Carcassonne Central

Carc Central Community => Reviews & Session Reports => Topic started by: danisthirty on November 02, 2014, 03:16:56 PM

Title: First game with new artwork
Post by: danisthirty on November 02, 2014, 03:16:56 PM
So, my wife and I had our first game of Carcassonne using the new ("2.0") artwork this evening.

It wasn't exactly a classic game, and we didn't use the river either, but I wanted to share the photo below all the same:

(http://www.dan.tehill.net/first_game_2_0-1.jpg)

The new artwork is definitely growing on me, and I'm not just saying that because I won (despite losing the big city by 2 blue knights against 3 red knights)!

Final scores were  :blue-meeple: 129 - 107  :red-meeple: (in my favour - my farmers made all the difference).
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: Darwin on November 02, 2014, 04:11:25 PM
Sorry, but the new artwork is not growing on me. The blue towers on the wall I can accept, but the red gravel in the cities and the pale city-walls insults’ my eyes. :'(

I am looking forward to receive some real old artwork in the mail one of these days - Hunters & Gatherers. And I already have the expansion ;D
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: Paul on November 02, 2014, 06:01:12 PM
The roads looks great. Definately an improvement.

The city tiles, however, look dreadful. Reminds me of pizza and vomit. Maybe they look great watching them for real but they do not seem to be photo friendly.
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: danisthirty on November 03, 2014, 04:27:37 AM
The roads looks great. Definately an improvement.

The city tiles, however, look dreadful. Reminds me of pizza and vomit. Maybe they look great watching them for real but they do not seem to be photo friendly.

vomit pizza? Mmm...  :P
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: Darwin on November 03, 2014, 07:02:37 AM
More important than the new artwork - did you play with the new abbot? Did you like it? How did I work?
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: danisthirty on November 03, 2014, 08:13:49 AM
More important than the new artwork - did you play with the new abbot? Did you like it? How did I work?

Sorry but we didn’t play using the Abbots as it was late and my wife wanted to keep things simple. We didn’t even use the river! Hopefully we’ll get to play a full game soon but I mostly wanted to play with the new artwork just to see how I felt about it as the landscape developed. I think most of my base-game only games will be played using these tiles from now on...
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: jungleboy on November 03, 2014, 10:08:40 AM
First I didn't like the new edition artwork when I saw the promotional photo, then I liked it when I saw the pictures posted on CarcF, now I don't like it again. And today I think I finally put my finger on why I don't like it.

I think the artwork and especially the detail on the individual tiles is beautiful. I have one of them as my iPhone home screen wallpaper. I even like the blue roofs. I haven't seen a close-up of the cloisters but I think they look quite cool too.

But for some reason when the tiles are put together I think it looks awful. Somehow the colours just don't interact well with each other on a larger scale. I think vomit pizza is a perfect description!
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: danisthirty on November 03, 2014, 11:40:28 AM
I kind of see what you mean jungleboy. Although each tile is beautifully illustrated there is definitely something different and almost unsettling about how a finished game looks in terms of the landscape.

The fields look less like grass and more like some sort of green lava, kind of like the surface of a liquid. And the cities look a bit like blobs of something floating on the liquid. It is hard to put into words really, but this certainly looks a lot less like a map of something than finished games played with the original artwork used to.
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: Whaleyland on November 03, 2014, 04:36:23 PM
danisthirty, I got a request: can you make a mixed map of old and new tiles to show how well they actually interact? I know it's been done before, but it would be good to see it in your lighting. Thanks!

Also, my partner said that the cities look like continents or islands on a sea of green. I don't think that is the intention HiG is looking for. I don't like the art of the cities at all. I don't mind the blue domes, but the inside is so dark and ugly and the walls are so white and blah.
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: kettlefish on November 04, 2014, 12:14:07 AM
I don't have the new Edition and I am happy without the new one.
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: Whaleyland on November 04, 2014, 01:51:19 AM
I don't have the new Edition and I am happy without the new one.
I think it's a good sign for the community that you're also against the new edition. I hope it is a stand-alone one-off like the Settlers of Catan Gallery Edition. I just don't think people will want this version over the old one if given a choice.
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: danisthirty on November 04, 2014, 01:56:03 AM
danisthirty, I got a request: can you make a mixed map of old and new tiles to show how well they actually interact? I know it's been done before, but it would be good to see it in your lighting.

New mixed with old (quarters):
(http://www.dan.tehill.net/new_vs_old_quarters.jpg)


New mixed with old (stripes):
(http://www.dan.tehill.net/new_vs_old_stripes2.jpg)


I was going to do a chequered one but I ran out of time. Instead, I'll see if I can persuade my wife to play a double-base game this evening and will mix the tiles up in a bag. Will take a photo of the resulting landscape and post it here.
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: Whaleyland on November 04, 2014, 02:37:55 AM
Sounds great. The mixed board doesn't look as bad as I thought it would and it does highlight the much more populated cities. I assume that the larger farms in the countryside are intended for use in a future expansions. If so, it is a smart forward-thinking move that should have been present in the original printed game. All the same, I still am rooting for the original.
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: Rosco on November 04, 2014, 02:41:13 AM
Personally, I am not keen on the new art, but the mixed game looks no different than a game with some of the fan expansions or indeed some of the official expansions which have poorer colour consistency.
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: Jéré on November 04, 2014, 02:46:56 AM
Maybe a more realistic scenario would be to try the New Edition with one or two major expansions? I'd be curious to see that.

Thanks for sharing your experiments, like a mad scientist mixing potentially explosive elements! :)

EDIT: Just noticed the new city tiles are super crowded, like Carcassonne had a baby boom between the 2 editions or something...
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: danisthirty on November 04, 2014, 03:04:05 AM
The mixed board doesn't look as bad as I thought it would and it does highlight the much more populated cities.

