Destination Tickets

• - Destination tickets with nearby cities need fewer train cars
• - Tickets can be risky! Be sure you can complete your tickets with your remaining car pieces before taking more.

Train Car Cards

• - You can use locomotives to to replace any color (e.g. a 6-car route can be completed only 5 matching cards and one locomotive)
• - Draw face-down train car cards to draw up to two multi-color cards per turn
• - Avoid face-up multi-color unless it's an emergency or you would hold more cards than your remaining car pieces

Train Car Pieces

You only play 45 train cars.

For reference, Vancouver to Los Angeles to Miami to Montreal is 42 trains if you hit the absolutely most efficient route. (It is 43 trains by the Northern route.) Any detour that makes the train more than 3 cars longer and the whole route is impossible.

• - Claim longer routes to gain more points per car

Choose your timing wisely

• - Without opponents, you would first draw 45 train car cards of the colors you want and only then play your 45 cars.
• - With opponents, some of the routes you want will be claimed before you can claim them, so you need to balance claiming routes early with using cards efficiently.
  • - Claim routes too late, and your opponent may claim critical routes that block you (or worse, end the game before you can play your cars!)

Competition

Other than maximising your points, you can also limit your opponent's ability to collect points by:

Ending the game quickly

• - The last round is triggered when any player has two or fewer train car pieces remaining.
• - Play more cars per turn by claiming longer routes.

Claiming routes to 'block' your opponent

• - Claiming routes early may allow you to claim your preferred routes, leaving your opponent to take inconvenient detours.
• - To avoid being blocked yourself, identify critical choke points in your route, and claim them early.
  • -- N.B. Some players, as in any other game, consider deliberate blocking - when you take a segment that interferes with your opponent without actually helping you - to be unsporting, but it can be considered a crucial strategy in a competitive format.

Drawing train car cards of a color that you opponent needs

• - Where an opponent is collecting cards of a certain color (for example for a 6-length route), or there is a gap in their route of a certain color, you can draw that color so that your opponent has to:
• - Use more turns to draw the cards they need.
• - Use any multi-color cards they hold.
• - Make it harder for them to complete their routes.

In higher level games, the typical strategy is to draw a lot of face-down cards to collect as many multi-color as possible and complete as many long routes as you can to connect your destinations and claim the longest route bonus. With this strategy it is often possible to win with only 2 low scoring tickets.

Board facts

• Each color has 27 spaces.
• Each color has one 6 route.
• 6/8 colors have one 5, two 4, two 3 and one 2.
• White and green have an extra 5 and 2 and one less 4 and 3.