Ticket to Ride Paris Review

Small box Ticket to Ride games have been great for some and a let down for others. When they were first released, I was in the camp of wondering why these existed. Ticket to Ride, after all, isn’t that long of a game, is it? So why do we need these small box city versions outside of it being a money grab. Overtime, however, I’ve come to enjoy these small box games and what they bring to the table. I love that they can be played quickly, and generally all have a gameplay change that keeps things interesting. Let’s take a look at Ticket to Ride Paris, and see where it fits in the small box city experiences!

Ticket to Ride Paris is going to play relatively similarly to other Ticket to Ride games you have played. On your turn, you can draw new “train” cards – although these are not all trains, but rather cars, buses, bikes, and more. You can instead choose to draw new ticket cards, or alternatively, claim a route on the board. Drawing cards is similar to past games – two cards from the face-up display, or one wild card; or two cards from the top of the deck blindly.

There are a number of differences that keeps Ticket to Ride Paris feeling fairly fresh. First, there are not wild grey routes on the board. In previous games, these could be claimed by playing all of the same colour, but it could be any colour! The other change is the distribution of colours on the board. For example, you will only ever use blue cards to claim 1-lenth routes, and only ever use yellow cards to claim 2-length routes. That means you’ll never see a 2 or 3-lenth blue or a 1 or 3-length yellow. It’s an interesting twist that will keep you looking at how many of each colour you have in your hand.

The other twist in Ticket to Ride Paris is attempting to create the French flag and celebrate Bastille Day by collecting one white card, one blue card, and one red card. These cards are collected each time you play a route of that colour (you keep one of the spent cards in front of you). Each time during the game that you complete the French flag, you score 4 points, discard the cards that created the flag, and start again. The flag can be scored as many times as possible during the entire game, but you can only work on one flag at a time.

I love this little twist. It makes playing Ticket to Ride Paris feel much different than the other small box Ticket to Ride games, and provides a reason to keep it in the collection. But there are more reasons I love having these small box games around – time. We play a lot of hefty board games, whether for fun or review, so our time is often limited. This is the perfect game to play while we wait for everyone to show up for board game night, or better, for late at night when the nights almost over bu you want one last game.

It will be up to you whether you think Paris is a good addition to your Ticket to Ride collection. I like the differences that it brings to the table, but if I was only keeping one copy, at this point it would be Ticket to Ride Amsterdam. Thankfully I’m not stuck keeping only one, and I like Ticket to Ride Paris enough to keep it around for the next little while.