Free Ride
– Bilingual Edition: Freie Fahrt –
Designer: Friedemann Friese
Illustrations: Harald Lieske
Game requirements
# of player: 1 to 5
Age: 10+
Playing time: 60 minutes
Idea of the game
Around the end of the 19th century, a growing network of railway lines was built in Europe. This allowed people to travel to the major cities to visit beautiful structures influenced by Art Nouveau and Historicism.
In Free Ride, you are taking charge of building the railway lines. Connect the cities in Europe and carry passengers to the cities. Your own railway lines and state-owned railway lines are free of charge. If you want to use railway lines of fellow players you must pay them, which converts their lines into state-owned railway lines.
Choose travel routes from an open display of city cards and fulfill them to gain victory points at the end of the game. The goal of Free Ride is to visit as many different cities of Europe as possible. Free Ride also offers a difficult solo challenge!
The new concepts of Free Ride
You are building railway lines between cities. There are three kinds of railway lines in Free Ride: your lines, lines owned by fellow players, and state-owned lines. When you travel along railway lines, you pay nothing to travel on yours and state-owned. However, to travel on a fellow player’s line, you must pay them 1 coin to convert 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.
During the game, you can choose from 6 travel routes in the public display. Each travel route consists of 3 city cards, and each offers two different options. Take 2 of the 3 city cards without changing their order while returning the remaining city card of the travel route to the game box. Thus, you cannot reverse the travel route or choose the first and third cards for your travel route.
In Free Ride it is always all about these decisions: do you build new railway lines, or move your train? Do you wait for better travel routes on display, or snatch the best travel routes from under your fellow players’ noses?
Game Components
- 1 game board/li>
- 135 city cards
- 275 wooden parts
- 16 player mats
- 54 coins
- 1 first player signal tile
- 2 rule booklets (English and German)
Game Rules
License editions
Further editions of the game have been published by our partners for the following countries / language areas:
