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Ticket to Ride: Europe is an incredibly fun sequel to the original game that provides a new map on which to build your rail empire and some fresh rules and mechanics that make the game feel distinct. I picked up this game after I moved to Germany and was delighted to find that while some of the strategies I employed in the original Ticket to Ride still apply, Ticket to Ride: Europe required some fresh thinking. These Ticket to Ride: Europe strategies will improve your game and help you win more often.

The best Ticket to Ride: Europe strategies are to focus on claiming long routes over completing Destination Tickets, play all of your trains in as few turns as possible, and use your Train Stations sparingly. In general, you should also focus on shorter destinations that coordinate well together.

Ticket to Ride: Europe feels much more strategic than the original game, and I have found that if you apply the strategies below you can win pretty consistently. Understanding how and why these strategies work will help you to implement them in your own games to emerge victorious more often.

Claim long routes instead of drawing Destinations

I analyzed the data from the top Ticket to Ride: Europe players to see what they were doing to win, and the most important observation is that they focus on claiming longer routes between cities instead of completing Destination Cards. My own experience corroborates this – by claiming longer routes I end up scoring more points in a faster more reliable way.

Let’s look at the data (taken from boardgamearena.com) from the top 2 rated Ticket to Ride: Europe players at the time of writing:

Statistic	#1 rated player	#2 rated player	All player avg.
Points with claimed routes	76.23	79.14	61.79
Points with completed destinations	29.36	22.93	42.87
Completed Destinations	2.22	1.92	4
Claimed routes	12.49	11.73	14.06
Avg. claimed route length	3.53	3.78	2.96
Kept initial Destination Cards	2.27	2.11	2.65

Points per game of the top 2 rated players vs the average player

Wow! There is clearly a massive difference here that we can learn from. The top players score many more points from ‘claimed routes’ than the average player while scoring far less from ‘completed destinations.’ The average length of the routes they claim is also noticeably higher than average, showing that they make a concerted effort to claim longer routes that are worth more points per train.

The longest routes in Ticket to Ride: Europe are listed below. It’s worth noting that, unlike in the original Ticket to Ride, there are no 5-length routes between cities. There are many 4-length routes, but the three long routes below are particularly valuable.

Stockholm to Petrograd – 21 points
Budapest to Kyiv – 15 points
Palermo to Smyrna – 15 points

Keep 2 Destination Tickets that coordinate well

From the chart above we can also see that the best players usually keep just two destination tickets and they almost always complete both of them. As a general rule, it’s best to find two routes that coordinate well together by overlapping or extending each other. If you are dealt three that all work well together then that’s even better, but the synergy between your Destination Cards is the most important thing.

CHECK IT OUT: My Complete Strategy Guide for the original Ticket to Ride

If you need to choose between Destination Cards in the East or the West, it’s usually better to keep the Destinations in the East. The routes in Eastern Europe tend to be longer, offering more opportunities to claim long routes and score more points.

Build up your hand with more Train Cards

Early in the game, you should focus on gathering Train cards rather than claiming short routes. There is no limit to the amount of Train cards you’re allowed to hold in your hand, so accumulating a large stockpile will serve you well for the rest of the game.

By collecting more Train cards, you’ll be able to place trains on longer routes and be more flexible with where your train placement. This strategy seems slow at the beginning but it pays off later in the game when you begin to use your Train cards to quickly complete Destination cards and easily disrupt opponents.

Top player ‘Docent’ and his opponent have both drawn 36 cards before a single train is played!

By delaying placing any trains you also get some valuable insight into your opponents’ plans. While you stockpile cards, look at where your opponents are playing and try to get a feel for what routes they’re trying to complete. Your opponents will be completely in the dark about your Destination cards since you’ll be playing no (or very few) trains early in the game.

Draw from the face-down pile more often

In general, it is usually better to draw from the face-down pile in Ticket to Ride. This is especially true at the beginning of the game when you’re mostly looking to establish a large bank of Train tickets and the exact colors don’t particularly matter. You want a diverse hand that gives you more flexibility instead of building for one particular route.

Drawing from the face-down pile also gives you a better chance at additional Locomotives/Wild cards, while keeping your opponents in the dark about what routes you’re planning to claim.

To prove that this strategy works, let’s again look at how the top 2 rated Ticket to Ride: Europe players draw their cards.

Statistic	#1 rated player	#2 rated player	All player avg.
Collected Train Car cards (total)	43.18	42.46	45.03
Collected Train Car cards (hidden)	33.56	35.62	22.51
Collected Train Card cards (visible)	9.61	6.85	22.52

How top-rated players draw cards vs the average player

This is pretty clear proof that drawing from the face-down pile is the way to go. The average player draws about half of their cards from the face-up cards, while the best players clock in at about 20%. The best players also draw fewer cards overall, likely because their games tend to be shorter and last fewer turns. Which brings me to…

Play trains and end the game as soon as possible

When you’re prioritizing claiming longer routes it’s in your best interest to end the game in as few turns as possible. This gives your opponents less time to complete any long Destination Tickets they may be working on and will often leave them with a lot of unplayed trains at the end of the game. Every train that your opponent hasn’t played when the game ends is a wasted scoring opportunity for them.

