Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West

The Game

Ticket to Ride getting the legacy game treatment comes as no surprise. The evergreen game series is hugely successful. A number of other popular games have had legacy versions published. When I learned about Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West, I felt it was a matter of sooner or later. It was certainly exciting to see Alan Moon, Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock work together. Ticket to Ride is well known, so I won't describe it. I will focus on what Legends of the West is like. 

When you open the large box, this is what you see. That long box on the left stores most of the cards. The eight boxes along the top are components to unlock as you expand the map. The legacy campaign (which consists of 12 games) starts with a map of just the eastern coast of USA. As you play through the campaign you will unlock regions and grow the map. You will be opening boxes and adding game components and new rules. 

The five boxes along the bottom are the player companies. You will keep some components for your next game, and this is where you keep such components. 

The basic rules of Legends of the West are similar to that of basic Ticket to Ride. In fact when the campaign starts, I find the rules even simpler. Later on there will be more rules and new mechanisms, but things don't get too complicated. This is still a family game. The complexity doesn't go up much. This is not a gamer's game. One aspect which is different from standard Ticket to Ride is you don't score points when building tracks. This simplifies the game. Also here your points are simply called money. At the end of a game instead of scoring points from completed tickets, you earn money. It's the same thing. If you fail to complete a ticket, you are fined. One more difference is when you build a track in your colour, you earn some money. There is incentive to collect train cards in your own colour. Tracks on the map come in six colours instead of eight. There are five player colours plus white. No more orange or pink. 

There are events. Some newspaper cards are shuffled into the train deck. When you draw one, you have to reveal the next event card from a separate event deck. You follow the instructions. Sometimes it is a one-time effect. Sometimes it is ongoing. This injects some uncertainty and variety. 

Some of the train cards. 

These are tickets

This is the map at the start of the legacy campaign. Much of the continent has yet to be explored. Florida is a large missing piece. The game is not meant to be historically accurate. Think of it as a historical what-if drama. 

Every player colour has a different train piece shape. 

This is a player's company box. It has two sections. One is for keeping components for the next game in the campaign. The other is for components needed for scoring at the end of the campaign. That's called the vault. Throughout the campaign you will be asked to put stuff into the vault. 

At the end of every game, you do scoring using this slip. Your points (i.e. money) come from three different sources. First, cash on hand. Second, the number of train pieces left. If you manage to use up your trains, you get a $16 bonus, which is significant. If you are able to, you want to end the game while others still have many pieces remaining. The third way you make money is from your completed tickets. Total money determines the winner for the game. This slip is then put into your company vault. It will be used again at the end of the campaign. 

This is the legacy card deck. You'll reveal some cards at the start of a game and also at the end. There will be some story to read out. New components and rules will be added too. 

The Thoughts

The campaign takes 12 games to finish. So far I've done seven. I don't have a complete map yet, but I have seen many game mechanisms and components. There will be more to come. I have been enjoying the journey so far. There are many pleasant surprises. From a game mechanism perspective, Legends of the West and Ticket to Ride are just slightly different. Not better or worse, just a little different. The new mechanisms are fun. Not particularly innovative. If they were in a different standalone game, I probably won't find them interesting. However as they are combined here as a package, they are fun. Playing Legends of the West is about enjoying the story and the extended journey, not really about looking for a new interesting game. It is about enjoying variants to the core Ticket to Ride formula. 

Like most legacy games, Legends of the West is best played with the same group of friends for the whole campaign. I would suggest you get 4 or 5 players. It will be a wonderful shared journey. 

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From this point onwards there will be spoilers. If you haven't played this game and intend to do so, best not to read any further. If you have no intention to play it, welcome to read on to see more details. If you have already played the game, let's reminisce...

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One part I absolutely love is this hole puncher. This is introduced at the end of the first game. When you complete a ticket, you have to punch a hole in it, in the section of your player colour. Some tickets let you punch one hole per row. Some let you punch two. Whenever a row is completed, that ticket is retired permanently. 

This particular ticket has some instructions. When it is retired, the player who completes it receives a letter. The letter has a story element, which must be read to the whole group. It also has some power which the player keeps for future use. 

