If you’re a board game enthusiast that has regular game nights, you no doubt have already played the tabletop favorite, Ticket to Ride. It’s a splendid example of the diceless strategy game, in which players have only themselves, and not the gods of the dice, to blame. As Ticket to Ride has such an admirable design, it follows that it has countless admirers, and as any game with a lot of fans also has many costly additions or expansions, Ticket to Ride players often have multiple variations on this game, just like Catan, Dominion or Munchkin. Today, Days of Wonder announced the newest Ticket to Ride train adventure, Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails! will debut at GenCon in August, and everywhere else in September.

Designer Alan R. Moon had this to say about creating a new and “totally refreshing Ticket to Ride experience” in Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails!:

Since our planet is about 70% water, when I started thinking about doing a world map for Ticket to Ride, it just seemed natural to add ships to the game. As I started laying the routes, it also became obvious that I would need some way to accommodate the longer ship routes. The double ship cards were the simple answer. To balance these powerful cards, I decided to put all the Wild Cards be in the train deck.

It was tough to figure out what the optimal mix of ships and trains was in the game. That led to the rules allowing players to choose their own mix of ships and trains at the start. Combining all of these elements created a game that has some fairly diverse strategies and what I hope is a totally refreshing Ticket to Ride experience.

While you can find the rules by following these embedded hyperlinks for The World and Great Lakes, here is Days of Wonder’s more general description of the newest Ticket to Ride variation:

Discover the next installment in our famous train game series: Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails! Including a massive two-sided board featuring the World map on one side and the Great Lakes of North America map on the other, this version will enable you to set sails to new horizons thanks to the new ship routes.

With the new Train and Ship cards, you will be able to claim the routes on the map, and also use them to build harbors and maximize your score. Double-Ship cards are included to quickly cross seas and lakes. Last, but not least, a new type of ticket appears: the Tour tickets, listing between three and five cities, that must be connected together at all costs, and rewarded with many victory points.

Here’s the World map:

And here’s the Great Lakes map:

And here’s the nitty gritty:

Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails is for 2 to 5 players ages 10 and older and takes approximately 90-120 minutes to play. It is a stand-alone game in the Ticket to Ride series. It includes 1 Double-Sided Board featuring 2 Maps: the World and the Great Lakes of North America. It also includes 165 Plastic Trains, 250 Plastic Ships, 15 Harbors, 5 Scoring Markers, 140 Travel Cards (Train, Ship, Double Ship and Wild) and 120 Ticket Cards (65 for the World map and 55 for the Great Lakes map). Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails is expected to be available at GenCon in August, then worldwide in early September at an expected retail price of $80/€70.

The good news for some in this description is “standalone game,” which means that you don’t need to buy any of the Ticket to Ride editions to enjoy this one.

Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails! will arrive in stores in early September.

Cross-posted to Board of Life.