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One of the biggest and most overlooked benefits of claiming long routes is that you can play all of your trains in fewer turns. You’ll be able to chew through your supply of trains much more quickly playing them 4, 6, or 8 at a time than you will be claiming a lot of 1, 2, and 3 length routes. This might seem like a small thing, but these small advantages add up quickly throughout the game.

We can see this in the data, as well. The top-rated players take, on average, about 34 turns per game, while the average player takes almost 40! This means that an average player would be left with a ton of trains at the end of the game and likely at least one incomplete Destination Ticket.

Use Train Stations sparingly

One of the biggest changes that Ticket to Ride: Europe made compared to the original version of the game is the addition of Train Stations. Train Stations allow you to hijack an opponent’s claimed route and use it to complete your Destination Ticket. This can be extremely powerful in some circumstances, but top players manage to avoid using the Train Stations almost entirely. Let’s look at the data again.

Statistic	#1 rated player	#2 rated player	All player avg.
Built stations	.19	.23	.43
Unused stations	2.81	2.77	2.57

The average number of Train Stations top-rated players use per game vs the average player

Again we see a very stark contrast between the top-rated players and the average player. A normal player tends to use their Train Stations about twice as much as more advanced players. This is likely because advanced players manage not to put themselves in a situation where they have to use one in the first place by keeping shorter routes that coordinate well together.

The benefit of not using your Train Stations is that you get 4 points for each unused Station at the end of the game, but it doesn’t end there. Playing a Station doesn’t directly earn you any points, uses an entire turn, and wastes Train Car cards. If you are thinking about playing a Train Station, make sure you factor in the entire cost and make sure it’s worth it!

Have an extra train card to claim a tunnel

We have established that every turn in Ticket to Ride: Europe is important and that you have to maximize the value of each one. To that end, it is essential that you have at least one extra card when you attempt to claim a tunnel. The rules state that if, after the three cards are drawn from the top of the pile, you can’t pay any additional Train Cards needed to claim the tunnel, your turn is over and you essentially accomplish nothing on that turn.

Unless time is short (at the end of the game) and the tunnel is absolutely essential to your overall plan, you should never attempt to claim a tunnel without at least one additional card of the color you plan to use. It’s simply not worth risking losing an entire turn just to claim a tunnel 1 or 2 turns earlier.

In the game above that features two highly rated players, player ‘Olimpionik’ claimed the long tunnel routes in back-to-back turns. He was forced to use two extra Locomotives to claim the Budapest to Kyiv route, but was well prepared with extra cards and was able to claim the route without losing his turn.

Keep shorter destination cards with more players

This is a strategy that I use in the original Ticket to Ride and have found that it works equally well in Ticket to Ride: Europe. When playing with a lot of players, the board starts to fill up quickly and your options may become more limited. It could potentially become very difficult to complete an extremely long destination card, so it might be wise to discard them and instead choose to focus on medium-length routes.

I would still recommend that you keep your longest Destination card if it coordinates well with one or two shorter routes, but this really comes down to your own personal play style. If you are playing with 5 players you might find that discarding longer Destination Cards is more effective since you aren’t forced to build in any one part of the board.

Claim important bottleneck routes early

When visualizing the routes on your Destination cards, look for pinch points or bottlenecks that would have the potential to become problematic. All cities have several ways to reach them, but some have more than others. As the game progresses, some of the routes into these cities will be claimed by other players making it more difficult for you to reach your destination.

Where these bottlenecks form is completely dependent on the Destination Cards you draw and how the game unfolds. It could be that your opponents are playing in a different part of the board and your path remains unobstructed but more likely you’ll see that routes to important cities start to get clogged. If the route you want to take is highly dependent on one or more intermediate cities, claim those routes early so that your plans aren’t irreparably damaged.

Watch how many trains your opponents have left

The end of Ticket to Ride: Europe can quickly sneak up on you if you’re not paying attention. After an opponent claims a route, always take a quick glance at how many trains they have left in their stock. This will help you manage how quickly you need to play your own trains so that you aren’t left with too many when the game ends.

You can often use this to your advantage if you’ve been stockpiling Train cards. By claiming many long routes in consecutive turns toward the end of the game you can quickly deplete your stockpile of trains and catch your opponents off guard. You can end the game before they have time to fully react, leaving them with wasted trains.

Block opponents from completing long Destinations

You should be trying to prevent your opponents from completing their Destination cards – especially long Destination cards that are worth a lot of points. It’s worth memorizing the long Destination cards in the game so that you can be on the lookout for your opponents working to complete them.

The long Destination cards in Ticket to Ride: Europe are:

Cities	Points
Lisboa-Danzic	20
Brest-Petrograd	20
Palermo-Moskva	20
Kobenhavn-Erzurum	21
Edinburgh-Athina	21
Cadiz-Stockholm	21

Longest Destination Tickets in Ticket to Ride: Europe

Blocking your opponent is especially effective in two-player games. Every point you deny your opponent is just as valuable as a point you score for yourself. In games with 3 or more players, this return isn’t quite as good because you’re spending a turn to deny one player points while other players can focus on building their own routes.

If you found the information in this article useful, you should also check out my Complete Strategy Guide for the original version of Ticket to Ride.

Thanks for reading! If I missed something or you have your own opinions, please drop a comment below.

Ticket to Ride: Europe | Ultimate Strategy Guide (11 Tips)