The first time we expanded the map, we went for Florida. We were not comfortable with that glaring gap. Here you can see some routes are semi transparent. They don't have a specific colour yet. You get to decide what colour these routes will be if you are first to build tracks. You will add stickers to the board to determine the colour. From then on, for all future games, the colour is fixed. 

This is an employee card. Every game you will pick one. At the end of a game, you get to choose one for your next game. The poorest player gets two employees instead of one. This particular employee above can only be used twice for the whole campaign, thus the need to punch a hole whenever he is used. 

The piggyback card is a life saver. In case you are stuck and locked out of a city, you can use this card (it's single use per game) to build one track to that city, using a route already claimed by someone else. 

This is the circus. When it comes into play, you can collect carriage stickers by building tracks of at least length 3. In Legends of the West you don't score points for building tracks. Painstakingly collecting many cards of the same colour to build long tracks feels like a waste of effort. The circus makes long routes attractive. Carriage stickers will help you score points. I mean make money. 

Everyone gets a tiny sticker booklet like this. You collect carriage stickers here. Every sticker is worth some points. If it is in your player colour, it is worth more points. Money. I mean money. 

On this page, you collect stickers in sets. Within a set, the colours must all be different. The largest set is worth $64 if you manage to complete it, but getting stickers in 5 different colours is not easy. 

I wasn't too ambitious and only attempted the 4-carriages set. 

 

Eventually the circus will end their tour. When you see this icon, it means the circus will leave play and you won't be able to collect any more carriage stickers. Whatever you have collected go to your company vault, to be scored at the end of the campaign. 

The grey pawn is the bandit. It always starts at Dodge City. When the bandit comes into play, whenever anyone uses a locomotive card (joker), the bandit must be moved. Whoever has tracks at the city he moves to is robbed. The money from these robberies go to the bandit's stash. The stash will keep growing, and when a specific event comes up, all players may get to share this stash. When the event happens, you may discard four cards to participate in splitting the loot. 

At this city, the bandit robs the blue and the yellow players. 

Towns (in red) can be controlled by players. In this photo above, St. Louis and Cincinnati are now controlled by the blue and the green player respectively. Taking control of a town can only be done through special powers and events. It's not something you can choose to do any time. The benefit of controlling a town is whenever anyone builds a track to that town, you get to collect a fee. Chicago is a city and not a town, so it is safe from being controlled by players. 

If you look closely you will find that the tracks around Oklahoma City are all stickers added to the board by players. Dodge City is where the bandit always starts, so players tend to be wary about building tracks in this area. 

At this point in the campaign we had about half the map revealed. There were still many routes in the newer regions (on the left half) not yet stickered. 

Baltimore has an anchor icon, which means it is a port. There are some minor gameplay elements related to ports. I (green player) took control of Baltimore when the opportunity arose, because I felt many routes would go through Baltimore. It was a hub. 

Shares! That's another mini-game in the campaign.

When shares are in play, there will always be two face-up share cards. If you build a track in the colour of one of these shares, you get to claim that share. When the campaign ends, you will make money from shares. Each of the six companies will pay shareholders based on who has more shares. So this is a majority competition. The shares mini-game leaves play after players claim all the shares. 

This is yet another mini-game - treasure hunting. This comes into play when you unlock the Sierra Madre region. Whoever builds tracks in the regions gets to either collect a treasure map or attempt to find a hidden treasure. How the treasure hunting works is that in order to be successful, you need to draw ten cards from the deck without any skull icon. This is actually quite difficult. Treasure maps are a tool to help you improve your chances of success. Every treasure map you have allows you to ignore one skull icon. 

When you successfully find treasure, you scratch off one section of this lost treasure card and claim the reward shown. Throughout the campaign hidden treasures can be found five times only. After that there are no more treasures. 

This particular employee helps in treasure hunting, increasing your chances of success. 

My progress with Legends of the West is a little slow. I started in Nov 2023, and so far I have played 7 games. Still 5 more to go to complete the campaign. I hope I can get it done before November this year! Perhaps I'll share more after I complete the whole thing.