Ticket to Ride: Legends of the West

• Designers: Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock, Alan R. Moon
• Publisher: Days of Wonder
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 20-90 minutes (per the box)
• Played with review copy provided by Days of Wonder
• Affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3MmRYiQ

As part of our buildup to the announcement of the Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres this weekend, we are looking at the 3 nominees for each award again.

Well, it’s really hard to review a legacy game – well, difficult if you want to do it and not give away any spoilers about the campaign.  As you likely know, the joy in a legacy game are the surprising twists and turns that you discover as the story unfolds.  If you read a review that tells you what happens, there might not be any reason to play the game!  For this game, we’ll probably write a few things about it.  For this initial piece, I will talk about only the first game (and still leave out any possible spoilers that might come out at the end of the first game).  

The goal here is to help you see what the first game is like, and this might help you make a decision if you want to invest in the game and get involved in a multi-game campaign.  Just about all of the information here comes from the rulebook – and this can be downloaded online, so no secrets there…  And, since the game comes out today – it seems like the perfect time to talk about the game!

So, the story from the publisher:

In Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West, players embark on twelve journeys across North America as 19th century pioneers. The campaign begins on the East Coast, with players working their way to the West from one adventure to the next, meeting challenges along the way. As in Ticket to Ride, completing your tickets will remain your primary goal, but you will need to develop other skills if you hope to overcome the unexpected events and your resourceful rivals. Game after game, route after route, you will continuously fill your vault with earnings. As the story progresses, you will open frontier boxes that unlock new rules, content, and many more surprises.

In the Legacy style, Legends of the West is a unique experience molded by player choices. Each player has their own role to play, allowing them to change the way the story unfolds around them. Combined with evolving mechanisms that change as the game progresses, players will have a new experience every time they gather around the board. At the end of the twelve games in this legacy campaign, you will have transformed your game into a unique copy that you can continue playing for a lifetime.

To start, each player in the game should pick a railroad company and take the box that goes with it, they can write their name on the box. This box has two parts, an office area where you keep stuff from game to game and a vault area for bank scoring slips and other stuff to be kept until the end of the campaign.  There is also a campaign box that will hold all the train cards, tickets, story cards and event cards between games.  

As said earlier, the campaign will be played over twelve games, and there will be permanent changes to the game made along the way – likely in new board pieces, new cards/events, and other things that will be added/taken away.  There will also be new rules added to the game, and the rulebook has plenty of areas for stickers to be added as these new rules are reviewed.  The quick reference found on the back cover of the rules also has plenty of areas for reminder stickers to be added.

There are plenty of materials in the box that remain unknown at the start of the game.  There are a bunch of frontier boxes and boards  which you will be directed to open at some point in the future.  There are also a deck of numbered postcards which you will eventually be told to read.  For now, you don’t do anything with them – just know they are there and get them when instructed.

OK, so back to the first game – set up the board with the five pieces you have for now.  Shuffle the newspaper cards into the train deck and then deal a hand of 4 cards to each player, replacing any newspaper cards. Each player also gets 5 coins to start the game.  Then deal out a market of 5 cards, again reshuffling newspaper cards.  At any point in the game, if there are 3 locomotives in the display, discard the whole display and deal a new market of 5 cards.  Each player is also dealt 4 tickets, they are examined, and each player must keep at least 2.  Shuffle the event deck and put them on the board.  Players should look at the back of their company box and get out the number of trains as directed for the current game.  Get out the cards in the office portion of the company box; at the start of the first game, you will only have a company bonus card in there.

Now, read the top card(s) from the story deck until you get to a PAUSE card.  If there are any special instructions for the game in those cards, follow them.  The player who has the caboose card in their company box will go first.

Game play is similar to regular TTR – but there are some differences, so do not assume that you can just play with what you know from the regular game.  On a turn, players take one of three actions: Draw cards, Claim a Route, or Draw Tickets.  The goal is to have the most money at the end of the game.

Draw Cards – you can draw either one face-up locomotive, or a combination of two cards from non-locomotive face up or mystery meat from the deck.  If there are ever three face up locomotives in the market, discard the whole market and draw 5 new cards.  If a newspaper card is drawn, turn the next event card up from the event deck, read it aloud and place it on the event discard pile – this new card is now the new current event.  These events can be one-time events or they could provide ongoing effects (until that event card is replaced or removed). There is no limit to the number of cards in your hand, though if there are ever 8 or fewer cards in the deck/discard pile, players are not allowed to choose this action.

Claim a route – play a set of train cards in colors matching the route on the board. Place locomotives of your color down on that route.  You must claim the whole route on your turn.  Note that you do not score points/gain money for a route.  If you claim a route in the color matching your company color, you will gain the bonus as listed on your company bonus card. If you claim a route that has at least one large city on an end, draw the top card of the train deck into your hand as a bonus.  At the start of the game, these are the only other rules that apply to claiming a route, however, there are areas for SEVENTEEN rule stickers in this section, so there are plenty of things to come!

Draw Tickets – Draw three tickets from the Tickets deck, and you must keep at least one. You are never allowed to discard tickets kept in setup or on previous turns.  At the end of the game, you will gain money for tickets which you have successfully connected and lose money for all tickets you have not successfully connected.

