Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails brings back the familiar gameplay of the original Ticket to Ride games, now spanning the entire planet. Of course, this also means that the waters can also be crossed with the help of ships.

As with the rest of the Ticket to Ride game family, players start the game with tickets representing two cities in their hands. During the game, you also have to collect colored cards, and then use them to book routes worth the points, with the colored train and ship figures placed on them. When a player has 6 or less pieces left, players can only complete 2 rounds and the game ends. After that, it is necessary to check whether the routes have been connected. If you do, you get points, if you don't, you lose points.

Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails also adds some new twists to the standard gameplay with separate train and ship decks (including wildcards that can be used for both). At the beginning of the game, 3 cards of each type are turned over, and after drawing cards, we fill up the empty spaces from one of the decks. (The cards must be shuffled in a separate deck for each type, if necessary.)

Similarly, players start the game with their own ship and train figure combination. To claim railway routes (square places), you need railway cards and these places must be covered with train figures. While a ship route (oval spaces) requires ship cards (or jokers) and ship pieces. Ship cards show one or two ships, and when you play a double ship card, you can cover one or two spaces with it. During the game, you can also perform an action to exchange ship figures for train figures (or vice versa), but for each such exchange you lose one point.

Some tickets can include a larger hiking route consisting of more than just two cities. If you build a network that exactly covers the tour route, you can get more points than if all the relevant cities were included in the network.

The Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails box contains a double-sided game board with the world on one side and the Great Lakes region of North America on the other. Depending on the map, you have to start the game with a different number of cards and figures, but there are other changes in the gameplay.

English edition.