My wife and I had friends round for dinner last Friday evening. Naturally this meant a couple of games of Carcassonne afterwards but we decided against having one big game and played two smaller games instead (keeping the number of expansions to a minimum so as not to make things overly complicated).
The first game (119 tiles) included the basic tiles plus Inns & Cathedrals, Traders & Builders and King & Robber Baron.
The final scores were:
Zombies - 166,
Pirates - 160,
Princesses - 103,
Monsters - 93
My favourite feature of this game was a medium-sized city that Kat had started. This had a lot going for it as it contained a cathedral and yet despite its potential value nobody else had tried to get into it and as such Kat kept just a single knight in it. Interest in the city grew as it drew closer to completion but I was the first to attempt to capitalise on Kat's success by placing my MegaMeeple on a new city segment on the outskirts of her city such that a relatively common tile would be able to merge our two cities and swing the majority of knights in my favour. I then placed subsequent tiles to prevent anyone else from being able to join Kat and I in her city without making it more difficult to close. With the city (now mine) just one tile away from completion it became a race to close it as the person to do so would win two wine tokens, one wheat token and one silk token, plus the King tile which we'd previously agreed would be worth ten points to whoever held it at the end of the game (same for the Robber Baron). I was the first person lucky enough to draw the required cccf tile and won 33 points for the city plus the trade tokens and King tile which I kept. Since I still had four Meeples left in my supply at that time, and because we were close to the end of the game, I even placed a farmer in the middle of the city just for fun (and 3 points)...
The second game (96 tiles) included the basic tiles plus The Tower, King & Robber Baron (tiles only i.e. no bonus for largest city or longest road) and a single tile from Inns & Cathedrals which had been left in by mistake.
The final scores were:
Zombies - 65,
Princesses - 60,
Monsters - 56,
Pirates - 50
My favourite feature of this game was a city that I claimed after someone else was removed from it, and then spent a while gradually trying to close it. Although it was surrounded by several towers, my Meeple was positioned such that it wasn't orthogonally adjacent to any of these and as such appeared to be relatively safe. Edd however was determined to find a way of capturing my Meeple before I completed the city and began building a tower which needed to be four-stories high in order to remove it. Brilliantly enough, he ran out of tower blocks after building the tower up to its third story and although Kat had the opportunity (and sufficient tower blocks) to remove my Meeple, she chose to go elsewhere and I completed my city for 20 points on my next turn. This wasn't even the best part though, as Edd also had a Meeple in an incomplete city on the other side of his three-storey tower. It wasn't in a prime location as the city was completely boxed-in and still needed two tiles to complete it, but even so his Meeple would have been worth 6 points in the final scoring so I was only too happy to add one of my tower blocks to the large tower and capture his Meeple in doing so.
We didn't finish playing until almost midnight which was quite a late night for us (since my wife is now almost 37 weeks pregnant!), but it was the most fun I'd had in ages and both games reminded me why I love Carcassonne so much!
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February 11, 2015, 11:59:43 AM