Tabletop Tuesday- Ticket to Ride- Games for kids?

We recently picked up Ticket to Ride for our game collection. It has been on our game list for awhile and we had some store credit at the FLGS. Brought it home and set it down on the table. Next morning my three year old son gets up and sees it sitting there. He is always curious about boxes so wants to look at it.

And then it happens. He sees the big old train on the front of the box. He sees the big old map on the back. This kid loves trains and he is fascinated by maps. Combine the two into a game? It’s a match made in heaven.

Now the box says 8+ and it does involve lots of advance planning in order to be able to play. I figured we’d let him “play” a round with us and he’d enjoy putting the train pieces out and drawing cards. But I was wrong. Never underestimate the power of a kid’s fascination.

For anyone unfamiliar, the goal of the game is to score the most points. You do this three different ways. The simplest way is to just build a train route by collecting cards of the same color and turning the number in to match a route on the game board. The longer the route, the more points it’s worth (and not in a purely linear way). At the end, whomever has the longest connection line of train routes gets some bonus points.

The other way to earn points is to complete train routes. At the start of the game everyone gets a minimum of two random train routes that tell you to connect two different cities together. You can do this a number of different ways just so long as you have trains that connect to each other and to both cities. Completing a route gives you bonus points at the end of the game. Failing to complete a route in your hand gives you negative points at the end.

Each turn you have the option to either draw new route cards, draw new train cards (there are six different colors of train cards) or to play train cards to build along a route. Most turns you’re just drawing cards to build up your hand so you have enough cards to build something.

The strategy comes in for deciding when to play and which routes to take to connect your cities. There are a lot of different ways you can go and you need to balance being able to finish the route with getting points for the trains you build (three routes of two each is worth only six points but very easy to get the cards for versus a single route of six distance which is worth fifteen points). You also need to watch out for revealing your destination too early in case someone decides to cut you off.

Now I expected some of these concepts might be a little beyond a three year old. And the real tough bits are. Holding the cards in hands so small is a bit difficult. And tracking more than one route (missions as he calls them) is a little much. Likewise thinking strategically to build the route that will net the most points.

But the core concepts of the game? Completely within the grasp of a three year old. Build trains from this city to this city, check. You need how many of what color? Check. Knowing when to draw from the face up cards versus the random deck? Check.

So with only minimal help from us he managed to play the entire game himself and didn’t lag completely behind us for points. In some ways he worked as a great wildcard to keep the game being completely a wife vs me game. He certainly exceeded the intelligence of some AI opponents.

We’ve since played the game several times more (one things kids love is repetition). Aside from occasionally deciding to go off on a tangent (we were playing with my wife’s uncle who lives in Vancouver so my son decided he absolutely had to build trains connecting Houston to Vancouver regardless of what his route cities were) he does quite well.

In the end, Ticket to Ride is an excellent game for groups of pretty much all ages. The younger ones might need a little coaching and cutthroat play is definitely off the table when someone is playing with all of their hands exposed. And