Ticket to Ride: Märklin (2006)

Ticket to Ride: Märklin is the third installment in Days of Wonder’s best-selling Ticket to Ride series. The board for Märklin is based on a map of Germany and each individual card in the deck depicts a different Märklin Trains model. A DVD introducing players to the Märklin line of model trains is included [Edit: DVD no longer included in recent runs.]

Märklin is a heavier version in the TTR series, allowing players to not only travel from city to city but also from cities to countries. A new mechanic is also introduced in the form of passengers and merchandise tokens. When the game is set-up a series of merchandise values worth victory points are placed on nominated cities. The values of these tokens diminish when multiple tokens are present within a single city, requiring players to move quickly to capture the higher valued tokens.

These tokens can be collected by the players by placing their Passengers (3 per player), which can be achieved at the end of a turn in which a player lays trains to enter the city in question. Once a passenger is in play a player can forfeit their regular turn to move a passenger. Moving along a player’s own train network comes at no cost and allows a player to take the top merchandise token from each city that is passed through. A passenger can also move along sections of track featuring other players trains but a passenger card must be paid each time this occurs to do so.

The player who completes the most destination tickets receives a 10 point bonus (instead of the base game’s longest route bonus).