Game Review: Ticket to Ride - Marklin Edition

By Rick Thornquist
March 27, 2006

Publisher: Days of Wonder
Designer: Alan R. Moon
Artist: Julien Delval
Players: 2-5
Ages: 8 and up
Playing Time: 30-60 Minutes

Game Played: Review Copy
Number of Plays: 8 (2, 4 and 5 Player Games)

Ticket to Ride - Marklin Edition is the third game in the Ticket to Ride series.  So what is a ‘Marklin’ you ask?  Marklin is actually a very old German toy company that is best known for their model trains.  Days of Wonder is marketing the game in association with Marklin, hence the name (you can still pick up the game at your regular game store, though). 

Most gamers have played Ticket to Ride, so the question is here is, what’s different? Well, most obviously, the map is of Germany.  There are now two stacks of tickets, long and short.  When you choose tickets either at the beginning or during the game, you can choose from either one or both of these stacks. 

There are a couple of additional cards as well.  +4 Locomotive Cards are wild cards but can only be used on routes that are four or longer.  Passenger cards allow you to use other player’s routes when moving your passenger. 

The main additions are the merchandise tokens and passengers.  The merchandise tokens are numbered tokens that sit on the cities.  The passengers get played when a player plays a route - they can put a passenger on either end of the played route.  In a future turn, instead of doing anything else, they can move the passenger from where it stands along their own routes picking up merchandise tokens in the cities along the way.  Each token is worth face value in victory points.

Oh, and one more thing - the 10 point bonus at the end is no longer for the player with longest route.  It’s now for the player who completed the most tickets.

In my opinion, the merchandise tokens and passengers add a very nice layer of strategy on top of the regular Ticket to Ride system.  Deciding where to place your passengers and when to move them is key and also adds even more tension to the game.  The game is still simple enough for non-gamers, but I think gamers will like the added strategy.  The game still has the issue of luck with the tickets (and the merchandise tokens are a little fiddly), but on the whole I quite like the game - it’s easily my favorite of the series and a very good game in its own right.

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