Author Topic: Tower and Builder, and Shepherd questions  (Read 11712 times)

Offline MrNumbers

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Tower and Builder, and Shepherd questions
« on: May 26, 2014, 01:54:58 PM »
Last Friday we had a game night, and just hours (!) before the event I have received at the Post my copy of "Sheep and Hills"! Great expansion that everyone enjoyed right from the start! During the game night we had some situations, that I wanted to discuss:
1. Imagine that you have situation like this (see picture 1) (bad angle, but there is yellow follower with a builder). Yellow player takes a tile, extends his city (with this receiving a right to take one more tile), and as his "move the wood" action he capture his own follower from this city, which automatically pull out his builder from the city. As he owned the right for a second tile before, he takes another tile, places it to the city in question and claims it again (but now in much safer place)! Logical question: does yellow allowed to do such combination? Formally rules for builder say: "Whenever the player places a tile that extends the road or city which includes their builder, they may take a double turn" (emphasis - mine). But at the end of the first part of the move there are no builder in play.

2. Imagine that you have placed a shepherd and started to extend your field, move by move. But suddenly someone (not you) has completely closed the area, where your shepherd is! (see picture 2, black has placed a tile with a road and a flier symbol, completing the road and shutting down the shepherd area). According to the rules for the shepherd, he can "herd the flock into the stable" by extending a field containing his shepherd by placement of a new tile. Since it is now impossible, does that mean that yellow shepherd is stuck on that field till the end of the game?

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Offline Paul

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Re: Tower and Builder, and Shepherd questions
« Reply #1 on: May 26, 2014, 02:13:25 PM »
1. Since there is no mention of the builder has to be in play in order for the effect to take place, it's safe to say (and this is how we play) you can take a double turn.
  Surely we all completed a city or road with a builder (going back to stock pile) and then taken another turn while no builder present on the board.

2. Not played with the Shepherd yet.  O0

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Offline Carcking

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Re: Tower and Builder, and Shepherd questions
« Reply #2 on: May 27, 2014, 12:46:30 PM »
1. ... Yellow player takes a tile, extends his city (with this receiving a right to take one more tile), and as his "move the wood" action he capture his own follower from this city, which automatically pull out his builder from the city. As he owned the right for a second tile before, he takes another tile, places it to the city in question and claims it again (but now in much safer place)! Logical question: does yellow allowed to do such combination? Formally rules for builder say: "Whenever the player places a tile that extends the road or city which includes their builder, they may take a double turn" (emphasis - mine). But at the end of the first part of the move there are no builder in play.

This play appears to be perfectly legal to me. It's a gamble, but within the rules. It would be very similar to extending a feature containing your builder and completing it with the same tile. You still get your extended builder play even though you now don't have a builder on the board.

2. Imagine that you have placed a shepherd and started to extend your field, move by move. But suddenly someone (not you) has completely closed the area, where your shepherd is! (see picture 2, black has placed a tile with a road and a flier symbol, completing the road and shutting down the shepherd area). According to the rules for the shepherd, he can "herd the flock into the stable" by extending a field containing his shepherd by placement of a new tile. Since it is now impossible, does that mean that yellow shepherd is stuck on that field till the end of the game?

Unfortunately, this is not addressed in the rules (or at least in the English translation of the rules). Another example of partially fulfilled rules being released in official expansions.

Until we have an official word, we'll have to house-rule that the shepherd is allowed to score. The alternative to that is he is trapped for the game. I would bet on the former, not the latter, as being in the spirit of the expansion.
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Offline Fritz_Spinne

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Re: Tower and Builder, and Shepherd questions
« Reply #3 on: May 27, 2014, 01:42:05 PM »
The rules are very clear: Your shepherd only can score if you yourself extend the field he is on (or another player with a shepherd on the same field). So when the shepherd is trapped there will be no scoring. In fact this feels not good especially when playing with 4 to 6 players. I think a possible house rule should be: If any player extends and closes a field with one or more shepherds, the sheep are scored no matter what player's shepherd it is.

Offline Carcking

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Re: Tower and Builder, and Shepherd questions
« Reply #4 on: May 27, 2014, 02:54:53 PM »
The rules are very clear: Your shepherd only can score if you yourself extend the field he is on...