I was quite surprised by how well the tiles went together actually. I thought it would be far more obvious, and somewhat hideous, but I actually quite like the one that I did in stripes as it looks as though the fields have had a lawn-mower going over them!

I assume that the larger farms in the countryside are intended for use in a future expansions. If so, it is a smart forward-thinking move that should have been present in the original printed game.

Indeed. But who could have predicted how successful Carcassonne was going to become in order to see the necessity of planning ahead in this way?

Maybe a more realistic scenario would be to try the New Edition with one or two major expansions? I'd be curious to see that.

Another good idea! But something that will have to wait until the weekend I’m afraid purely because of how long expanded games tend to take. A game using just the basic tiles can take us as little as 15 minutes to complete although it’s usually closer to 20. Even with just I & C + T & B the game-time would increase to over an hour. With two sets of base tiles I expect the game will be 35 – 40 minutes long.
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: Paul on November 04, 2014, 03:33:26 AM
danisthirty, I got a request: can you make a mixed map of old and new tiles to show how well they actually interact? I know it's been done before, but it would be good to see it in your lighting.

New mixed with old (quarters):
(http://www.dan.tehill.net/new_vs_old_quarters.jpg)


New mixed with old (stripes):
(http://www.dan.tehill.net/new_vs_old_stripes2.jpg)


I was going to do a chequered one but I ran out of time. Instead, I'll see if I can persuade my wife to play a double-base game this evening and will mix the tiles up in a bag. Will take a photo of the resulting landscape and post it here.

Now that I see the new art up close, I must withdraw my previous statement of how 'pukative' they looked. They look rather nice and I do like it in general. In a way, it's like computers, forcing the base (computer / board game) to demand higher resolution to be able to enjoy much cooler graphics.
  Carcassonne does the same, demanding higher resolution of pictures so people don't get nauseous.  ;)

I also like the grass now that I've had a chance to see it in much closer detail. In a way, that's how real grass is in nature unattended by man. As described in earlier post on this thread by others, it looks like a sea of grass and that is how grass should be.

7 seconds of grass stock photo:  :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c73BsSHOCwQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c73BsSHOCwQ)

 :meeple:
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: jungleboy on November 04, 2014, 01:22:09 PM
The mixed board doesn't look as bad as I thought it would and it does highlight the much more populated cities.

I agree that it doesn't look as bad as I thought but I still think it's too bad for me to ever considering playing them both together, plus I think it would look worse without such a neat division of tiles into quarters or strips.

I assume that the larger farms in the countryside are intended for use in a future expansions.

What do you mean by larger farms?

Personally, I am not keen on the new art, but the mixed game looks no different than a game with some of the fan expansions or indeed some of the official expansions which have poorer colour consistency.

I don't play with fan expansions above all for that reason. And the poor colour consistency in some Spielbox expansions (especially the Cathars and Plague) will never stop bothering me (re: the Cathars, that's why I'm so happy to have the Besiegers now, because it goes better with the other tiles). So a mixed game with new and old art is a no-go for me. The art is basically the biggest reason I like the game, so if you mess with that, you mess with my enjoyment :)
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: coyote on November 05, 2014, 06:15:07 AM
I assume that the larger farms in the countryside are intended for use in a future expansions.

What do you mean by larger farms?
I think he's meaning the larger farmhouses. (Which, I just noticed, do appear much larger than, say, the houses inside the city tiles..)
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: Whaleyland on November 05, 2014, 11:21:12 AM
I assume that the larger farms in the countryside are intended for use in a future expansions.

What do you mean by larger farms?
I think he's meaning the larger farmhouses. (Which, I just noticed, do appear much larger than, say, the houses inside the city tiles..)
Yes, that's what I mean. I was going to reply earlier but my iPad was not letting me edit the post properly. FarmHOUSE is definitely what I mean.
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: danisthirty on November 05, 2014, 03:51:43 PM
Hey, so we finally got round to having our 144 tile double base game! Screenshots below:

Game played with 72 tiles from both the old and the new Carcassonne sets (mixed together):
(http://www.dan.tehill.net/thechards/doublebasegame_1.jpg)

(http://www.dan.tehill.net/doublebasegame_2.jpg)

(http://www.dan.tehill.net/doublebasegame_3.jpg)

(quality not so great as these photos were taken in quite low light with a phone camera)

Final scores were much closer than I realised. I won by just 3 points!  :blue-meeple: 226 vs 223  :red-meeple:

Overall it was definitely noticeable that the two different styles of art had been mixed together but this was less distracting than I thought it would be and I quite enjoyed the game, and looking at the landscape map afterwards. The roads are much more windy in the new box but when mixed with the old artwork this makes the roads look a lot more interesting, as do the different shades of green for the fields.

The worst thing that I observed in this game was the cccc tile from the old game which really looked out of place surrounded by city tiles from the new game. Apart from this the cities were OK but not so great really.
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: meepleater on November 05, 2014, 05:25:21 PM
Oddly enough I actually think the mixture of old and new artwork looks better than the new artwork on its own...
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: Fritz_Spinne on November 05, 2014, 09:39:00 PM
the biggest difference is the dark ground of the cities of the new edition, this is really bugging.
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: danisthirty on November 06, 2014, 05:12:04 AM
the biggest difference is the dark ground of the cities of the new edition, this is really bugging.

Agreed!
Title: Re: First game with new artwork
Post by: Darwin on November 06, 2014, 09:05:05 AM
I am still looking forward to a review of a game with the new abbot, danisthirty  ;)