Full Speed Ahead
TICKET TO RIDE LEGACY: LEGENDS OF THE WEST
Designer: Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock and Alan R. Moon | Publisher: Days of Wonder
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
Starting Components
◗5 Puzzle-cut board pieces
◗280 Plastic trains
◗136 Illustrated cards
◗5 Company boxes
◗ Bank slip pad
◗142 Cardboard dollar coins
◗ Campaign components
◗ Campaign deck
◗8 Frontier boxes
◗ Conductor’s toolbox
◗8 Frontier boards
◗77 Postcards
Did you know that legacy games are now over a decade old? Risk Legacy exploded onto the scene riding a wave of shock and awe. Players were mesmerised by the concept of a board game where you literally left your mark, forever changing the board by adding stickers, personalising continent names and, the biggest point of controversy, tearing up components.
These games aren’t designed to be disposable; even the original Risk Legacy is still fully playable after you’ve seen the last of the planned content.
They’re instead created to be personal; not just a game you can take off a store shelf, it’s something that's yours, your playgroup’s memories, actions and consequences, permanently etched into the fabric of the board instead of remaining in your mind.
It’s that same drive to create lasting gaming memories that, some 12 years later, left me and many others wondering just how does one work the same magic for an established family game like Ticket to Ride.
From the moment you lift the lid on this game (after moving away the very clear ‘FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS’ cover, to make sure you don’t inadvertently ruin the experience) you can immediately see the possibilities in store for your group of 2-5 players over the next 12 games.
Each player is the president of a rail company, collecting their personal company box which will hold their cards, collected achievements and bank slips recording how well they did in each game. This company selection also comes with a unique design of train, adding a little immediate flavour as you choose between the middleclass carriages of the blue B&O to the more industrial black New York Central Systems.
Your first game takes place on a suspiciously segmented section of America’s East Coast, with obvious jigsaw gaps on the western and southern edges. Those familiar with the smaller boxed Ticket to Ride games like London or New York may recognise this more condensed layout and this is very much intentional: the game wants to welcome you into the main changes to Ticket to Ride quickly, so it can really begin to break your expectations.
The core gameplay remains the same: players compete to complete tickets, which require them to lay out train routes from one city to another. Each route requires a set number of carriage cards, often of a specific colour. On your turn, you can either draw carriage cards from the face-up supply or blind from the deck, play out carriage and/or locomotive cards (which count as all colours) to complete a route, or draw more tickets to see if there’s any other moneymaking journeys you can complete. The game continues until one player has two or less trains remaining, giving everyone one last turn before revealing tickets and tallying up totals to determine you final score.
It’s here that there are some subtle differences to the standard game, such as players no longer earn points for simply placing down routes. If a player manages to complete a route that matches their company’s colour, they earn a cardboard $2 coin, said coins replacing the iconic wrap-around score board that naturally wouldn’t be doable when the whole game board isn’t available from the start.
Another way to make money/ points is through events: shuffled into the carriage deck are newspapers, which immediately reveal an event card from the deck. These events range from ways to earn money for certain routes or locations, to penalties that discourage more direct ways of completing tickets. They add a little variety to every game, ensuring midgame twists that may dramatically change how players strategize.
Some cities on the board are also marked as ‘large cities,’ offering a free carriage card when a route is completed to them, encouraging players to tussle for space early and to use up their trains as quickly as possible. This is further incentivised with a money bonus based on how many trains you have remaining by the end; the less trains left, the more money you make.
All of these elements feel like minor tweaks, small adjustments from a designer who’s worked on a game for nearly 20 years, unsurprising given original Ticket to Ride designer Alan R. Moon has been working on this game design since the very start. Whilst pleasant and enjoyable, I was expecting my review to come down to a hearty yes recommendation, for being a pleasant and novel way to experience a much beloved game.
Then we opened our first box.
You do not know how much I want to wax lyrical about this game’s secret, slowly unlocked content. The immediate spark of joy as you finish your first game is everything that makes legacy games magical; immediately obvious in context, but nevertheless surprising and delightful.
This happened every time we revealed something new, discovered something exciting about the game. Content is unlocked at a steady, slowly increasing rate, rapidly accelerating as you make more and more progress. Nothing I revealed was a disappointment, every new feature being met with eager concentrated stares, as each of us tried to grasp the potential point value and find a way to monopolise on this new mechanic.
There is constant sense of discovery as you play. From the bigger reveals of new frontiers to the smaller stories of postcards, minor personal elements that not only give players unique benefits, but many of which tease future features, secretly guiding players so that they can finally take advantage of their hidden power (or even discover exactly what it does.)
Everyone I played this with wanted to share it with others. One of them has already preown copy ordered their to play with family and friends around the festive season, despite seeing a lot of what the game has to offer, just for the sheer experience of getting to see the game play out differently, developing in its own unique way. It is the epitome of why legacy games aren’t a fad, but their own frontier of cutting-edgege design.
I applaud the hard work that these three designers have put into crafting and refining such a joyous experience. I’ve often found the best legacy games to have been games with a more cooperative focus (Pandemic Legacy and Betrayal Legacy being particularly standouts) but Ticket to Ride Legacy has finally sold me on the value of an ever-shifting challenge that incentivises healthy competition between players. Maybe it’s the game’s perfect theming, but playing the game feels like you’re constantly taking advantage of new opportunities to win, enjoying the challenge as the map gets bigger and the tickets harder to complete (but all the more lucrative if you manage it) and above all, thrilling in the race to control the Wild West.
Few campaigns capture that same buzzing energy of kids at Christmas, wanting to tear into each box and play game after game. It’s a rare experience that celebrates both the original game and the legacy elements in equal measure, one that I am delighted to have experienced and cannot wait to see others go on their own railroad adventures.
MATTHEW VERNALL
WE SAY
It delivers in every way it needed to for an unforgettable series of games, that will entertain and engage that ‘just one more go’ urge. Masterful work by designers who’ve refined this to a fine art.
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED TICKET TO RIDE
Both games naturally have a lot of the same core mechanics, but the unique legacy elements ensure that you need to make room for both in your gaming storage solution