Update 2016-08-14: This article was translated to Japanese by the team at Big Cats Game Blog.
Ticket To Ride is a great board game where the premise is that you’re a railroad baron at the start of the 20th Century. Along the way you collect “Destination Tickets” and you need to need to connect up two specific cities to score extra points.
Not all cities are created equal, however. Some cities are represented on “Destination Tickets” more frequently, and some cities only have a few pathways into and out of the city.
We calculated the Most Valuable Cities in Ticket To Ride through a simple formula. Add up the number of points that you get with a given city, and divide it by the number of paths connecting up that city.
For example, New York City has 57 points associated with it, but there are four paths into the city in a 2 or 3 player game, and seven paths in a 4 or 5 player game. Compare that to Miami, which is worth 50 points but only has three paths regardless of how many people are playing. This make Miami and much more “valuable” city to connect up with.
Essentially, the more “valuable” a city, the sooner you need to establish a train line into it. If not, you run the risk of being cut off from any current points you have in your hand, and any future bonus points from already having a connection there.
We’ve crunched the numbers for the US Map and for all four versions of the game (Original, 1910, Big Cities, and Mega Game) and produced a PDF for your reference to use while you’re playing.
“Ticket To Ride” Most Valuable Cities downloadable PDF
And since we’re a site all about graphs, we offer some key information in graph form.