Author Topic: First game with Bridges, Castles, and Brassieres  (Read 3310 times)

Offline dirk2112

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First game with Bridges, Castles, and Brassieres
« on: January 21, 2017, 06:33:09 PM »
We finally opened up the Bridges, Castles, and Bazaars expansion.  We played it along with Hills and Sheep, GQ11, and the base game.  This was the closest game we have had.  Without farmers, my son won by 25 points (he refuses to farm still).  My wife won the biggest farm with 8 cities and 3 castles for an awesome 33 points (notice the green meeple on the photo)!  I had a bunch of little farms that added up to me squeaking out a win. 

My son and wife LOVE LOVE LOVE Hills and Sheep.  They are the luckiest shepherds on the planet and rarely draw a wolf.  I am a terrible shepherd, but I enjoy the expansion as well.  We didn't keep track, but I imagine my son scored over 30 points with sheep and my wife probably hit 20.  My son and I shared several of the big cities, but for whatever reason the hills didn't play much of a part.  The vineyards play a big part in monasteries.  The castles inadvertently benefited from the vineyard too.  The vineyard CCCF tiles are really good for city battling/sharing and make this expansion really shine. I like the elephant shaped city at the bottom.

Alright, enough about why we love Expansion #9.  On to the new (for us)...

Bridges
This was the component that I was looking forward to the most.  The wooden pieces look nice and it is fun to put a meeple on top of the bridge.  If you look at the board, you can see only one bridge was played the entire game.  Every time a piece came up where a bridge could have been used, there was something more valuable to do with the tile.  Maybe this requires Inns and Cathedrals to be worthwhile.  We will give it a few more games before jumping to conclusions, but so far this was a big let down   :( 

Castles  :(y) :(y) :(y)
These totally changed the game for us.  My wife and I were very good at putting castles next to big features and scoring major points on them.  On one particularly cool moment, a CFFF piece closed my wife's cloister with a vineyard for 12 points.  I had a nearby castle, so I got the 12 points as well.  My castle was in range of my wife's castle, so by way of a chain reaction, she scored another 12 points.  We had a similar happening near one of the bigger cities.  The added values to the farmers was nice.  It didn't really alter the final scoring enough, but for whatever reason it made the battles for the farms more cutthroat than usual.  All three of us enjoyed this expansion and I can see it being used a lot in future games. 

Bizarre? Bazaars? Brassieres?  :(n)
My son and I really didn't like this expansion.   We had to really keep track of who actually pulled the bazaar tile because the bidding and tile placements can be time consuming and distracting.  The most anyone bid on a tile was 6 points as it was the perfect tile for my son to close off 2 features.  I believe the most I bid was 2 points for a CFCF tile that I really needed.  My wife, for whatever reason, really liked the bazaar.  Even though she didn't use it as well as we did, she saw the value in being able to pick and choose your pieces.  It reminded her of Isle of Skye, which is another game we like.  Yes we realize this predates Isle of Skye.  I did really like the Bazaar tiles themselves.  They do a good job creating additional scenery and I think our final board is one of the best looking we have ever built.  I think we will play with them again, but maybe with a house rule or maybe I will use the rules of a fan expansion.  I am not sure yet. 

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=3098.0
« Last Edit: January 21, 2017, 06:35:25 PM by dirk2112 »

Offline Decar

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Re: First game with Bridges, Castles, and Brassieres
« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2017, 01:04:35 AM »
Amazed you didn't make the most of the bridges!  Don't forget they also very useful for merging farms together!  Good report (+1 from me) - I've not tried but would like to do an Isle of Skye auction round next time a Bazaar pops up!

Offline thodekey

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Re: First game with Bridges, Castles, and Brassieres
« Reply #2 on: January 22, 2017, 01:25:00 AM »
Nice report. I must say, i end those game most of the time with a bridge left in the end but when i use them, they give farming a boost indeed! When drawing some special tiles, bazaars can be a thankfull topic as well...to close that big project and get that meeple back. We don't use it every time here but when we do, i like it a lot

Offline dirk2112

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Re: First game with Bridges, Castles, and Brassieres
« Reply #3 on: January 22, 2017, 06:53:55 AM »
Amazed you didn't make the most of the bridges!  Don't forget they also very useful for merging farms together! 

The farms were already massive without the bridges.  There are too many dead ends in the expansions we played with.  I look forward to trying it again sometime. 


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