Author Topic: Carcassonne Games Marathon: July 2nd in London  (Read 30718 times)

Online JT Atomico

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Re: Carcassonne Games Marathon: July 2nd in London
« Reply #75 on: July 10, 2016, 11:23:35 AM »
Game 17 - Carcassonne II (demo version)

:yellow-meeple: Halfling 31 :blue-meeple: Curt194 30

:green-meeple: JT Atomico 30 :red-meeple: jungleboy 27



​This is a special promotional edition of the game given out at Spiel to advertise the new art version of the game. It features only 20 small tiles and four miniature meeples in red and blue, which I replaced with some different ones from spielmaterial so that we could all play in our colours.

Since the game was only designed for two players, we played in pairs again. Each game being a rematch of The Castle from earlier in the day.

To amuse ourselves, for the scoreboard counters we used the novelty large meeples (seen in the individual player photos earlier in this thread) to contrast against the tiny game! In my game with jungleboy, we also used his big wooden tile tower to draw the very few, very small tiles from. I thought it was pretty funny at the time, but then again we had been playing about eight hours of Carcassonne by that stage so maybe you had to be there!

There is not much to say about the games themselves, they were both exceptionally quick as you would expect. As you can see from the scores, both games were very close. I won against jungleboy by just 3 points and Halfling beat Curt194 by a single point.

Overall standings

1st:green-meeple:JT Atomico11213(1409)
2nd:yellow-meeple:Halfling5921(1305)
3rd:blue-meeple:Curt1945174(1152)
4th:red-meeple:jungleboy1466(1147)

Online JT Atomico

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Re: Carcassonne Games Marathon: July 2nd in London
« Reply #76 on: July 10, 2016, 11:32:55 AM »
Game 18 - Over Hill and Dale

:blue-meeple: Curt194 105 :red-meeple: jungleboy 91 :green-meeple: JT Atomico 89 :yellow-meeple: Halfling 56



T​his was one of two games (the other being The Ark of the Covenant) which I had not played before the day. Having now played it, I am very keen to do so again! I thought it had some really interesting new elements and I think that more in depth strategies would emerge with repeated plays.

My favourite of the new features was the stables, which you can place on any meadow to give you points for all of the animals on surrounding tiles (but it cannot be played in to the surrounding area of any existing stable). They are a bit like a DIY cloister which you can increase in value by adding more animals.

The option to hike a wanderer along a path is also a nice addition. Lots of the game variants try to find ways to make building long roads more valuable and this one does it very successfully. It totally removes that slightly disappointed feeling you get when you draw a normal straight bit of road!

Both of these are quite open to sabotage by your opponents, either by playing animal-free tiles near your stable or by closing your road early to stop you from hiking. There actually wasn't much (if any) of that in our game, but I expect it would be more important if you start to play the game more often.

Curt194 mastered both of these new scoring methods! He built a path of eight tiles which he hiked up and down several times as he extended it. This path also ran past both of his stables which he managed to squeeze a huge 21 out of by placing tiles around them with plenty of animals. This earned Curt194 a strong win in what was the last individual game of the Carcathon, with only the team based Star Wars remaining.

Overall standings

1st:green-meeple:JT Atomico11223(1498)
2nd:blue-meeple:Curt1946174(1257)
3rd:yellow-meeple:Halfling5922(1361)
4th:red-meeple:jungleboy1566(1238)
« Last Edit: July 10, 2016, 11:40:08 AM by JT Atomico »

Online JT Atomico

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Re: Carcassonne Games Marathon: July 2nd in London
« Reply #77 on: July 10, 2016, 11:46:10 AM »
Game 19 - Star Wars

:red-meeple::green-meeple: jungleboy & JT Atomico 163 :blue-meeple::yellow-meeple: Curt194 & Halfling 139



​This was it! The final game of the Carcathon. The last official game released under the Carcassonne brand at the time of writing, taking us all the way up to 2015.

