Ticket to Ride: London

• Designer: Alan R. Moon
• Publisher: Days of Wonder
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 10-15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Asmodee

Ticket to Ride: London features the familiar gameplay from the Ticket to Ride game series — collect cards, claim routes, draw tickets — but on a scaled-down map of 1970s London that allows you to complete a game in no more than 15 minutes.

Each player starts with a supply of 17 double-decker buses, two transportation cards in hand, and one or two destination tickets that show locations in London. On a turn, you either draw two transportation cards from the deck or the display of five face-up cards (or you take one face-up bus, which counts as all six colors in the game); or you claim a route on the board by discarding cards that match the color of the route being claimed (with any set of cards allowing you to claim a gray route); or you draw two destination tickets and keep at least one of them.

Players take turns until someone has no more than two buses in their supply, then each player takes one final turn, including the player who triggered the end of the game. Players then sum their points, scoring points for (1) the routes that they’ve claimed during the game, (2) the destination tickets that they’ve completed (by connecting the two locations on a ticket by a continuous line of their buses), and (3) the districts that they’ve connected. (A district consists of 2-4 locations, and you score 1-5 points for a district if you link all of its locations to one another with your buses.) You lose points for any uncompleted destination tickets, then whoever has the high score wins!

My thoughts on the game

Well, I was surprised to see this in the list of new Asmodee releases in July 2026, but this early city board in the TTR franchise is being reprinted, originally having come out in 2019.  Interestingly, I never got a copy of this when it first came out, so I was excited to actually get a chance to play it.  I have really liked these smaller city versions of Ticket to Ride as they provide a lot of variety and they honestly give me a full game feeling in a very short amount of time. 

Be warned, the game is incredibly fast.  In fact, it feels like in some games, it takes longer to explain the rules than it does to play the game!  Players start with an incredibly small supply of busses, and the longest route is only 4 spaces.  In TTR:London, you’re furiously racing to get cards and place routes.  Players not only are trying to connect their tickets but also fighting for control of the Districts.  Note that the tickets go from 3 to 11 points while the most valuable District is only 5 points – so I wouldn’t give up a connection needed for a ticket to try to lock down a District.

For me, if I get tickets that match up in setup, I’ll take them both and then work on connecting them.  If not, I’ll keep one and then strongly consider taking tickets on my first turn to hopefully find a complimentary one to build towards.  Again, with only 17 busses, you have to use them carefully!

Our games are definitely coming in around the ten minute mark, which might be slightly faster than I want – but it also makes it easy to shuffle everything up and play two or three games in a row!  As with all of these smaller City TTR versions, they are great for fillers, opener/closers, and honestly as a way to introduce the series to non-gamers.  The rules are dead simple; fitting on a single folded sheet – and the short game length (and low MSRP) makes them ideal for folks who don’t have a lot of experience with games.

This one will enter the permanent collection (along with all of the other city variants), though I’m trying to come up with a way to store them all together – I’m thinking about finding an empty 30cm box and then storing all these city boards and extras in baggies within – that way I can keep all of the city games together in one single box (and honestly still have room for more).

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Mark Jackson (11 plays): This is not my favorite of the Ticket to Ride city games (I love the two different kinds of trains & tracks in TtR: Berlin) but it’s an incredibly solid entry in the series. Our games tend slightly longer (15 minutes) than Dale’s 10 minute mark. I will agree with him that this series (including London) are great opener/closer games. 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale, John P, Mark Jackson
• Neutral.
• Not for me…