I've had Ticket to Ride for a few years now, and have pondered the possibilities of solo play on many occasions, but only today did I put in the effort to actually get a working set of rules changes going.
I've played the following through and it works quite nicely.
The first thing to say is that this is a true solitaire rule-set, you play to see how high a score you can get, rather than playing against dummy players controlled by an A.I. Having said that, you will be playing against the game, as you would in a cooperative game. The challenge gets harder over time as you try to improve on your previous best.
Choose a colour to play with, any colour but black. We'll be using black to block routes as the game progresses.
Set the game out as normal.
Draw three tickets. You must keep these!
Draw two train cards to start off your hand.
Now, you start alternating turns, first you, then the game, then you, then the game and so on.
On your turn you can draw train cards or tickets or play trains as normal.
All double routes are active, but you may only use one, as per the normal rules.
On the games turn you draw a ticket. Find the shortest path between the destinations. Now place "one" black train on one of the route segments along that shortest route. You can not place black trains on both parts of a double route. If the shortest route is occupied by either your trains or the black trains, find the next shortest route between the two points (even if it shares some of the same route) and play a train to block that route.In this way, every time the game "plays", it will block a route.
After you've played the black train discard the ticket. If you run out of tickets, shuffle the discards into a new draw pile. Likewise when ever you want to draw a new ticket you should shuffle the discards back into the draw pile first.
Continue playing until either your supply of trains gets to three or less, or the supply of black trains reaches three.
There is no bonus for the longest train. Instead you get a 10pt bonus if all of the destinations on your tickets are joined together in any way.
That's it. Nice and simple.
I've played the following through and it works quite nicely.
The first thing to say is that this is a true solitaire rule-set, you play to see how high a score you can get, rather than playing against dummy players controlled by an A.I. Having said that, you will be playing against the game, as you would in a cooperative game. The challenge gets harder over time as you try to improve on your previous best.
Choose a colour to play with, any colour but black. We'll be using black to block routes as the game progresses.
Set the game out as normal.
Draw three tickets. You must keep these!
Draw two train cards to start off your hand.
Now, you start alternating turns, first you, then the game, then you, then the game and so on.
On your turn you can draw train cards or tickets or play trains as normal.
All double routes are active, but you may only use one, as per the normal rules.
On the games turn you draw a ticket. Find the shortest path between the destinations. Now place "one" black train on one of the route segments along that shortest route. You can not place black trains on both parts of a double route. If the shortest route is occupied by either your trains or the black trains, find the next shortest route between the two points (even if it shares some of the same route) and play a train to block that route.In this way, every time the game "plays", it will block a route.
After you've played the black train discard the ticket. If you run out of tickets, shuffle the discards into a new draw pile. Likewise when ever you want to draw a new ticket you should shuffle the discards back into the draw pile first.
Continue playing until either your supply of trains gets to three or less, or the supply of black trains reaches three.
There is no bonus for the longest train. Instead you get a 10pt bonus if all of the destinations on your tickets are joined together in any way.
That's it. Nice and simple.
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