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Free Ride

42.00€

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Meeple on Board Rating

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Board Game Geek Reviews


  1. Nice, light route building game where oftentimes the most difficult thing to do is to find the cities on the map. There's some real swings in luck possible here, but players complete so many tickets over the course of the game that a few lucky draws probably won't decide the winner (and the scoring strongly incentivizes visiting new cities). The ramp-up in game tempo as players do more train movements and fewer track builds feels satisfying.

  2. 8 out of 10

    This game is interesting and seems to balance various strategies well. It requires you to consider what your opponents do. It combines luck and skill in a way that many great games do -- the luck vs. skill mix seems similar to that in Ticket to Ride.

  3. 6 out of 10

    A step up in complexity in terms of a route builder as players also need to move their locomotive around the map to various destinations. While a fun game, I found that it was too repetitive throughout and overstayed its welcome. Also, the lack of designated areas or other ways to distinguish routes on the map make it mandatory that you have some third party way to quickly parse the map for information.

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Around the end of the 19th century, a growing network of railway lines was built in Europe, allowing people to travel to the major cities to visit beautiful structures influenced by Art Nouveau and Historicism.

In Free Ride, you are one of several people in charge of building railway lines, connecting the cities in Europe, and carrying passengers to those cities. The game board shows 45 cities connected by a network of potential routes, and all railway lines built will be one of three types: lines owned by you, lines owned by fellow players, and state-owned lines. When you travel along railway lines, you pay nothing to travel on your lines and state-owned lines. To travel on a fellow player’s line, however, you must pay them 1 coin, which converts their line to state-owned. From then on, traveling on that line is free for all players. As coins are limited, you should carefully balance the building of your lines with the conversion of fellow players’ lines to state-owned lines.

Where do you want to build? At the start of play, each player drafts part of a travel route. Multiple travel routes are available for choosing, and each travel route consists of three cards. When you choose a route, you take either the first and second cards or the second and third cards as your starting and ending point (in that order). Return the unchosen card of that route to the box.

Once the third deck is empty, you can either withdraw from the game with uncompleted routes (returning those cards to the box) or keep taking turns until you finish all your routes, at which point you immediately gain 1 coin and withdraw. In either situation, you earn 1 coin (and do nothing else) on each subsequent turn. Once all players have withdrawn, you tally your score, earning 3 points for each coin, 5 points for the first card you have of a city, and 2 points for each other card you have of a city. (Each of the 45 cities appears once in each of the three decks.) Whoever has the most points wins.

Free Ride also offers a difficult solo challenge!

Ages

10+
Players

Solo, 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players, 5 Players
Play Time

50m – 90m
Designer

Friedemann Friese
Mechanics

Connections, Contracts, Movement Points, Network and Route Building, Solo / Solitaire Game, Victory Points as a Resource, Pick-up and Deliver
Theme

Trains, Transportation, Travel
Publisher

2F-Spiele, Rio Grande Games
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