Following Days of Wonder’s public statements about the 2014 Ticket to Ride World Championship, the two players involved have issued public statements about the best-of-three match in question.

Erwin Pauelsen, the player stripped of the title, said that after playing eight Ticket to Ride games that day, he inadvertently picked up extra cards in the second game of the final (English translation), a mistake that went unnoticed by either player or the table judge. Tournament rules state that Days of Wonder has the right to reassign the winner of a match in case of any irregularity. As the recording of the match shows Mr. Pauelsen taking the cards, it provides Days of Wonder sufficient reason to not award the prize to him. “The organization wanted the trophy back and I agreed.” Mr. Pauelsen has consulted with a lawyer afterwards, “but she stated the pre-defined rules of the organization would render a case useless”.

On BoardGameGeek.com, Kenneth Heilfron, states that he was cheated against during the championship finals, pointing out the math behind the game. If no cheating occured during the match in question, with the number of turns played and the number of trains placed on the board, he should have had six extra cards in his hand at the end of the game. Mr. Heilfron suggests multiple explanations for this, which point to some purposeful action by Mr. Pauelsen. “It was no accident, and it is not something the judge or myself could catch easily.”

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Erwin Pauelsen (Netherlands) has resigned his title as 2014 Ticket to Ride World Champion after admitting to cheating in the second game of the final held in Issy-les-Moulineaux near Paris, France. Online spectator “Knock-Chiroubles”, viewing the championship via Days of Wonder’s streaming, analysed the match between Erwin Pauelsen and Kenneth Heilfron (North America) and posted his findings to the Days of Wonder forum. The forum member stated that during the game in question, Pauelsen took 30 turns while Heilfron took 28, despite Heilfron being the first player in the game and the last to take a turn. The forum member concludes his analysis by noting that there were “3 missing turns for Kenneth in this game”. Another poster states that while watching the live stream, he realized that at some point Pauelsen attempted to play twice in a row and Heilfron, who was showing signs of fatigue, did not notice.

In the weeks following the championship, which was held on September 27th, Days of Wonder stated they had reviewed the final matches and “found evidence of cheating during the 2nd game of the final. Mr. Pauelson has admitted to his dishonesty and agreed to hand back his title and trophy.”

Kenneth Heilfron has been officially declared the 2014 Ticket to Ride World Champion and will receive the grand prize of a trip for two nine-day trip to Asia, including three nights on board the Eastern & Orient Express.

Mr Pauelsen was the 2010 Catan World Championship winner and came in tenth place in the 2012 Catan World Championship.

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People who read Purple Pawn know that my family and I are big Ticket to Ride fans. Especially my 8-year-old son. So when the Nederland map pack arrived for review, we were pretty excited.

The map, of course, is of the Netherlands, and is mostly double-tracks. The gimmick of this map is that every double-track costs a certain amount of tokens to claim. The first person to claim a double-track pays this fee directly to the bank. The next person pays the person who first claimed the section of track. You see, unlike other Ticket to Ride maps, both routes on a double-track section can be claimed no matter the amount of players. The players with the most tokens at the end of the game earn sizable bonuses. Don’t have enough tokens to claim a section? Take a loan card. It’s worth -5 points, and automatically drops you out of the running for end-of-the-game bonuses.

What we really liked about this map is that there’s room to move, though very hard to get were you need to go without paying somebody some tokens. It’s also a VERY high scoring map. There’s no doubt that most players will be lapping the score track, possibly twice.

Overall Days of Wonder doesn’t fail to deliver on yet another great addition to the Ticket to Ride family. Just remember that you’ll need a copy of Ticket to Ride or Ticket to Ride: Europe to use this map pack.

A copy of Ticket to Ride: Nederland was provided free for review by Days of Wonder

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On May 19th, 2011 Days of Wonder released Ticket to Ride for the iPad. As a longtime Ticket to Ride fan I have been using it for nearly a month and have been generally pleased with my purchase.

First, the App is a recommended buy. I love Ticket to Ride and enjoy playing it on the iPad. Unfortunately, you have to either play Solo or Online since this is not a multi-player game except through the online version. Unlike Smallworld which allows the game to be played between to people face to face, this version of Ticket to Ride does not allow two or more people to play from the same machine.

The downside is that you get bored playing the bots, which do not have different levels of skill, which means once you figure out their patterns you can consistently win.

The upside is the iPad Ticket to Ride App integrates with the Days of Wonder online version seamlessly. This grants you access to thousands of online players who have been using the web interface. And the skill level of the online users can be very challenging.

The app interface is rather obscure for navigation. You have to negotiate a train station interface, guessing at what things are, until you become familiar with the app layout. Once into a game, things are very clear and easy to understand if you have played the game before. There are tutorials and instructions located in parts of the Train Station that you can hunt down and study to learn to play. They are all fairly clear except the use of Depots in the European version. I even know how to play the game and was still slightly confused about how to use them.

There still appear to be a few bugs in the game. I had some cards freeze on the screen. I could still play but had a pink rail card stuck over NYC, preventing me from seeing below it. I have also had the draw deck disappear, preventing me from selecting a second card. On several occasions the game has crashed, kicking me out and restarting from the beginning, losing my game in progress.

All of these bugs are fairly minor and infrequent and should disappear over time. I never have had it crash during an Online game, only against bots.

The game play is very fast, especially when playing bots. Even in Online mode, the games move along quickly, making it possible to play a 20 minute game with four players.

In game purchasing allows you to expand to the European map, Swiss map, as well as the 1910 expansions for Mega-cities, Big Cities and 1910 classic.

This app is very similar to the online version that you may have already paid for, but the convenience of using the iPad to instantly connect and begin playing is worth the cost.

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