Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
Aurora Borealis
Several of us here at Meeple Mountain have a fondness for Alan J. Moon’s classic game Ticket to Ride. We’ve reviewed several versions of the game, including 2024’s Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West.
It’s also a game my weekly gaming group enjoys. When a recent illness forced us to meet online instead of in person, we’d start each session off with back-to-back Ticket to Ride games on BoardGameArena.
Recently, Meeple Mountain was offered a review copy of Ticket to Ride: Northern Lights (known simply as Northern Lights from here on). I quickly agreed to take it on, knowing it would be easy to get it to the table for several plays over the coming weeks.
With over 20+ million copies sold worldwide, I’m going to skip over the rules on how to play Ticket to Ride. (If you haven’t played it, check out my colleague Kevin Brantley’s review of Ticket to Ride: Refresh to learn how.)
Instead, let me discuss what you likely came here for: the differences in gameplay that Northern Lights brings to the table.
The Icy Sky at Night
What’s new and different in Northern Lights? I’m so glad you asked!
The Board
The first thing you’ll notice is the game board. It’s long and narrow with congested areas in the middle and right side of the map. Depending on your player count, routes will get increasingly harder to complete as the game progresses.
Ferries
Like Ticket to Ride Europe, Northern Lights features ferries. Ferries connect adjacent cities across a body of water and appear on the board as gray path markers. Some are plain gray, while others have a locomotive icon on them.
Ferries require either a Locomotive card to be claimed or a matching pair of colored train cars (e.g., two blues or two greens). Ferries require more train cards to complete than other pathways, but they can also be rather generous thanks to…
Drawing Bonuses
…ferry bonuses. Along the left coastline of the board, trains require ferries to progress northward. Most of these ferry routes display a circular brown icon with a plus sign and a number. These show that when you complete that section, you gain train cards from the top of the deck equal to the number shown.
In our first game of Northern Lights, I drew two route cards that followed the western edge of the board. The number of extra train tickets I accumulated, coupled with more than enough matching pairs of colored train cards made my northward progress much easier than expected.
End-Game Bonus Cards
In the original game, there is one end-game bonus of 10 extra points for the player with the longest continuous train route. Northern Lights changes that with a small deck of eleven bonus cards.
At the start of the game, shuffle these eleven cards and randomly choose a number dependent on player count. Place them face up in easy view of all players. A sample of these bonuses includes The Most:
- locomotive cards in their hand at the end of the game
- completed tickets to at least one city inside the Arctic Circle
- completed tickets worth 5 points or fewer
- connections to different countries
- ferry routes claimed
The mix of end-game bonuses is a welcome addition, making each game feel different and making for a different set of strategies throughout the game.
The Full-Sized, Over-Saturated Cards
My copy of the original game came with frustratingly small cards. They might be suitable for a child, but not for me or my friends when we sit down to play.
The Ticket to Ride USA 1910 expansion introduced new cards, closer in size to standard playing cards. These also replaced all the cards needed in the original game. (Many people bought this expansion just for the larger cards.) I’m relieved to say Northern Lights also comes with these same larger cards.
The engine and train car cards are especially noteworthy due to the new art. The colors are vivid and over-saturated, giving them an almost psychedelic appearance. Or maybe that’s just me.
Paddles Cut the Water In a Long and Hurried Flight
When playing different versions of Ticket to Ride, I’ve never found one that I felt was a Must Buy. Each has been fun in its own way, but I haven’t felt a powerful urge to purchase anything beyond my original edition of the game. (And if I did, my copy Free Ride fills that need quite well.)
Now that I have Northern Lights, I will bring it out for some of my lighter gaming friends who have already played Ticket to Ride. It is easy to explain the differences as they’re really only minor. The hardest feature of the game for me and my US-centric players has been trying to locate the foreign language towns on the map. (A trait, to be fair, it shares with Free Ride.)
Ticket to Ride: Northern Lights is an easy game to recommend. It’s familiar enough to get playing quickly while being unique enough to require some additional thought. As a lighter-weight game that’s good for families and adults, it’s a solid member of the Ticket to Ride family.
Ticket to Ride: Northern Lights details
- Designer: Alan R. Moon
- Artists: Julien Delval
- Publishers: Days of Wonder, Rebel Sp. z o.o.
- Release Date: 2022
- Player count : 2 - 5
- Age range : 8+
- Time range : 30 - 60 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Connections, Contracts, End Game Bonuses, Hand Management, Network and Route Building, Open Drafting, Push Your Luck, Set Collection
- BGG Geek Rating: 7.80293 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 4.0.
- More articles about Ticket to Ride: Northern Lights.