Since the rules for Star Wars have an official team play variant for four players, we decided to pair up to give us a different experience for our final game. The Rebel Alliance was represented by jungleboy as Luke Skywalker and myself as Yoda, while Curt194 took the role of Darth Vader and Halfling was a Storm Trooper for the dastardly Empire team. I had purchased some extra meeple stickers to ensure that we could all continue to play in our designated colours.

The most notable rule difference in the Star Wars variant is that when two opposing meeples share a feature, ownership is immediately resolved with dice combat. You can boost the number of dice you get by using your large meeple or if there is a friendly faction symbol on the disputed feature (only the largest dice counts rather than the sum).

Rather amusingly, the run of the dice very much followed the narrative arc of the Star Wars original trilogy! At first, jungleboy and I enjoyed A New Hope by winning a few of the planets and asteroid fields early on, but it was not long before The Empire Strikes Back giving Halfling and Curt194 a bit of a lead in the middle of the game. In the end though, the Return Of The Jedi handed jungleboy and I more than our fair share of the luck towards the end of the game, grabbing us quite a few planets and one particularly large asteroid field.

In the end, the powers of the Dark Side were defeated as jungleboy and I took the victory for the Jedi. This final game brought the Carcathon to a finish!

Overall standings

1st:green-meeple:JT Atomico12223(1661)
2nd:blue-meeple:Curt1946274(1396)
3rd:yellow-meeple:Halfling51022(1500)
4th:red-meeple:jungleboy2566(1401)

Offline jungleboy

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Re: Carcassonne Games Marathon: July 2nd in London
« Reply #78 on: July 10, 2016, 12:14:58 PM »
Great recaps Jamie! Next time I will play better :)


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Online JT Atomico

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Re: Carcassonne Games Marathon: July 2nd in London
« Reply #79 on: July 10, 2016, 12:21:10 PM »
Bonus Game - The Adults Of Carcassonne

:yellow-meeple: Halfling 60 :blue-meeple::green-meeple: Curt194 48 JT Atomico 48 :red-meeple: jungleboy 46



​We did it! In a little over nine hours, we had completed our marathon. So how did we celebrate the achievement of playing through all 19 official games in the Carcassonne franchise? By playing more Carcassonne, of course!

To round off the day we played a game of The Adults Of Carcassonne which is an unofficial drinking game variant of the base game that was created by Carcatronn, a forum member who once ran CarcassonneShoppe.com which was an excellent resource for quirky Carcassonne extras, as well as normal games and parts. (The name of the game makes more sense if you know that My First Carcassonne was originally released under the name The Kids Of Carcassonne.)

If you have managed to read this far in the thread then you will have heard lots already about how the individual games played out and my thoughts on strategy, etc. For this one, I will simply say that the game was enjoyed by all and the shots of beer or cider were very welcome celebratory drinks! The staff at Draughts seemed to be very amused by the game too!

We had agreed that this game did not count towards the official results of the day (since it is not an official game), but the final honours were taken by Halfling who scored a nice round 60 points with his cider-filled meeple glasses.

Online JT Atomico

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Re: Carcassonne Games Marathon: July 2nd in London
« Reply #80 on: July 10, 2016, 01:51:04 PM »
Results & Statistics

So, that's it! All 19 games as they happened. A reminder again that you can watch a time-lapse of the whole day here: Carcathon

Below is the final results table from the day (does not include The Adults Of Carcassonne). We agreed beforehand that the ranking would work like a medals table, so simply sorted by number of wins, then by second places, third places, fourth places and finally tie-break on total points scored if necessary.

RANKPLAYERWINS |2NDS |3RDS |4THS |POINTS
1st:green-meeple:JT Atomico
12
2
2
3
(1661)
2nd:blue-meeple:Curt194
6
2
7
4
(1396)
3rd:yellow-meeple:Halfling
5
10
2
2
(1500)
4th:red-meeple:jungleboy
2
5
6
6
(1401)

My 7 game winning streak in the middle of the day went a long way to securing top ranking for me. I expect it helped a lot that I was the one who owned all of the games, had spent the previous week studying and compiling the rules, and had played almost all of the games at least once before!

