Messages

16

Anything Else / Re: for my birthday

« on: June 30, 2013, 05:58:29 AM »

Congratulations on the arrival of your son. Fatherhood is the best!

17

News and Events / Re: Welcome to the new forums / explanation for downtime

« on: June 28, 2013, 03:13:24 AM »

gantry,

Thanks for all your hard work too!

18

Official Rules / Re: The Phantom and Wheel of Fortune

« on: June 28, 2013, 03:09:18 AM »

I agree with Carcking.

We always play the phantom on the tile placed only.

19

News and Events / Re: Welcome to the new forums / explanation for downtime

« on: June 27, 2013, 04:26:00 AM »

Scott,

Thanks for all the hard work getting the forum back up. We all really appreciate it.

20

Official Rules / Re: The Goldminers: Gold Removal Question

« on: May 30, 2013, 04:13:11 AM »

According to the CAR:
"When more than one player has the majority in a finished structure when gold is to be claimed, or when several structures with a claim to gold are completed at the same time, the gold pieces are distributed among those claiming players. Distribution proceeds clockwise, starting with the active player, until all of the corresponding gold pieces have been awarded."

My interpretation is that you would score the city first and then the road, as the scoring for the city doesn't need majority established. If there was a gold piece remaining for the road, then the distribution starts with the active player, but as the gold piece has already been distributed it doesn't matter.

My vote would be that the active player should get all the gold pieces in your scenario.

21

General / Re: Highest scoring city

« on: May 12, 2013, 04:37:04 AM »

Thanks kettlefish, I missed the pennant on its own down the bottom. Dad is not going to be happy when I tell him that the city was worth even more points

My Dad did try to keep me out. He kept adding followers when he could but he just couldn't close off the city and I would bring in another to match him. I was very lucky near the end as we were tied for the city for about ten minutes when none of tiles that came out could be added to it. The city just kept getting bigger and bigger as we tried to gain majority control.

22

General / Re: Highest scoring city

« on: May 11, 2013, 10:48:16 PM »

Here's a picture of my city.

23

General / Highest scoring city

« on: May 11, 2013, 10:45:56 PM »

I read a series of articles online during this week called "Anatomy of a Game: Carcassonne" by Shannon Appelcine on www.mechanics-and-meeples.com, originally posted in 2006. I'm sure many people have already been alerted to this series of articles (I saw a carcassonnecentral link in the google search) but I found them extremely interesting. The discussion in part two bout the tile ratios and the way that "Inns and Cathedrals" and "Traders and Builders" evens out the perceived inequality in the base game was particularly interesting.

Catching up with my folks this weekend for Mother's Day and inspired by the article Dad and I decided to have a game of Carcassonne and we used the Base game, started with River and River II without allowing follower deployment until the rivers were completed and then added the "GQ mini expansion" tiles to "Inns and Cathedrals" and "Traders and Builders" for the main game.

Game 1 ended with my Dad wining 176 - 114. Aided by his 56 point city and superior farmer deployment he thrashed me. The finished layout was extremely compact, almost rectangular with very little gaps. The fields were all divided up into small sections because of the number of short roads.

Game 2 was a whole other story. We continued with the same expansions and from the very beginning the game was much more spread out. But as you can see in the photo of the end of game, the majority of cities lay to the west of the rivers. Dad's 30 point road sprang out of the centre of the game headed east, while I focused on trying to steal his large city that he was developing with his builder. After using 4 followers and risking the entire city on a single remaining tile I was able to claim ownership and score the 90 points that the Cathedral tile helped create. With the help of my 90 point city and 3 farmers, the game ended with me, gaining "revenge" for the first game, wining 310 - 170.

So the 90 point city was the largest city we had ever scored and it got me thinking. What is the biggest city that everyone on the forum has scored?

24

Other Games / Re: Tasnia tile builder game on Kickstarter

« on: May 09, 2013, 12:40:04 AM »

I jumped in and supported the game too. It looks really interesting.

Has anyone tried any of the other games that they have on offer?

25

The Marketplace / Re: News from the CundCo Shop

« on: May 04, 2013, 04:28:47 PM »

The School is great fun. I hope you enjoy it.

CundCo provide excellent service. I bought my copy from them and it was a very quick delivery. I'm in Australia too and my memory is that the shipping costs were very reasonable too.

Welcome to the forums harvster... It's great to see other Australian Carcassonne players here.

26

Reviews & Session Reports / Re: First time Fan-expansions: The Lake and Wells

« on: April 29, 2013, 06:33:35 AM »

The fan expansion goodness continues...

Over the weekend I made 132 new tiles to create the Forest expansion. I had a 2 hour long game with my Dad (1-1 as usual). We loved it.

We use the tower tile holder and it was stacked to overflowing. Before we had used all of the tiles on top of the tower we had each scored over 100 points. The strange thing is that the two thirds of the game that followed we both didn't score as quickly. We even had a 20 minute section where there was no scoring.

The Forest expansion is fantastic. Not only does it make farming difficult but it also provides so many opportunities for extra cities. And the appearance of the landscape was beautiful. The tiles are a wonderful addition to our gaming.

I ended up winning 197 - 152. But was lucky that I added 50 points in a section where all of my Dad's followers were unable to score.

Thanks to Scott and Novelty for all their work on this expansion.

If you look carefully you might be able to see the second play test for my own fan expansion inspired by my daughters love of cloisters. It will be called "Cloisterville" which is my daughters catchphrase when multiple cloisters connect.

27

Reviews & Session Reports / Re: 5 Player with WoF and Traders & Builders

« on: April 29, 2013, 06:14:15 AM »

Did you play Little Buildings with the buildings scoring equally or 3, 2, 1 value? I have only tried it with equal value.

28

Reviews & Session Reports / Re: First time Fan-expansions: The Lake and Wells

« on: April 24, 2013, 11:05:14 PM »

After a week of playing with the lake and wells, the blank tiles I ordered arrived so I made up a set of the Mountains expansion.

Before making the tiles I was expecting the mountains to build large "Alps" through the landscape but I was pleasantly surprised how many of the tiles only had one side with mountains, suggesting that the mountains would be smaller features and that has been what happened for us. It was great to be able to use the mountains to block expanding farms and I like how the appearance of the landscape altered from the regular game.

The tiles are really well thought through and it is a really enjoyable expansion. Thanks to Novelty and Scott for creating it. I look forward to trialling more expansions. Think the Forest will be the next one.

29

Reviews & Session Reports / Re: 1 vs. 1 - Base game only

« on: April 22, 2013, 03:14:41 AM »

Most of my games are 1 - 1. It's quite rare that I get to play a 3 or 4 player game. Since buying lots of the expansions, my Dad and I very rarely play just the base game, but if we do we always play with the river (actually, we usually play with both rivers). It would be interesting to see how different we would play against each other.

And kettlefish, it's good to know that I'm not alone in losing to brand new players

30

General / Re: History of the Cité of Carcassonne

« on: April 17, 2013, 02:12:02 AM »

There is a fantastic map image that I use as my iPad wallpaper. It is available at this link http://1-media-cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/tg/image/1350/91/1350911024806.jpg