Halloween in Nightmare – review of the board game “Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train”

The well-known series about trains consists of many bases and additions with new maps. This time, just before Halloween, Rebel released the opportunity for players to ride in haunted wagons around Nightmare.

Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train is the second board game, next to the First Journey, dedicated to the youngest. In these scenes, the author invites kids from 6 years of age to the game. After analyzing the instructions of both games, I found that they only differ in one bonus, which you should also remember about in the latest version. Otherwise, the rules are the same.

Sweet Halloween

Ghost Train delighted me with its graphic side. I love Halloween and the holiday season that follows, so any decorations, gadgets or board games associated with them go straight to my list. And although I am one of the people who do not like the train series, I had to have this version.

All components are tailored to the topic. The kids on the cover are dressed up as different characters, the wagons are actually small haunted houses, and instead of the depots on the cards, we have platforms with decorations. There you will find a pirate ship, circus performers, pumpkins, a cemetery, a barn and a spooky forest. On the board, however, we will visit a haunted circus, an abandoned school, a mansion on a hill or a gloomy clearing. All seats are marked with cute graphics, which are also found on the ticket cards for the convenience of younger players.

From school straight to the cemetery

The rules are very simple, so even younger children will be able to sit down to play the game. We put the board in the middle of the table, and next to it we create piles of platforms and tickets. Each player receives wagons of the selected color, two ticket cards and four platforms.

During our turn, we can either make one connection by spending cards of the appropriate color and place our haunted houses on the board, or we can choose two platforms from a face-down pile for our hand. In the event that we are not able to meet the requirements of our tickets, because, for example, other players have blocked the necessary routes, we can discard these cards from our hand and take two new ones.

We also have two bonuses to earn in the game. If we manage to connect one of the three marked places in the upper left corner of the board with one of the three locations in the lower right corner, we will receive a special “trick or treat” ticket. If, on the other hand, we draw a route from Town Hall to a hilltop estate or crypt, we immediately draw two platform cards. This is the bonus that is not included in the aforementioned Ticket to Ride: First Journey.

The winner is the person who redeems their sixth ticket. The game also ends when someone has used all their cars. Then the person who has completed the most routes by that time wins.

The simpler the better

Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train is a typical representative of the series. We collect colored cards on our hands, arrange the connection, placing the carriages on the board and carry out the route from the tickets. We won’t find anything new here, and even a few rules have been simplified, just like in the previous children’s version. For fans, this is another box to add to the collection, and for opponents, another game that will bypass a wide berth.

As I mentioned earlier, I do not like the train version. “Adult” maps are boring and monotonous for me. Collecting cards takes a long time, and the route taken by another player leads to frustration. That is why so far the only version that I liked, even though I do not belong to the target group, was First Journey . The rules of all versions are too clichéd for adults to enjoy. Until now, I do not understand the phenomenon of train games that reign on players’ tables, let alone collections consisting of a dozen or so similar boxes.

However, as a game for children or a family, it works very well. Performing exactly the same movements for over an hour is incredibly boring, but shortening these activities to 20 minutes, adding cute graphics and atmospheric names, you hit the jackpot. The haunted houses are much larger than the wagons from the original, and the markings on the board and cards are understandable even for children who are not yet able to read the names of the locations.

All this means that if someone asked me about the best game in the train series, I would point to Ghost Train, of course emphasizing that it is a version for children. It’s good that I have a young player for whom colorful wagons are another fun toy that can also be arranged outside the board. That is why I will be happy to sit down to this board game, especially on Halloween, surrounded by candles, pumpkins and spooky decorations.