Ticket to Ride is a hugely popular, multi-award-winning, and massive spin-off and expansion spawning game. It's easy to teach and play (especially the base game) and makes a great introduction to the board gaming hobby. The base game has very simple set collecting and route building mechanisms that are easy to grasp, but offer a fun challenge to play.
The spin-offs add extra elements, such as Tunnels, Ferries and Train Stations in TtR: Europe, or passengers in the Märklin Edition. There are other expansions to add different things to the base game, my favourite being Alvin & Dexter, which add two giant monsters that stomp around the board blocking cities. It adds a little chaos and a lot of fun!
But, this post is actually about the two new expansions Days of Wonder just announced - Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 1 - Team Asia & Legendary Asia and Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 2 - India & Switzerland.
Both sets come with a double sided board and a set of new destination cards and any new rules you will need.
Volume 1 comes with an interesting sounding team game variant:
Team Asia from Alan R. Moon – Four or six players compete as two-player teams, with teammates sitting next to one another at the table. Each player has her own secret hand of cards and tickets, in addition to some cards and tickets being placed in a shared cardholder that either player on the team can access.
When a player draws cards, she must place one card in the cardholder and the other in her hand (unless she takes a face-up locomotive, in which case it must be shared); when a player draws tickets, the first ticket kept must be placed in the cardholder and any additional tickets kept added to her hand. A player can spend her turn to add two tickets from her hand to the cardholder. A team's points are tracked collectively, and the team with the highest score wins.
Legendary Asia from François Valentyne – The main change in this set-up is that some of the routes through Asia are labeled mountain routes, with one or more spaces on the route bearing an X. Whenever a player claims one of these routes, she must place a train from her reserve in the Mountain Crossing area of the game board, earning two points for each such train but losing access to them for the rest of the game. The player who connects to the most cities in a single network earns a ten point "Asian Explorer" bonus.
Volume 2 reprints a previously available map expansion (Switzerland) and adds the new India map, which in turn adds new ways to score:
India from Ian Vincent – On this game board for 2-4 players, in addition to scoring points for claiming routes and completing tickets, a player can also score points in two other ways. First, the player with the longest continuous path of trains receives a ten point bonus. Second, each player scores bonus points for connecting the cities on one or more tickets with two distinct routes. The first two such tickets earn five additional points each, and the next three earn ten points each for a maximum bonus of 40 points.
Switzerland from Alan R. Moon – This is a reprint of Ticket to Ride: Switzerland, first published in 2007. This game board is for 2-3 players only. Instead of connecting only cities, some destination tickets connect a city to a country or one country to any of those surrounding Switzerland; a player who completes such a ticket scores the highest point value for which she qualifies. Unlike most other TtR games, discarded tickets are removed from the game instead of being returned to the ticket deck. Also, Locomotives can be used only to build tunnels.
Here are the new maps:
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