Trains

1986 · 2-6 Players · ~180-360 min · Competitive

1830: Railways & Robber Barons is the definitive 18XX game and one of the deepest economic strategy experiences ever published, where railroad operations serve as a vehicle for ruthless stock market manipulation and financial warfare.

2018 · 2-4 Players · ~90-150 min · Competitive

Rails to the North takes Great Western Trail's most underdeveloped system, the railway, and builds it into a full second game, a branching network of northern routes and cities that converts the base game's simple track into a strategic frontier of its own. For the heavy-euro faithful who consider the base one of the era's finest designs, the expansion is close to mandatory, deepening delivery decisions, opening new engine lines, and rebalancing the cattle-versus-infrastructure debate the original quietly settled too early. It also lengthens an already long game and adds rules mass the base's elegance didn't need. Veterans call that Tuesday.

2005 · 2-5 Players · 30-60 min · Competitive / Route Building / Set Collection

Ticket to Ride: Europe takes the formula that made the original a modern classic and improves it in almost every meaningful way. Tunnels, ferries, and stations add just enough decision-making to satisfy players who found the base game too simple, without pushing the complexity past what a family can handle on a weeknight. A loose two-player mode and a ceiling on long-term depth keep it from the highest tier, but for its intended audience this is about as good as gateway board gaming gets. If you're only going to own one version of Ticket to Ride, this is the one to buy.

2017 · Puzzle

Cosmic Express wraps deceptively deep train-routing puzzles in adorable alien aesthetics, offering hundreds of brain teasers that start simple and scale to genuinely devious levels of complexity.

2024 · 2-5 Players · ~20-90 min · Competitive / Campaign / Legacy

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West is the most accessible legacy game ever made, and for many families it will be the first time they experience the thrill of a board game that remembers what you did last session. The 12-game campaign introduces new mechanics at a pace that keeps each session fresh without ever overwhelming, and the journey from East Coast to open frontier carries genuine momentum. The narrative itself is thin, and experienced legacy players may find the whole thing plays it safe. But for the audience it's designed for, this is an excellent introduction to campaign-style board gaming built on one of the hobby's most reliable foundations.

2004 · 2-5 Players · 30-60 min · Competitive / Set Collection

Ticket to Ride is the game that has introduced more people to the modern board game hobby than almost anything else on the shelf. Twenty-two years after release, it still does that job better than most of its imitators. Limited strategic depth and card draw frustration keep it from satisfying experienced players over the long haul, but that was never its purpose. For families, mixed groups, and anyone looking for a first step beyond mass-market classics, this remains one of the best options available.

2016 · 2-5 Players · ~90-120 min · Competitive

Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails is the beloved gateway franchise gone global and gone heavier, a standalone edition spanning the whole world on a double-sided board where plastic ships claim ocean routes alongside the familiar trains. For fans who found the classic editions too light, the added decisions, fleet composition, harbors, double-length routes, deliver the deeper game they wanted, and the world map's scope produces the series' most epic sessions. For the family audience the franchise built, the same additions read as bloat, longer, fiddlier, and crueler on card luck. The series' most polarizing box, loved and shelved in equal measure.

2022 · Horror · PC / Steam

Choo-Choo Charles delivers on the absurd promise of its spider-train monster with a short, memorable experience that runs out of ideas well before it runs out of island.