Ticket to ride san francisco

For almost 20 years now, the Days of Wonder publishing house has repeatedly managed to squeeze out another glass of juice from the fruit of the franchise step by step. And one wonders again and again if author Alan R. Moon managed to squeeze something innovative out of the original game idea.

In addition to expansion game boards for almost every major country in the world, small-scale series of well-known cities have been published since 2018. First of all, we traveled to New York in the 60s in taxis, and then took red double-decker buses to London in the 70s. For Amsterdam, we made a detour with boxcars to the 17th century and now back to the present: the train for the train: San Francisco.

This time we drive up and down mountain roads in proper style using mini cable cars. The city map stretches from the Mission District in the south through the well-known areas of Haight-Ashbury, Pacific Heights and the famous Lombard Street to the sea with Pier 39, the ferry to Alcatraz and of course the city’s landmark, the Golden Gate Bridge.

Ticket to ride: San Francisco – Procedure

Nothing has changed in the gameplay compared to the predecessors of the series. With transportation cards in six colors, we try to build our cable cars on color-matched tracks. Due to the size of the game plan, the sections are very short, and the longest on land is only three fields long, with only the ferry from Fort Mason to Golden Gate Bridge holding the record with five fields.

24 destination cards, of which each player keeps one or two cards in his hand secretly at first, is also taken from a proven game principle. The goal here is to connect specific places together. If that works, which isn’t too difficult for the small board, you can get more cards as the game progresses.

Many methods can be used twice, otherwise it will not be possible to connect the places unhindered. Only in a two-player game can you use only one of the lanes. The ferry routes to Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge can only be used with the help of joker cards that show a phrase.

Souvenir plates are primarily new

The “innovation” (if you want to call it that) of Ticket to Ride: San Francisco is that stacks of souvenir tiles are placed in 5 designated locations on the board at the start. Two other locations can be freely chosen by the last or penultimate player. Whenever you connect a location via cable car that has such tiles, you can take one of them back to your supply, provided you don’t already own it. In the end, different squares give points. And this was with innovation.

From Train to Training: San Francisco Slips Away

As always with Ticket to Ride it’s nice to look at, the mini cable car models are well designed, but I wonder who this series is aimed at. big like Step by Step-Fan I would always pick on the big brothers from the series. The plans there are bigger, the roads are longer, and the goals are more difficult.

The city chain may want to attract new players and possibly children. The maximum game time here is a quarter of an hour, so Ticket to Ride: San Francisco might be a good nightcap after long nights of gaming. But for me personally, the Cities series ends up on the sidelines.