Days of Wonder Announces Ticket to Ride Map Collection Featuring Two $10,000 Contest Winners

Best-Selling Board Game Gets 3 All New Maps in Multi-Volume Collection

Los Altos, CA; Paris, France – August 29, 2011. Days of Wonder today announced the upcoming release of the Ticket to Ride™ Map Collection, a series of new maps playable with the original Ticket to Ride USA or Ticket to Ride Europe board games.

To celebrate the ever-growing Ticket to Ride player community and Days of Wonder’s upcoming 10-year anniversary, the company recently organized a $10,000 Ticket to Ride Map Design Contest. 612 Ticket to Ride fans and aspiring game designers from 40 different countries submitted their own maps for a chance to win the $10,000 cash prize. Perhaps even more exciting was the possibility of seeing their design published in the Ticket to Ride Map Collection to be officially introduced at Essen SPIEL 2011, alongside a brand new team-play map accommodating up to 6 players, created by original Ticket to Ride game designer, Alan R. Moon.

A long evaluation process revealed two exceptional contest entries. As a result, the company doubled the prize and selected two Grand Prize winners: François Valentyne from Toronto, Canada, with his map of Legendary Asia, and Ian Vincent from London, UK, whose map explores the Indian subcontinent. Each winner earned the $10,000 Grand Prize and will see his design in the upcoming volumes of this collection.

"We were so impressed with the breadth and quality of the contest entries that we decided to award not just one, but two Grand Prizes,” said Eric Hautemont, CEO of Days of Wonder. “Not only does this recognize the tremendous contribution of the Ticket to Ride community to the game, it also gave us an opportunity to bring back in print our long-gone but very popular Swiss map."

Both volumes of the Ticket to Ride Map Collection will feature two different maps on a double-sided board. Volume 1 – Ticket to Ride Asia, will feature Alan R. Moon’s Team Asia for 4 or 6 players and the Legendary Asia map ushering 2-5 players through challenging Himalayan passes. Volume 2 – Ticket to Ride India, will let 2 to 4 players compete over ‘Grand Tour of India’ bonuses and bring the 2 to 3 players Ticket to Ride Switzerland map back into print. These expansions require trains and train cards from Ticket to Ride or Ticket to Ride Europe. Volume 1 will debut at Essen’s Messe in Germany, October 20-23, 2011, and go on sale at better game retailers worldwide in late October. Volume 2 is expected worldwide in December 2011. Suggested MSRP for each volume is $30/€28. For more information, visit www.ticket2ridegame.com/maps/

About Ticket to Ride

Elegantly simple and taking less than three minutes to learn, Ticket to Ride has been honored with over two dozen international board game awards. Millions of players have already discovered this best-selling railroad adventure where tension builds at every turn of the game, as players compete to create routes across North America, earning points as they go. Additional points are won for completing Destination Tickets between specific cities and building the longest continuous route. Over 1.5 Million copies of the board game have been sold and over 25 million games of Ticket to Ride Online have been played to date on the PC, Mac and iPad.

About Days of Wonder

Days of Wonder publishes top-quality, family-oriented board and digital games that are easy to learn and fun to play. Founded in 2002, Days of Wonder has a global presence, with offices in the US and Europe, and distribution in 25 countries. To date, the company has sold over 2 million board games and hosted over 25 million games online. In June 2004, Days of Wonder became the youngest publisher ever to win Germany’s prestigious Spiel des Jahres, the world’s most coveted game prize.