Last year I tracked down the 2-time UK Carcassonne champion for 2012/2013 on Boardgamegeek. I was keen to play against him as I met him very briefly at the 2014 competition, so I asked if he'd be interested in an online game as I wanted to see what I could learn from him, especially since he finished 7th in the 2013 world championships! He was gracious enough to accept my invitation, but we struggled to find mutually convenient times and so only played a couple of games last year with him winning by 7 points each time! I felt totally outclassed on both occasions.
However, we happened to find a random opportunity for a couple of games this evening and I was amazed to win not one, but both games:
I was very careful with my meeples in the first game as I know from experience just how strong a player Richard is, and never really ran into any problems with my supply. I did run out with about a dozen tiles to go but I'd built up a decent lead and was certain I'd won the main farm outright by then. I also had a couple of cities that I could continue to expand and this helped me to hang on to my lead as he closed the gap slightly towards the very end. One thing I learnt from him in previous games is to make literally every point count so I did this as best I could and delayed him with a couple of good traps too (most of which he successfully prevented).
The second game was a bit scrappier. He played an early farmer so I immediately set about ensuring that his farm here would be as small as possible, picking up a few more points along the way. We had a short battle over a growing city which he won when he got his second knight into it and thwarted my attempts to do the same. As a backup plan though, he also attempted to get a third knight into the city but I managed to prevent this which rendered the city impossible to complete in the process. The result was that he lost a total of 4 meeples from an early stage which ended up being worth just 17 points at the end of the game.
Obviously I was so thrilled that I had to come on here to post about it, but I did feel a little sorry for Richard as well as this was one of those occasions where the tiles were certainly on my side. Still, it was a fun way to spend an hour and I'm sure he'll be out for revenge next time!
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