Ticket to Ride has been running since 2004, and Days of Wonder has never really stopped making them. There are standalone boxes, city editions that play in fifteen minutes, a kids’ version, a twelve-game legacy campaign, and a numbered series of map expansions that need a base game you might not own.
Walk into a shop and you’ll see four or five blue boxes with trains on them. Almost none of the packaging makes it obvious which ones are complete games and which ones are map add-ons that do nothing on their own. That’s the problem worth solving, so it’s the one we’ve built this around.
Everything ranked below, with the standalone-or-expansion question answered up front for each one.
Click here to jump to the comparison table…
Already narrowed it down to two? We’ve got a dedicated Ticket to Ride vs Ticket to Ride Europe comparison, plus our Europe review, a simplified how-to-play, and the official rules PDF.
First, The Only Rule That Matters
Standalone means the box contains everything — board, trains, cards, tickets. You can buy it as your only Ticket to Ride game.
Expansion means it contains a map and destination tickets and nothing else. You supply the train cards and plastic trains from a base game you already own. The numbered Map Collection volumes are all expansions, every one of them.
This trips people up constantly, because a Map Collection box looks just as substantial as a standalone box on a shelf. If you’re buying someone their first Ticket to Ride, the volume number on the spine is the warning sign.
Ticket to Ride Versions Comparison Table
(Click the thumbnail to jump down to the entry)
| Image | Version | Standalone? | Players | Time | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Ticket to Ride: Europe | ✅ Yes | 2–5 | 30–60 min | Regular groups, most replay value |
 | Ticket to Ride (US) | ✅ Yes | 2–5 | 30–60 min | First-time buyers, families |
 | Nordic Countries | ✅ Yes | 2–3 | 30–60 min | Couples, two-player households |
 | City editions | ✅ Yes | 2–4 | 10–15 min | Travel, lunch breaks, quick fills |
 | Legacy: Legends of the West | ✅ Yes | 2–5 | 12-game campaign | Committed groups of the same people |
 | Rails & Sails | ✅ Yes | 2–5 | 90–120 min | Groups wanting a longer game |
 | First Journey | ✅ Yes | 2–4 | 15–30 min | Kids aged 6–8 |
 | Map Collection Vol. 1–7 | ❌ No | Varies | Varies | Owners of a base game |
The Ranking
1. Ticket to Ride: Europe
Standalone. 2-5 players, 30-60 minutes, ages 8+.
The best all-round box in the line, and the one we own. Europe is the original game plus three additions: tunnels that can eat your whole turn, ferries that demand locomotive cards, and stations that let you borrow an opponent’s route when you’re blocked.
Stations are why it takes the top spot. In the original, if someone claims the track you needed, you’re finished. Reroute the long way or eat the loss. Europe hands you three escape hatches, each worth 4 points if you never use it, so being blocked turns into a decision instead of a disaster. That one change is what makes it the better game for groups who’ll play it a lot.
It ships with 46 destination tickets against the original’s 30, too, which pushes back the point where regular players start recognising cards.
The costs are real though. Ten minutes to teach instead of five, and the ticket pool is short on genuinely long routes, which quietly favours whoever has played most. Europa 1912 fixes that if you get far enough to care.
Check Ticket to Ride Europe Price on Amazon
2. Ticket to Ride (the original US map)
Standalone. 2-5 players, 30-60 minutes, ages 8+.
Second as a game, first as a purchase for most people. Worth stating plainly rather than burying it in the ordering.
The original is the cleanest version of this design. Three actions, five minutes to teach, and a map with open space and long transcontinental runs that remain the most satisfying thing the series does. If the box is going to get taught to new people over and over, relatives at Christmas, friends who don’t play games, that simplicity is worth more than anything Europe adds on top.
It’s the meaner game at four and five players, as well, because being blocked is permanent and there’s no station to bail you out. Some groups want exactly that.
One buying note: a 2025 refresh of the original is in circulation (ASIN B0F8PKN4B7) alongside the long-running listing. Same game, new packaging.
Check Ticket to Ride Price on Amazon
3. Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries
Standalone. 2-3 players, 30-60 minutes, ages 8+.
The specialist pick, and the best version of Ticket to Ride at two players.
Every other box says 2-5 and plays fine at two while feeling a bit empty. A big map with two people on it doesn’t generate much conflict. Nordic Countries is built for 2-3 and nothing else. The map across Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden is deliberately narrow, routes are contested from the first turn, and it keeps tunnels and ferries so you’re not trading away depth for the smaller count.
If you’re a couple, or your game nights are mostly you and one other person, this is a better buy than Europe. Almost nobody tells you that.
The ceiling is the catch. It stops at three players, so it can’t be your only copy if you ever host four.
4. City editions — New York, London, Paris, Berlin, San Francisco, Amsterdam
Standalone. 2-4 players, 10-15 minutes, ages 8+.
Small boxes, small maps, one city each, done in a quarter of an hour. New York is 1960s taxis, London is 1970s buses, Amsterdam is 17th-century horse carts, San Francisco is cable cars, Berlin is trams and subways, Paris is 1920s buses. Some are branded as Express editions.
