Ticket To Ride: Astro Edition

• Plays on an accurate northern hemisphere winter sky chart. Star chart background from Orion Telescopes, with some cosmetic editing done strictly to accommodate game play. Stars are identified within their constellations and colored to match their spectral type. In addition to stars, destination points include other night sky objects such as star clusters, a nebula, and a galaxy.

• Three major constellations are featured: Orion, Ursa Major (containing the Big Dipper), and Cassiopeia. These constellations highlight a new inclusion to standard TTR game play: special destination tickets invite the player to connect stars within these constellations.

• Game play not only retains the balance and tension of previous versions of Ticket to Ride, but it has an additional educational value. Players will gain a familiarity with the night sky soon learn the location of constellations and stars.

Many extra details below.

Contest submission form information

Unique appeal or features: Ticket To Ride Astro Edition gives you a chance to traverse the heavens! Players visit major constellations, the brightest stars, nebulae, notable star clusters, and even a distant galaxy. The map represents an accurate northern hemisphere winter sky, so players can learn constellations and other notable night sky landmarks as they play.

New Rules: Play is nearly identical to the original version of Ticket To Ride, and uses the same number of original train pieces (of course, there are updated Destination Ticket cards). The only difference in rules is that, even for 2- and 3-player games, there is no restriction on claiming the second path in a Double-Route within the three noted major constellations (Orion, Ursa Major, and Cassiopeia). Outside of those constellations, the usual restriction on Double-Routes still applies.

New Component: There are no additional components. However, there is no explicit rule against incorporating components from other maps (such as TTR Europe's station pieces).

Additional Comments: Future maps with the same concept could also be developed, e.g., a summer sky edition or a southern hemisphere map.

Discussion on TTR: Astro Edition

Some additional thoughts on moving the design into production:

• One thing I really wanted to do with the board was to make sure the actual stars and constellations stood out among the TTR routes (without sacrificing accuracy). However, I lack the artistic talent. A good artist might be able to make this work.
  

• An extraterrestrial concept is a departure for the Ticket To Ride series, but I think there are some interesting ways to fit the idea into the canon. It could be marketed completely as a space-themed game: e.g., have it take place well into the future and instead of trains, use rockets. (Game testers came up with the term "caboosters" which HAS to fit in somewhere.) Another approach is to broach steampunk territory, which would be a natural intersection between the TTR series and a space theme.

• I'm interested in being able to include some extra materials with the game as educational supplements. A star chart? Pronunciation guide? Short astronomy tutorial?

Gamer suggestions

Playing with a group of experienced gamers, we came up with a number of possible tweaks to the game that might be optional play features. These are not part of the current version of the map, but might be interesting extras (optional rules for experienced players? expansion components?).

• Incorporation of star colors into game play. Perhaps Destination Tickets that require a player to find a route between two red stars, or undertake a route that goes through one of each star color.
• Incorporation of different stellar objects into game play (i.e., a sort of "set collection" mechanic). Destination Tickets could have additional dimension of type of object (probably necessitating having more different types of objects on the map), and players could be rewarded for diversity of routes. Another possibility is to have some routes pass through background sky objects like other nebulae or galaxies, with some reward for players to cross through enough different types.
• Similar to the Switzerland map featuring bonuses for connecting regions, Destination Tickets could require players to connect two different constellations.
• We discussed some sort of wormhole/space warp option. Although it seems like a natural idea for this setting, it actually works against the mechanics of Ticket to Ride, which rewards route building. Perhaps there is a way to make the idea work, though.

Design process and concessions to accuracy

The idea for this map is rooted in my interest and background in astronomy. My undergraduate major was astronomy, and I even went to graduate school to study it for a while (though I ultimately decided not to make a career out of it). Recently I bought a ridiculously awesome telescope. I heard about the Ticket To Ride map design contest not long after I got this telescope and the idea seemed like a natural fit: constellations make natural networks, even if they are rooted in human imagination rather than any physical reality of space. 

At first I thought the map could be painstakingly accurate: for example, routes would be colored like destination stars, or the actual physical distance between stars would be reflected in route lengths. This proved impossible, unfortunately. Bright star colors don't distribute well the way the route colors in other TTR games do. (I suppose with some development you could make this work, using a skewed number common colors and cards, but among other complications it doesn't let players use the original game pieces. So let's call that v.2.0.) Having actual stellar distances invites a whole host of problems. Two stars right next to each other in the sky may be incredibly distant in reality. Multiply that times the dozens of stars on the board and it makes an unintuitive mess of what we perceive as an orderly network. So, first concession to pure accuracy: routes are colored to optimize game play rather than reflect any stellar facts. Oh well. Second concession: distances between points reflect apparent visual difference, rather than actual physical differences. This is particularly true with the inclusion of M74, a galaxy, which is orders of magnitude further away than anything else on the board.

The third concession came up as I picked logical stars to include. Some constellations simply don't have any bright stars. Either I had to leave them out or find something else of interest to point to. Hence, the inclusion of a few star clusters and nebulae. It's fun to have them just as interesting other points, though, so I'm happy with that. I also wanted to be sure to get most notable constellations involved, and that meant using all Zodiacal constellations, even if some are fairly dim.

• Moved Mizar/Alcor--Kocab route to Alkaid--Kochab. A minor change, but play testing revealed possible cut-off of Alkaid in previous layout.
• Better color matching for purple/pink train cards and routes.
• Fixed some errors on the new destination tickets.
• Some additional cleanup of star chart background.

• Board size tweak. Blew up playable area a bit, but cropped edges of sky chart to reduce overall board size.
• Revised Double-Routes from v.0.2 which had multiple length options (e.g., Sirius-Adhara route had a three-train-long purple route alongside a two-train-long orange route). Europe map has some routes like this but they were confusing in user testing. Now all Double-Routes have equal-length options.Part of this re-shuffling led to minor route redistribution and an additional two-train-length yellow rout between Capella and Algol. Reshuffling also added two additional two-train-length uncolored routes.
• Removed some of the non-utilized constellation names to reduce overall board clutter. Cleaned up some extra lines and marks on the sky chart that were interesting but possibly distracting for a cleaner overall look.
• Have now developed destination tickets matching the general board design. This is an improvement over v.0.2, which took the "jot destinations on the back of old business cards" approach.