Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West rules refresher

Read the refresher

You're trying to end each game with the most dollars, and over the twelve game campaign to fill your company's vault with more than anyone else. You earn money by completing the tickets you keep, claiming routes in your own company color, performing certain event actions, and using up your plastic trains. Every ticket you fail to complete costs you its value.

For setup, build the board from all the pieces you've unlocked so far. Everyone empties their company box office, never the vault, and puts what they find into play. Everyone starts with five dollars in coins, and your coins stay visible all game. Shuffle newspapers into the train deck based on player count: six for two players, four for three players, and three for four or five players. Deal four train cards to each player and turn five face up. Any newspaper dealt to a hand or the face up row gets shuffled back and replaced. If three of the face up five are locomotives, discard all five and deal a fresh five. Deal four tickets each. Everyone keeps at least two, and returned tickets go to the bottom of the ticket deck. Then read the story deck until you reach a Pause card, reading both sides of every card. Shuffle the event deck face down onto its space. The event discard space starts empty, so there's no current event at the start. Check the back of your company box for how many plastic trains you use this game. It's twenty in the first game and rises as you go. Any rule stickers you've added are in force. The player holding the caboose card goes first. If that player isn't playing, pick a random start player and give them the caboose.

Play goes clockwise, one turn at a time, until the game ends. On your turn you do exactly one of three things: draw train cards, claim a route, or draw tickets. Unlike other Ticket to Ride games, claiming a route doesn't score anything by itself.

When you draw train cards, you take two, each from the face up row or blind from the top of the deck. Refill the row immediately after taking a face up card. A face up locomotive must be your first draw, and it's your only card that turn. A locomotive drawn blind counts as a normal single card. If three locomotives are ever face up at once, discard all five and turn up five new cards one by one. There's no hand limit. When the deck runs out, shuffle the discards, newspapers included, into a new deck. If the deck and discards together hold eight or fewer cards, you can't choose to draw train cards.

Newspapers trigger events. Whenever you draw a newspaper from the deck, whether blind or as a replacement, flip the next event card onto the event discard pile, where it becomes the current event. Then discard the newspaper and draw a replacement card. Most events are ongoing and stay in effect while they're on top of the pile. Events marked with a lightning bolt happen immediately, then have no further effect, although they stay on top. If the current event is ever retired, flip a replacement right away.

To claim a route, play cards equal to its number of spaces in the route's color. Gray routes take any single color. Locomotives are wild. Place one of your plastic trains on each space, then discard the cards. Both ends need a city, so routes running off the board edge can't be claimed. You can claim any open route, connected to your network or not, but only one per turn, and you must claim the whole route at once. You can never take two lanes of the same double or triple route. In two and three player games, once one lane of a double route is taken, the other lane is closed. All three lanes of a triple route are always open.

After claiming, resolve the claim route steps in order, skipping any you don't qualify for or haven't unlocked. The company route step comes before the large city step. If the route matches your company color, at any length, take the bonus shown on your company bonus card. If the route connects to at least one large city, draw the top card of the train deck. Connecting two large cities still gets you just one card, but you get a card on every turn you connect to one. Locomotives can also be spent as extra discards to meet postcard, event, or other conditions. You need one extra locomotive per condition you want to satisfy.

When you draw tickets, take three from the top of the deck, or whatever is left. You must keep at least one, and the rest go to the bottom. Kept tickets stay with you for the whole game and can't be dropped later. Keep your tickets secret unless told otherwise. When you draw a postcard, read the indicated side aloud and keep the other side private. When you meet its condition, show it and collect the benefit. Postcards drawn at the end of a game can only be completed in a future game.

The end triggers when any player finishes their turn with two, one, or zero plastic trains left. Everyone, including that player, then gets one final turn. Each player fills out a bank slip with the year and three lines. The first is coins in hand. The second is a bonus for trains remaining: sixteen dollars for zero trains, twelve for one, nine for two, then shrinking down to two dollars for eight to ten trains and nothing for eleven or more. The third is total ticket value: reveal your tickets, add completed ones, and subtract failed ones. A bank slip total can never go below zero. The most dollars wins. Ties go to whoever completed more tickets, and if still tied, to whoever came later in turn order. Before cleaning up, the last place player takes the caboose card into their office. The caboose holder then publicly retires one event from the event discard pile, if there is one. Check the story deck's Pause card for new materials or rules, and everyone slides their bank slip into their vault.

A turn, played out

It's a three player game and you run the yellow company. You have 6 plastic trains left. Your hand holds 3 yellow cards, 2 red and 1 locomotive. On the board is an open double route, 4 spaces long, one lane yellow and one red, running from a city into a large city. It isn't connected to your network, but any open route can be claimed. You play the 3 yellows plus the locomotive as the fourth, place 4 trains, and discard the cards. With three players, the red lane beside yours is now closed to everyone. The claim itself scores nothing. Now the steps, in order. The route is yellow, your company color, so you take the bonus shown on your company bonus card. Then, because it touches a large city, you draw the top card of the train deck. It's a newspaper. The next event flips onto the event discard pile and becomes the current event. The newspaper is discarded and you draw a replacement, a blue card. You finish your turn with 2 trains left, which triggers the end. Everyone, you included, gets one final turn. Stopping at 2 trains is worth 9 dollars on your bank slip. Spend your 2 red cards on a 2 space red route next turn and you hit 0 trains, worth 16.