The game continues until one player has 2 or fewer trains remaining in their supply.  Each player, including the player who triggered the end, gets one more turn.  At the conclusion of the game, each player takes a blank bank slip to record their scores.  In the first game, the following things are recorded:

• Coins in hand
• Bonus for trains remaining – ranging from $16 for zero trains left, down to $2 for 8-10 trains left
• Tickets – positive value for completed tickets, negative value for missed tickets

Players tally up their total, and write down their total end game dollar value;  However, a negative value will be recorded as $0.

The player with the most money this game is the winner.

If there is a tie on money, the player who has completed most tickets is ranked higher.  If still tied, the player later in turn order is ranked higher.

The player who finished in last place gets the caboose card.

Before the game is cleaned up, the new holder of the caboose card gets to retire an event; taking any one card from the current event discard pile and removing it from the game forever.  There is a spot in the campaign box to hold such cards.  

Finally, check the Pause card from the Story deck to make sure there are no end-game rules on the card.  Then all players put their bank slip into their vault in their company box.

You can either now play the next game in the campaign, or pack everything up and resume play later.

My thoughts on the first games

Well, the first game was a great introduction – definitely fast and sweet, but setting the stage for future games.  The small board (only going as far west as Cincinnati, Nashville and New Orleans) only uses 20 trains; so, it simply can’t take that long.    But it does allow the players to get a feeling for how games will go.

The big change that I saw at first was that you didn’t score for your routes; though each player would get a bonus for routes in their player color.  This changed the motivation for both the draw and the track building – each player definitely wanted to draw their own color of card, and there was certainly more of a rush to fill in the board with your trains.  There was still a bit of card hoarding, but nothing like what I’ve seen in regular TTR games.

Additionally, the overall timing of the game changes because as players are playing some of their trains just to get the $2 bonus, this more rapidly depletes their small stock of 20 trains.  It is definitely more risky to try to collect cards until the last possible moment and then play them starting at just the right time. Compounding this time pressure is the end game payout for trains remaining.  It’s definitely going to be punishing to miss out on the timing here.

One other thing that affects the timing are the Event cards.  Though I won’t spill any details for spoilery reasons, let’s just say that some cards really motivate you to play early and often; or some cards make the conditions ripe for fast expansion…

A bit more of the legacy side comes into play at the end of each round; and like usual, the team of Daviau and Leacock make it such a smooth process.  I really like the pacing of the new things in their legacy games.  There is usually something neat or “wow” enough to always keep you on the edge of your seat in terms of anticipating what is coming next; but at the same time, things tend to be introduced in a way that it won’t overwhelm you either.

Between games, everything gets stored in your company box.  The score sheet gets put in the vault area, which is only to be opened at the end of the game, and anything else that you have collected ends up in the front section.  It makes setup/cleanup really quite easy.  It’s pretty easy to see how individualized your games can be as the caboose holder is tasked with editing the Event Deck at the end of every game…  And I’ve not even mentioned any of the other surprises that are coming your way!

We finished the campaign after 8 sessions; playing multiple games per session early on, but only one game at a time near the end as the game length really gets to be a bit on the long end.  Which makes sense when you think about the fact that you’re adding a new board section onto the game after each play, so it just naturally gets longer and longer.

Everyone in my group enjoyed it – though some varying levels of enthusiasm about it.  I felt it was neat to have so many different ideas in the box, and each time you played a game, you saw something a little different.  That being said, there was also a nice bit of consistency in the game as some strategies paid off game after game due to some shrewd placement of (things) in the early rounds. Our group liked the way that we had some control over the way our map grew, that became a fun recurring event for us at the end of each game.  This also means that each group will experience the game a little differently as each will encounter the different elements in a different order.

On the whole, I think this game is a must for anyone who loves Ticket to Ride.  It really brings some unique ideas to a well-loved game, and it is definitely an experience worth having.  

If you want to try it out yourself – Affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3MmRYiQ

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Ben B: I have never completely finished a legacy game and so far we are halfway through this with my family and may never finish. 

It starts out simple enough and moves along quite well at first, but as years go on, the added complexity has been a challenge for some of my family gamers. Each year you play, adds a new thing to consider when playing and that has not been as smooth as I hoped. My 12 year old needs re-explaining each time we pick it up and has struggled to win often focusing on blocking and route completion and not the extra things introduced each round. This game is also a pretty significant table hog. We also have found the story pretty uninteresting making it almost non-existent from a narrative of years you play along. My other gripe is that the initial board is short and you play with fewer trains but as you add to the board, you also add to your supply of trains which add to play time. So while the first two scenarios took us about 45 minutes each, the next two, took us an hour each and the last two scenarios took even more time. While seasoned gamers will have no challenges here, it has been a departure from our previous TTR games and mini-map games. 

Alan H: Thus the first legacy game I have completely finished. I played a four player game throughout the whole game with no one missing a session. 

From the start we were enthralled. We all knew many versions of Ticket to Ride, so when unexpected things happened we were delighted. (Maybe easily pleased, but still it was exciting to see how the game we knew would change so much.) The first half of the campaign was very enjoyable as the introduction of changes were still good and the impact on gameplay was fun. Towards the end of the 12 games, we felt the game had run out of steam and we were pleased to have completed it rather than looking forward to a 13th game. 

Apart from the early three or four games, each game was a session and with set up, new things to consider and game play, the games lasted about 2 hours. Which was sufficient. We all thought it was a tremendous experience and it was well worth the investment in time. 

It will be interesting to compare comments when we can discuss the details of the game, rather than the overview so that we can see what ideas worked best.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Alan H.
• I like it. Dale Y, Ben B, John P
• Neutral.
• Not for me…