It is interesting that Curt194 managed to take second place on the rankings despite scoring the fewest points over the course of the day. Winning games is what counts though and he did that, in particular bookending the day by sharing a win in the first game and winning the last individual game (Over Hill and Dale).

Halfling's amazing haul of 10 second place finishes shows just how consistent he was across the day - a few points here or there could have made the difference. It is also notable that he only came 4th twice, less than any other player. His total points score of exactly 1500 points is also quite satisfying!

Unfortunately for jungleboy, it wasn't the best day of his Carcassonne career. The results table is certainly not a fair reflection of his play and contributon during the day. Still, he managed a couple of wins during the day and ended up with more total points than Curt194 in second place.

Some final statistics from the day:
  • Tiles played: 1272 (+130 cards, +9 dice)
  • Points scored: 5656
  • Points per game: 297.7
  • Points per tile: 3.82 (excludes non-tile games)
  • Meeples and other figures: 500
  • Cups of tea: 8
« Last Edit: July 10, 2016, 02:05:18 PM by JT Atomico »

Online JT Atomico

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Re: Carcassonne Games Marathon: July 2nd in London
« Reply #81 on: July 10, 2016, 02:01:29 PM »
Final Thoughts

I had an absolutely fantastic day playing through all of these many Carcassonne variants and spin-offs! Combined with my game of Mega Carcassonne ealier in the year, I have now played with almost every official Carcassonne tile, barring a handful of mini expansions that are particularly new or for a spin-off that I haven't played much.

I thought that Draughts was a really good venue for it. They were very accomodating to us during the day, especially making exceptions to their normal weekend rules of not taking bookings and having a four hour session limit. The food was pretty good too!

I was quite pleased with how the timelapse video came out, but the picture quality was a little underwhelming by the time it was processed. I think if (when?) we do this again I will try and write my only little timelapse program that can also be used to track the score to show the points and overall result table live on the stream. (No promises!)

So, the obvious question is what do we next?

Personally I would be very keen to do this again at some stage, perhaps after the next installment of the "Around The World" series comes out later in the year.

Or perhaps we could turn it in to a weekend with the goal of playing every tile, including all of the expansions to all of the games. We would need most of a day to play Mega Carcassonne and another to do the spin-offs!

One other option might be a campaign style game that a friend of mine has been planning which he is calling Carcassonne Galactica. Without going in to too much detail, it is a play-through of the Star Wars edition but with every planet being decided by playing a full game of an appropriate spin-off (e.g. the Winter Edition for the ice planet of Hoth). It might also be a good way of getting all the spin-offs out of their boxes again.

That is for another time though. I will wrap up this very long series of posts by just saying thank you again to Halfling for coming up with the idea, and to him, jungleboy and Curt194 for making it such a great day. I loved it! :green-meeple:

I hope we will have another day like this before too long. But for now the games, having all been played, are back on the shelf:

« Last Edit: July 10, 2016, 03:19:26 PM by JT Atomico »

Offline Halfling

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Re: Carcassonne Games Marathon: July 2nd in London
« Reply #82 on: July 10, 2016, 03:00:49 PM »
These games are not filed/stacked in order - shoddy!

A great write up. I am still talking about the day to anyone who will listen.

I would like to add the 10 year anniversary edition to the next car carcathon because it exists and I have not played it and it is full of phantom teachers (ish).  Has anyone played all 20 versions, and is there a 'Carcassonne 20' club? Maybe that's a new thread.
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Online JT Atomico

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Re: Carcassonne Games Marathon: July 2nd in London
« Reply #83 on: July 10, 2016, 03:22:48 PM »
These games are not filed/stacked in order - shoddy!

Well they mostly are actually! Except for the ones on the top that don't come in a normal rectangular box so could not be put in the middle of the stack.

I would like to add the 10 year anniversary edition to the next car carcathon because it exists and I have not played it and it is full of phantom teachers (ish).

I have this too if needs be. :)


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