How to Play Ticket to Ride

Give each player a color of trains, and place a matching victory point marker on the starting space of the board. Shuffle the ticket deck and the train cards deck.

Deal 3 ticket cards face-down to each player. Each player must keep at least one of these cards, but may opt to keep two or three instead. All ticket cards not being kept are placed on the bottom of the ticket deck.

Deal 4 train cards face-down to each player, which are all kept. Flip the top 5 train cards of the deck face-up in a row in front of the train card deck. You are now ready to start the game.

Take your turn by taking one (and only one) of the following three actions: Draw train cards, draw tickets or place trains.

Draw 2 train cards by drawing either the top card of the deck or one of the face-up cards. Immediately replace any face-up cards drawn by flipping over the top card of the train deck. If the first card you draw is not a face-up rainbow locomotive, you may draw a second card as long as it is not a face-up rainbow locomotive.

Draw 3 tickets from the ticket deck, as you did in the beginning. Again, you must keep at least one of these 3 tickets, but may opt to keep two or all three if you wish.

Play trains to claim a route by playing the appropriate number of train cards of the same color. For example, if you wish to lay trains between 2 cities that are connected by 5 blue spaces, you must play 5 blue train cards. Locomotives are wild, and may be used as any color. Grey routes count as any color you like, but must be played all in a single color. (e.g. On a route with 4 grey spaces, you could play 4 orange train cards or 4 yellow train cards, but not two of each.)

End the game. When a player runs down to two or fewer plastic trains remaining, the game ends at the end of her next turn. Players score points for each train route completed based on length (as noted on the board). All completed tickets are added to a player's score, but uncompleted tickets are subtracted. Whoever has the most points wins!