Is Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train worth it?

Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train is another spin on the child friendly Ticket To Ride: First Journey. The game is a simpler version of the award winning franchise, and requires players to complete a set number of routes as opposed to trying to earn the most points. But is getting this version of the game worth it? We think so, although with a caveat or two. Let’s take a look.

If you’ve played Ticket to Ride before, you know the basics. Collect coloured train cars, build routes on the board, and complete tickets. As we mentioned before, these tickets don’t award points, and generally only link locations two spaces away from each other. The goal here is not to accumulate points, but just finish routes. The first to six finished routes wins the games. Routes can be earned by completing the various route cards, and an additional ‘route’ can be earned by connecting one side of the board to another.

Ghost Train is similar to First Journey in multiple ways, but adds a few unique things with some of the locations. Linking specific locations can earn you additional free train cars, and everything has that ghoulish Halloween overview. But the question still remains – is this a game you need to own. If you don’t have Last Journey, I think Ghost Train is a slightly better version of that experience. The unique ghoulish and Halloween backdrop is really cool as well, and that extends from the board to the cards. This is an easy recommendation and really is a great game for kids.

If you do own Last Journey, I’m not sure there is enough here to warrant a purchase. That being said, we also enjoy having themed games for specific times of the year, so if you are a big Halloween fan, grab this up. We now own three versions of the game Patchwork (regular, Christmas, and Halloween), and we take out specific versions depending on the time of year. In fact, we pack away those games with our decorations, as opposed to putting them on the board game shelves. We have the same feeling about Ghost Train. When we packed up our Halloween decorations a few days ago, we took Ghost Train and put it in the box with those decorations, and it will come out again next Halloween.