Days of Wonder - Ticket to Ride; France & The Wild West Pt 2

The second half of the new Ticket to Ride Expansion is the Wild West which can be found on the reverse side of the board. This includes a new set of white cars to add a sixth player to the game, new destination tickets and 18 city markers (3 for each player).

Those city markers are the key to the Wild West version which features a map of the US from about the eastern edge of Colorado to the west coast. These city markers are key to this version of the game and it should make for some very interesting strategies. At the beginning of the game each player will select a starter city. The first route you claim must be from your starting city and every subsequent route must connect to your home city or to a city you have built to. Only one player's marker can reside in each city and once placed they cannot be moved. Now comes the real twist. If you build into a city controlled by another player then they score the points for claiming the route not you. Even more intriguing is if for some reason a player claims a route between two cities that are controlled by other players (or even the same player) then both players score the points (or a single player would score double). This board also introduces Ferry like those in Ticket to Ride Europe.

This is possibly one of the most interesting twists I have seen in the Ticket to Ride games and will really affect the strategy you use in both claiming routes to complete your tickets and where to locate your city markers. I'm definitely looking forward to getting a few games of this one in.