‘Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train’ Board Game Review
I don’t think anyone would deny that Ticket to Ride sits easily among the top three of what the board game world calls “Gateway Games” – meaning any game which allows players to make the step from classic games like Chess, Scrabble or even Monopoly to the more innovative world of modern games. That said, even Ticket to Ride has a few complexities in its ruleset that make it too complex for younger players. To address this, Days of Wonder released a line of games under the Ticket to Ride: First Journey brand. The latest game in this series – Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train – is a brand new, fun-focussed and Halloween-themed experience that I just happen to have been playing for the past few evenings.
Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train is a lot like the other First Journey editions of Ticket to Ride, but rather than being set on a simplified map of Europe or the USA (for example) it takes place in a spooky town, complete with various creepy locations for players to explore. This theme allows the artwork to really shine through, and the board is large, colourful and absolutely packed with images that will excite and intrigue younger children. The plastic trains – usually quite traditional in nature – are also unique to Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train, with each one looking like something out of the Munsters or the Addams Family. The overall aesthetic is really pleasing, and everything is cohesive and very well produced.
Other components include the train cards which are used to drive the gameplay, and tickets, which simply depict two locations on the board. In Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train the gameplay is similar to, but slightly simpler than the standard game, so players still collect train cards and then play them to place their ghost train pieces on the board, but the objective of the game is simply to complete six tickets. There is no concept of points value for different tickets, and there are no long or short journeys – and all ticket cards are broadly equal in terms of difficulty to complete. The board does feature a couple of bonuses, where players can complete certain routes to gain additional train cards, or even a bonus ticket.
For me, Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train is a little simplistic – and that’s not a surprise seeing as I am an adult who enjoys fairly heavy games – but for my kids, this game is borderline perfection. Firstly, the build quality here is far above what we’ve come to expect from many games aimed at younger players. The train pieces are big, bold and chunky and they look good on the board. The board and the cards all match, and the kids absolutely love to look at the artwork – claim which character they want to be playing as (which isn’t even a feature of the game) and spend ages talking about where to go, which location is spookiest and so on. There’s genuine excitement at the table and it’s just lovely to see.
More importantly though, another issue with many kid’s games (or even those aimed at the adult mass market) have awful rules and often, aspects that simply don’t work. It will come as no surprise that Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train (being from Alan R. Moon and Days of Wonder) is a properly considered game that takes the fundamentals of Ticket to Ride and just simplifies them. The experience is streamlined, easy to learn and fun to play – the kids just seemed to get it from the outset, and whilst both my wife and I felt that Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train was simplistic, we still had fun playing because the kids were just so into it. If there is one criticism, it’s possible that getting to six completed tickets stretched the limits of our younger daughter’s attention span, but that’s easily fixed by playing to five, or four tickets instead.
In summary then, Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train is a great game for younger players – perhaps between five and ten years old. It’s a little simple for anyone older than that or kids who enjoy more complex games in general, but you know that going in considering that even the original Ticket to Ride is relatively light in terms of weight. The production quality is fantastic, with everything from the board and the plastic trains through to the instruction manual itself (just one double-sided sheet) being fantastically well done. This is a quality product and a lovely addition to any collection where younger players are the focus. Older players would need to have a serious interest in Halloween to find the same joy in it, but that may well still be possible depending on how heavy you like your games.
*** 3.5/5
Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train is available online at 365Games.co.uk, or at your local games store. Don’t know where yours is? Try this handy games store locator
