Round 6: quevy vs jungleboy

[jungleboy]

Quevy and I played our final league matches last night as part of our battle for 3rd/4th/5th with Carcking. I won both matches to end the 'season' on a good note. The first game was 86-57 and the second game was 89-84.

In the first match, quevy started out well and soon built a decent lead of 20 points or so by completing some early cities. He also glommed on to one of my cities and the battle for this northern city became one of the key aspects of the game. I put a second knight in the area (needing a CCXX tile to join), and quevy soon drew the two-city CCFF tile. He could have blocked out my second knight and closed the city in the process (which would have given both of us the same score), but instead he chose to place the tile nearby and try to add a second knight to the main city. In the end my second knight joined the main city but his didn't. He later added a second knight but I added a third, and though the city was never finished, this was a 24-point unfinished city for me that represented most of the difference in the final score.

Elsewhere on the board, quevy had set himself up to finish both a cloister and a 4-point road with a single RRXX tile. I tried to make this difficult for him by adding an extra tile in the area that made him need a RRRX tile. Since the RRRR tile was already out, quevy placed the fourth tile around the tile he needed to ensure that a simple RRRF tile (the T-intersection) was all he needed. This would have also closed a second, larger road, so he had three meeples riding on this one tile. Even though there were still plenty of tiles left in the bag, he never got it and was therefore quite unlucky. With three meeples tied up there, one on a farm, two in the large northern city and one more trying to get into that city, that left quevy with no more meeples. That allowed me to put a second farmer onto the main (and only) farm and I ended up winning it for 18 points.

The farm and the large unfinished city were the keys to this game. Quevy led for most of the game after my slow start but these two features alone scored me 42 points in end-game scoring, almost half my total score.

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=853.0

[jungleboy]

The second game was very close at 89-84 and could have gone either way.

The game started strangely for me as I drew three early cloisters. I also had a road in the area and within the first few moves it became clear that I had put myself in a situation where I needed one particular tile (RRXF) to complete two cloisters and the road (marked in red on the board), even though I had just been telling Dan (who was hosting/watching) that quevy's downfall in the first game had been putting himself in the exact same situation. With the next tile I decided to trap myself into needing a RRFF (corner road) tile rather than letting quevy make it a rarer RRCF. That same tile was near my only city, so I decided to place a knight on it to stop quevy from an easy glomming on opportunity. But this gave quevy the chance to trap both of my knights with one tile, and he did so a couple of moves later, trapping me into needing the RCFC tile that doesn't exist in the base game (marked in blue on the board). So the board was a mess for me, with two meeples trapped and three more relying on one tile. Luckily I got that tile soon enough and eventually completed all three of my early cloisters. I also realised that my two trapped meeples in the south weren't all that much of a problem, because I could keep adding to them whenever I drew an unwanted city piece. There were lots of pennants in the two cities too, so in the end I scored 16 points with these unfinished cities.

Meanwhile in the north, quevy had drawn the CCCC tile and used it to start building a city. I tried to glom on, but before I had managed to join his city, he added a second knight in the area. With my two trapped knights in the south, I couldn't get into an escalating conflict for this northern city, so I instead chose to trap his two knights and my one knight by making him need a CCCC tile (which was already used) to complete it.

The strange thing about this game is that only seven cities were completed, and six of them were two-tile cities. Quevy's 14-point city including the start tile was the only city of 3+ tiles completed. Most of the close games in the league have boiled down to a farm battle at the end, but this wasn't really the case. Quevy had one farmer in the main farm, and I put one in the area but never actually joined it. Quevy added a second farmer to the main farm, and I added a second in the area. Quevy then added a third farmer. I realised that the main farm was only actually worth 9 points (later 12 points), and that my farmers were better served where they were, in secondary farms, than joining the main farm where quevy held the advantage. So in the end he got 12 points from farms and I got 9. I'm not sure if he realised that by the end I was trying to keep my farmers out of the main farm, and that he could have tried to join them.

As we drew the last few tiles I was confident that I had (just!) enough points to scrape home. Quevy outscored me by 3 points on farms but I outscored him by 6 points on unfinished cities. I had claimed an unfinished 5-point road with my last meeple with a few tiles to go which almost matched the 6-point unfinished road that he had. That road was the difference in the final score - 5 points.

[danisthirty]

Well done both! Congratulations on being the first to finish too; hopefully Rob and I won't be too far behind you.

@jungleboy - I was surprised to see how you turned things around after quevy seemed to be getting off to some very strong starts in both games. It was great fun to watch!

@quevy - I really felt your pain as you spent so much of that first game waiting for the rrrf tile that never came!