategy may require the 1910 expansion where there are more tickets, and an additional goal of collecting the most routes. But if you are playing in person that expansion is almost required so that you can have full sized cards. Save the mini cards for your dry-erase marker travel version of the game.