If you're looking for a fun, casual board game, then Ticket to Ride might be it. I must admit that we avoided playing it for a while but when we finally got around to it, we enjoyed it so much that we bought the original. It's a well presented game with several versions and expansions available which introduce more maps and rules.
Your aim is to get the most number of points. This can be done by putting trains on the tracks between cities, getting points for completing any destination cards in your hand or achieving titles like Longest Train or Most Destinations (depending on the game you're playing). The game play is pretty straight forward. You can either pick up train cards, put down trains or pick up more destination cards. Longer destination cards and tracks attract more points and making an efficient network is worth achieving. Decisive claiming of tracks helps as it's easy to become blocked, especially if the maximum number of players are involved. Two and three player games may still get claustrophobic as double tracks can only be claimed by one player.
The board needs a little space while setup is pretty quick. The simple mechanic allows short game times meaning multiple games are easily possible.
Happy connections
