Game Review: Ticket to Ride: The Dice Expansion

By W. Eric Martin
October 2, 2008

Publisher: Days of Wonder
Designer: Alan R. Moon
Players: 2-5 (or 2-3)
Playing Time: Varies
Rules Language: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Finnish, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian
Price: $20
Links:

Version played: Production copy
Times played: Eight, all with two players

Do you like to play mean? Do you want other players to recoil from a devastating move issuing from your fingertips into the heart of their tiny little plans? Do you want them to feel poisoned, shot, drowned, burnt and shot over a river – in game terms, that is? If so, read on for an explanation of how you can turn a family-friendly game into a contest for jerks…

Ticket to Ride: The Dice Expansion, which can be used with any Ticket to Ride board game, includes a plastic dice cup, five white dice, three black dice, rules and 30 track tokens, split into 15 single tracks and 15 double tracks. The white dice feature:

• single track x2
• double track x2
• a station x1
• a locomotive x1

Perfunctory Rules Explanation

Players no longer collect colored cards turn by turn, saving for future routes on the gameboard based on the color of those routes; instead a player rolls the dice on her turn, setting aside as many dice as she wants, then optionally rolling some of the dice again. Once you finish rolling, you can claim one route, draw tickets or pass, possibly collecting track tokens at the same time.

To claim a route, you need to have as many dice (or tokens) showing the type of route that you want to claim, either single or double, as there are spaces in that route. On the original Ticket to Ride board, for example, if you want to claim the Houston-New Orleans route, you need to have some dice or tokens showing some combination of single track and locomotives. To claim New Orleans-Miami, you’ll need both dice and tokens since the route is six spaces long and you have only five dice.

The rules for each Ticket to Ride game apply while using the dice, which means, for example, that locomotives can’t be used to claim regular track in Nordic Countries, only ferries and tunnels. When claiming a ferry, you need to have rolled a locomotive for each space marked as such in the route. In Europe, you need to roll 1-3 stations or locomotives to place a station on the board and use someone else’s track at the end of the game. In Märklin, you need locomotives in order to move passengers over an opponent’s track. In the various games with tunnels, you roll the three black dice after identifying the route you’re trying to claim; you must then pay one extra symbol for each marked face that you roll.

As for drawing tickets, you draw one ticket card for each station or locomotive showing on the dice, following the regular rules of keeping at least one.

For each two dice that you don’t use during a turn, you can claim a single or double track token. You can hold no more than three tokens, and if you hold three at the start of your turn, you can’t claim any more, even if you pay some during your turn.

Opening the Door to Jerkitude

Players adopt different play styles while playing the Ticket to Ride games – stockpiling cards in order to claim routes on multiple successive turns, living off the top of the deck, and so on – with that style depending somewhat on what the other players are doing. If Joe picks up two yellow cards and already owns the route from Phoenix to Los Angeles, you’re likely to claim the LA-San Francisco route immediately rather than risk getting scooped and being forced on a roundabout.

Ticket to Ride: The Dice Expansion turns each game into an endless opportunity of scoops and counterscoops. In my first game on the original U.S. board, for example my opponent – who had just learned of the series a week earlier and had since played all of the games multiple times – was slowly chugging from west to east, moving through Kansas City, to St. Louis, to Chicago, and to Pittsburgh – at which point I claimed the NY/Pittsburgh route ending his road to the Big Apple since I had already blazed a trail down the east coast. He shlumphed in his seat and I won by 100+ points.

While there’s always the opportunity for aggressive play in Ticket to Ride, doing so bears a cost that you must repay later. I’m holding certain colored cards for a reason, after all, and using them to stymie an opponent will force me to dip into my locomotive stash or start digging for more cards of that color in order to stay true to my plan.

With the Dice Expansion, however, you’re free to jump all over the board with no long-term cost to your growth other than the loss of trains to place on the board. This freedom serves as both positive and negative: You can block others easily, but can be blocked as well in turn. Instead of searching desperately for cards of one color, I have a reasonably good chance of claiming the route of my choice on a turn, depending on the track tokens I hold. Of course if the dice don’t show up, then I need to figure out another use for what I rolled, a process that sometimes takes longer than in the card-based game because all routes of a certain length are now open to you. You’re that kid in the candy store with a dime in your pocket and long arrays of equally delectable sweets laid out before you. Which...one...should...you...pick?

I was able to block my opponent in that game and in others because I have a few hundred games’ experience on him due to online play and it was easy to deduce where he was headed. Once we switched to Switzerland, Nordic Countries and Märklin, where we were on more equal footing, I couldn’t play the ticket-guessing game any longer. Fortunately I didn’t have to because blocking is so easy. In fact, the ease of the blocking makes you a little paranoid because depending on the board situation, you can be locked out of a certain area completely: I step foot down this path, the opponent takes the next one in line; I veer off to go another way, and he takes the next one once again. This type of behaviour is easiest in Switzerland, with its interlocking nest of short routes, although the dice rolls can sometimes lead to failure due to the low percentage of double track on the board and the restriction of locomotives to tunnels.

The Dice Expansion shifts the tension of the TtR games away from the combination of card draw (Will I get the cards I need? Are alternatives available?) and board play (Will someone claim the route before me? Are alternatives available?) so that the board play stands above everything else. The track token management requires some amount of attention, but it almost never proves to be a critical aspect of your success or failure because you can usually dump and stockpile tokens as needed. Instead you’re gambling more on whether someone will cut you off.

The gambling extends to the ticket draws as well. You have to roll stations and locomotives in order to draw tickets, so if you roll only two, you have fewer chances of drawing a ticket that will work your plan. The counterpart, of course, is rolling five stations and having a wealth of tickets to choose from, especially on an open board like Europe that lets you connect more easily due to the stations, or on a relatively closed board like Nordic Countries that has many small interconnecting tickets, or on – okay, drawing five tickets is good no matter which board you’re on.

In the end, The Dice Expansion comes across as a glimpse into a parallel universe of Ticket to Ride. Most of the same game elements are in place, and your tolerance of – or love for – spiteful moves and in-your-face nastiness will determine whether you want to move through the looking glass or stay in the present world.

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