These are much better than they have any right to be. You get the core decision loop intact, competition for routes starts immediately because the map is tiny, and the box fits in a coat pocket. For a lunch break or a train journey they’re excellent, and they’re cheap enough to own two or three.
What they’re not is a replacement for a full-size box. Fifteen minutes doesn’t leave room for a plan to develop, and the tickets are short enough that the long-route payoff never really lands. Buy one as your second Ticket to Ride, not your first.
San Francisco and Berlin get picked out most often as the strongest maps of the set, and both hold up well at two players.
Check Ticket to Ride New York Price on Amazon
5. Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West
Standalone. 2-5 players, twelve-game campaign, ages 10+.
Released in late 2023, designed by Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock alongside Alan R. Moon, which is to say the people behind Pandemic Legacy got their hands on it. Twelve linked games heading west across 19th-century North America, with the board and the rules changing permanently as you go.
When it works it’s the most memorable thing in the series by a distance. The map fills up with your group’s history, and rules unlock in ways that genuinely change what the game is.
It sits at fifth for practical reasons rather than quality ones. It needs the same people, in roughly the same order, twelve times. Groups who can actually commit to that are rarer than they think, and a campaign abandoned at game four is the worst value on this page. It’s also the most expensive box here, and being legacy, it ends.
Buy it if your group has already finished a campaign together. Otherwise you’re buying an intention.
Check Ticket to Ride Legacy Price on Amazon
6. Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails
Standalone. 2-5 players, 90-120 minutes, ages 10+.
Two oversized double-sided maps — the World, and the Great Lakes of North America — and a second currency. You’re now managing train cards and ship cards, plus harbours that score at the end.
It’s the biggest and most strategic version, and for a group who find the base games too light it’s the right answer. Juggling two card types instead of one adds a real layer, and the World map has a scale nothing else in the line comes near.
The play time isn’t a rounding error, though. Ninety minutes to two hours turns Ticket to Ride from the game that warms up an evening into the game that is the evening. That’s a different product for a different table, and it gives up the thing that made the series famous, because you can’t teach this one in five minutes.
Check Ticket to Ride Rails & Sails Price on Amazon
7. Ticket to Ride: First Journey
Standalone. 2-4 players, 15-30 minutes, ages 6+.
The kids’ version. Simplified US map, bigger cities, shorter routes, and you win by completing six destination tickets rather than counting points. There’s a Europe version of it too.
It does its job properly, which is more than most junior editions manage. The actions are identical to the real game, draw cards, claim routes, complete tickets, so a child who plays this at six moves up at eight or nine with nothing to unlearn. That’s why we put it on our best educational board games list.
It sits here only because the audience is narrow. For the six-to-eight-year-old it’s aimed at, it’s as good a purchase as anything on this page. For anyone else it’s too slight, and an eight-year-old already playing strategy games will find it patronising.
Check Ticket to Ride First Journey Price on Amazon
8. The Map Collection volumes (1-7)
Expansions — these are not standalone games.
- Vol. 1: Team Asia / Legendary Asia
- Vol. 2: India / Switzerland
- Vol. 3: The Heart of Africa
- Vol. 4: Nederland
- Vol. 5: United Kingdom / Pennsylvania
- Vol. 6: France / Old West
- Vol. 7: Japan / Italy
Each volume holds a map, usually two, with its own destination tickets and its own rule twist. No train cards, no plastic trains. You need the original or Europe to play any of them.
They’re last because of that dependency, not because of quality. Several are excellent, and for someone who’s played their base game thirty times a new map beats a seventh copy of the same one. UK (Vol. 5) adds a technology-upgrade system that’s the most substantial change anywhere in the series. Nederland (Vol. 4) brings toll roads. Team Asia (Vol. 1) is one of the very few good team-based route games.
Just don’t buy one first. A Map Collection box as somebody’s introduction to Ticket to Ride is a gift they can’t open.
So Which One Should You Actually Buy?
Never played it, buying one box: the original US version. Five-minute teach, cleanest design, most forgiving to hand to non-gamers.
You know you like this style, buying for a group that plays regularly: Europe. More tickets, more replay value, and stations mean nobody gets locked out and checks out of the game.
It’s mostly two of you: Nordic Countries, and it isn’t close.
Buying for a child aged 6-8: First Journey.
You want something in a bag for travel or lunch breaks: any city edition — San Francisco or Berlin first.
Your group finishes campaigns: Legacy: Legends of the West.
You already own a base game and want more: a Map Collection volume, starting with UK (Vol. 5).
The honest summary is that the series peaked early. The original and Europe are still the two best boxes twenty years on, and most of what followed is a variation built for a particular situation rather than an improvement on the formula. We don’t mean that as a knock. Nordic Countries at two players and a city edition in a backpack are both doing something the flagship boxes can’t. But if you’re buying one box and you want the best odds of it actually hitting the table, you’re choosing between the first two here.
One last warning worth repeating. There’s a 15th Anniversary Edition of Europe in a much bigger box, with train miniatures and 108 destination tickets. It’s lovely and it costs a fair bit more, but its components don’t match the standard edition, so if you’re buying to play alongside someone who owns standard Europe, get the standard box.
Think we’ve got the order wrong? Tell us which version you’d move and why. The why is the interesting part.
Thumbnail image artificially generated for illustrative purposes.
