Here are some screenshots and a
quick summary of how I felt the game went:
To be perfectly honest, I did enjoy this game but I really felt that the towers spoiled it. Whether or not this is actually the case remains to be seen, but it seemed to me like the majority of the captured meeples belonged to me and I struggled to keep anything on the board in the first half of the game. Even when I tried to defend certain meeples by putting other meeples on top of towers ("capping" them?) the capper meeples would just get captured and then on the next move I'd lose the meeple I was trying to defend. I never actually ran out of meeples somehow, but at one point the other 3 players were sharing 6 of my meeples between them.
A good example of my frustration was when jungleboy captured yet another of my meeples (he finished the game with 3 of them but had 4 at one point) from a city and I made some comment or other. He replied that I should have been defending it better and I pointed out that the tower foundation was 6 tiles away and I'd already capped it twice! I did eventually complete the city in question but this was only because of a lucky tile draw rather than any amount of skill, tactics or planning...
I enjoyed the game a lot more once everyone else had run out of tower foundations! I used the last of mine to get my phantom back from B1nder and then captured a farmer belonging to jungleboy which had been there for most of the game. I had been sharing the farm with him earlier but, surprise surprise, my farmer got captured which left it all to him... or so we thought. It wasn't until I tried to claim the farm with my phantom (having successfully removed jungleboy's farmer) that I realised Rosco also had a farmer on it. Apparently nobody else had spotted this either (apart from Rosco) as he was connected to it from an adjacent farm which went under a bridge. It seemed too late to do anything much about it by this point but then I started thinking about how I could get onto it using some of my bridges and a plan (albeit a very optimistic one) began to form...
The last dozen tiles went very quickly as they included 2 bazaars; both were drawn by Rosco meaning I got first choice of tile both times. I extended an unclaimed city with a cccr tile and claimed both fields either side of the road with a meeple and my phantom. Not noticing that he'd run out of tower foundations, jungleboy placed a tower tile directly next to my tile with the intention of capturing yet another meeple of mine, but then realised he couldn't. This really helped me out though as I then used one of my bridges to connect both farmers to the main farm. It was so beautiful it deserves a screenshot so here it is:
I was leading on points and was guaranteed 30 bonus points from trade goods too but the scores were close enough that I needed the farm as well, even if it was shared. Rosco joined a second farmer of his onto the farm with his last tile but I was happy with this as it was still tied and felt safe. However, the last tile of the game fell to B1nder to place and it was a fffr tile with cloister. I don't know if it was deliberate or not as he hadn't really been taking part in the farm battle but he placed the cloister such that he could get 8 points from it and in so doing joined a third farmer of Rosco's onto the main farm. This lost me the farm, and consequently the game. To my discredit, I wasn't really very happy about this...
Anyway, all's fair in love and Carcassonne. The bridges really added an extra element to it although the castles were largely ignored, as was the builder for some reason. Well done to Rosco, and thanks also to jungleboy and B1nder for the excellent game!
Show Posts
