Ticket to Ride Train Cards: Face Up, Blind, or Locomotive?

Most turns in Ticket to Ride are draw turns. You will spend far more of the game picking up cards than placing trains, so small edges in how you draw add up. This lesson covers the three choices you face every time: take a card from the face-up row, draw blind from the deck, or spend your whole draw on a face-up locomotive.

What is in the deck

The current box has 110 train cards: 12 in each of 8 colors (purple, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, white, black) and 14 locomotives, which are wild. That means:

• Any single blind card is a locomotive about 1 time in 8 (14 of 110).
• Any single blind card is one specific color about 1 time in 9 (12 of 110).
• Any single blind card is either that color or a locomotive about 1 time in 4 (26 of 110).

Those are fresh-deck numbers. As the game goes on, cards sit in hands and in the discard pile, so the real odds drift. The rough shape holds: a blind card helps a one-color plan about a quarter of the time.

Collect two or three colors, not eight

That last number is the reason to narrow your plan. If you need only one color, three of every four blind cards miss. If you are building toward two colors plus locomotives, about 38 of the 110 cards help you, a bit better than 1 in 3. Add a third color and close to half of all draws help.

So pick the colors for your next two or three routes and draw toward them. Then use your extra cards wisely:

• Gray routes take any one color. A pile of five yellows you never planned for can still claim a gray 5.
• Leftover pairs can claim short routes that connect your network or block a rival.

A hand of fifteen cards spread across eight colors is the classic sign of drawing without a plan.

Face up or blind?

Take a face-up card when it is a color you need. You know exactly what you get. With 5 cards showing, at the start of the game there is about a 45% chance at least one is a specific color, and about a 72% chance at least one is one of two colors you want.

Draw blind when the row has nothing you need. You might hit your color, a locomotive, or a card for a gray route.

Mix them. Taking one face-up card first, then looking at the replacement before choosing your second, gives you the best of both. The new card is a fair pick, unless it is a locomotive.

There is a hidden cost to the face-up row: everyone sees what you take. Three green cards in a row tell the table you have a green route coming. Blind draws tell them nothing. When you are collecting for a route someone else might want, a blind draw or two keeps your plan quiet.

Is a face-up locomotive worth it?

Taking a face-up locomotive costs your whole draw. You get one card instead of two. That is only a good trade when the wild card does something two normal cards cannot:

• It finishes a route next turn, especially a contested one, and nothing else in the row would.
• It is the last piece of a long route, where the right color is scarce.
• The row has nothing else useful and you are short of locomotives for a big route.

Otherwise, two useful colored cards usually beat one wild one. And a blind draw always has its own chance at a locomotive, which costs you nothing extra: at the start of the game, two blind cards bring at least one locomotive about 24% of the time.

Remember the flip side of the rule: if a locomotive turns up as the replacement after your first pick, it is not yours. It stays for the next player. Watch who sits after you; you may be handing them a wild card.

The three-locomotive reset

Any time 3 of the 5 face-up cards are locomotives, all 5 are discarded and 5 new ones are dealt. It is rare on any single deal (at the very start, under 2%), but over a long game it can still happen. When it does, the row is a fresh look for the next player.

When the deck runs out

When the draw deck is empty, the discards are shuffled into a new deck. Because cards are discarded in sets as routes are claimed, the rulebook asks for a thorough shuffle. Late in a game with heavy drawing, notice which colors were spent on recent routes. Those are the colors coming back.

A drawing checklist

1. Which two or three colors am I collecting right now?
2. Is one of them face up? Take it, then look at the replacement.
3. Is a face-up locomotive the only thing standing between me and a contested route? Then it is worth the turn.
4. Am I telling the table too much? Mix in a blind draw.

The openings lesson showed which routes to collect for first. Drawing well is how you get there before anyone else.