The hypnotic beat of rock music spills into the London streets along with young people dressed as smart as you please. Your bus navigates through the city, headed to the next destination but you wonder about getting off; touring the city on a double-decker bus is smashing!
Components
- 1 board map of London transportation network
- 68 plastic Buses (17 in each color)
- A Few spare plastic Buses
- 44 Transportation cards
- 20 Destination Ticket cards
- 4 Scoring Markers
- Rulebook
Object of the Game
Claiming a Route between two adjacent Locations on the board;
Successfully completing a Continuous Path of Routes between the two Locations listed on your Destination Ticket(s);
Completing Districts by connecting all its composing Locations.
Setup
Place the board map in the center of the table. Each player takes a set of colored plastic Buses along with its matching Scori ng Marker and places this Scoring Marker on Start 1.
Shuffle the Transportation cards and deal a starting hand of two cards to each player 2. Place the remaining deck of Transportation cards near the board and flip the top five cards from the deck face up 3.
If by doing so, three of the five face up cards are Bus cards, immediately discard all five cards and flip five new cards face up to replace them.
Shuffle the Destination Ticket cards and deal two to each player 4. Each player must look at their Destination Ticket cards and decide which ones they wish to keep. Each player must keep one card, but may keep both.
If they choose to keep only one, the returned card is placed on the bottom of the Destination Ticket deck. Then place this deck next to the board 5.
Players must keep their Destination Ticket cards secret until the end of the game.
You are now ready to begin.
Game Play
Starting with the youngest player and proceeding in clockwise order, players take turns until the game ends.
On your turn, you must do one (and only one) of the following three actions: draw Transportation cards, claim a Route, or draw Destination Ticket cards.
Draw Transportation Cards
Transportation cards match the Route colors on the board (green, black, orange, pink, yellow and blue) except for Bus cards which are multicolored and act as wild cards (they represent any color when claiming a Route).
You may have any number of Transportation cards in your hand at any time.
This action allows you to draw two Transportation cards. You may take the top card from the deck (a blind draw) or take any one of the five face up cards. In this case, immediately replace it with the top card from the deck.
As an exception, if you take a face up Bus card as your first card, you cannot take another card on that turn. You cannot take a face up Rus card as your second card either.
If, at any time, three of the five face up cards are Bus cards, immediately discard all five cards and flip five new cards face up from the deck to replace them.
When the deck is empty, shuffle the discarded cards to create a new Transportation cards deck.
Claim a Route
A Route is the set of spaces of the same color on the board that links two adjacent Locations.
Some Locations are connected by Double Routes (two Routes of the same length connecting the same Locations). A single player cannot claim both Routes of a Double Route.
To claim a Route, you must discard a number of cards from your hand equal to the number of spaces in the Route and place a plastic Bus on each of those spaces.
Note: In two-player games, once one Route of a Double Route is claimed, the other one cannot be claimed by the other player.
Most Routes require a specific set of cards. For example, a Blue Route must be claimed by discarding Blue Transportation cards. The grey Routes, on the other hand, can be claimed with a set of cards of any one color.
You can claim any open Route on the board, even if it is not connected to a Route you previously claimed. You cannot claim more than one Route per turn.
If you do not have enough plastic Ruses left to place one on each space of a given Route, you cannot claim that Route.
When you claim a Route, you immediately record the points you received , based on the Route Scoring Table printed on the board and move your Scoring Marker on the Scoring Track accordingly.
You can claim a Yellow Route that is three spaces long by discarding any of the following sets of cards:
Draw Destination Ticket Cards
Each Destination Ticket card shows two Locations and a point value. At the end of the game, you score the point value of each Destination Ticket card you completed or lose the point value for cards not completed.
To complete a Destination Ticket card, you must connect the two locations listed on the card by creating a continuous path of Routes you claimed. You may have any number of Destination Ticket cards.
This action allows you to draw more Destination Ticket cards. To do so , draw two cards from the top of the Destination Ticket cards deck. You must keep at least one of those cards, but may keep both of them if you want.
Any returned cards are placed at the bottom of the Destination Ticket cards deck. You cannot discard a Destination Ticket card once you have chosen to keep it.
If there is only one Destination Ticket card left in the deck, you can still do this action but must keep the card.
Destination Ticket cards and their completion must be kept secret from other players until the end of the game.
 To complete a District, a player must link each Location with each other Location in that District. |
End of the Game
When a player has two or fewer plastic Buses left in their supply, each player - including that player - gets one last turn. Then the game ends and players calculate their final scores:
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Players should have already accounted for the points they earned as they claimed Routes. To make sure there was no mistake, you may want to recount the points for each player's Routes.
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Then, each player reveals all their Destination Ticket cards, adds the value of each card they completed to their score, and subtracts the value of any card they failed to complete.
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Finally, each player scores the value of every District they completed. A District is made up of Locations of the same color and number. This number is also the Points value of the District.
To complete a District, a player must link each Location with each other Location in that District, in no particular order.
The player with the most points wins the game.
In case of a tie, the tied player who completed the most Destination Ticket cards wins. If players are still tied, they happily share the victory.
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