In light of the overall quality of these rules (and expansion rules lately) I would not deem these rules very clear...but rather omissive. This and other possible scenarios of game play are meerly not addressed. It's difficult to rule such key questions based on the extrapolation of rules that are incomplete. The best we can do is to try to find the "spirit" of the expansion and house-rule from there.
« Last Edit: May 27, 2014, 03:03:51 PM by Carcking »

Offline MrNumbers

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Re: Tower and Builder, and Shepherd questions
« Reply #5 on: May 28, 2014, 12:54:38 AM »
1. I haven't seen this situation from such angle: of course, if you can finish a feature with a builder, remove it and take another tile, my described situation now looks completely legal (and, for the record, we allowed yellow player to do so).

2. If strictly follow the rules, Fritz_Spinne is right: the shepherd is trapped, and exactly that way we played our 4-player game. I am not a "house-rule-guy", I prefer to stick to the official rules, so until further official clarification this will stay as it is. It will be additional thing to watch for: not only ordinary follower can be trapped :D

P.S. The only house rule I support, is tie-breaking the hills. I agree with the most community people that this is the only logical way to be.

Offline obervet

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Re: Tower and Builder, and Shepherd questions
« Reply #6 on: May 28, 2014, 05:41:03 AM »
2. Imagine that you have placed a shepherd and started to extend your field, move by move. But suddenly someone (not you) has completely closed the area, where your shepherd is! (see picture 2, black has placed a tile with a road and a flier symbol, completing the road and shutting down the shepherd area). According to the rules for the shepherd, he can "herd the flock into the stable" by extending a field containing his shepherd by placement of a new tile. Since it is now impossible, does that mean that yellow shepherd is stuck on that field till the end of the game?

I would play it as the rule states. If the shepherd is trapped, he can't cash in his sheep because he can't add to his field. That's similar to a farmer who gets trapped. To me this promotes defense by the other players and forces more thought into the decision to put down a shepherd -- it's not just "I can't place a follower, so I might as well plop down my shepherd." And I'm okay with that.

Offline obervet

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Re: Tower and Builder, and Shepherd questions
« Reply #7 on: May 28, 2014, 05:45:04 AM »
1. ... Yellow player takes a tile, extends his city (with this receiving a right to take one more tile), and as his "move the wood" action he capture his own follower from this city, which automatically pull out his builder from the city. As he owned the right for a second tile before, he takes another tile, places it to the city in question and claims it again (but now in much safer place)! Logical question: does yellow allowed to do such combination? Formally rules for builder say: "Whenever the player places a tile that extends the road or city which includes their builder, they may take a double turn" (emphasis - mine). But at the end of the first part of the move there are no builder in play.

This play appears to be perfectly legal to me. It's a gamble, but within the rules. It would be very similar to extending a feature containing your builder and completing it with the same tile. You still get your extended builder play even though you now don't have a builder on the board.

I agree with this. The trigger is the placement of the tile to extend the builder's city or road. Once the tile has been placed, that condition has been triggered, so the double turn will happen. Further things happening to the figures shouldn't have any bearing on the double turn. After all, if that tile completed the city, you would score the city and remove the follower and builder before the double turn, but you would still claim the double turn even though the builder was no longer present.

Offline Carcking

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Re: Tower and Builder, and Shepherd questions
« Reply #8 on: May 28, 2014, 11:23:28 AM »
2. If strictly follow the rules, Fritz_Spinne is right: the shepherd is trapped, and exactly that way we played our 4-player game. I am not a "house-rule-guy", I prefer to stick to the official rules, so until further official clarification this will stay as it is. It will be additional thing to watch for: not only ordinary follower can be trapped :D

Yes, no doubt Fritz_Spinne is right, given the information we have.

My point though is that it is an arbitrary burden on the player to strictly enforce a rule set that are already known to have omissions on other key questions. For all we know they simply forgot to address the condition of a trapped Shepherd - that is safe to believe if only based on the fact that they actually did fail to address it. To strictly enforce a rule then concerning that condition you have to assume they left it off by choice so that it would fall by default to being covered by other game mechanics already in play.

I would reason that, if not addressed in the rules we have, that condition is not covered by other mechanics already in play by default. As we know, if it was a Farmer trapped on a farm then yes, he would be trapped. The Shepherd is not a Farmer though. He is not even a follower. And the Shepherd mechanic allows for in-game scoring. These are all different from the Farmer. That, along with the overall quality of the rules, and the unexpected passive approach to Hill majority by clarification, is enough for me to say I would not necessarily rule by default...certainly not strictly.

Recent rules questions and clarifications have proven that conditions omitted from the rules are actually mistakes. I am not keen on letting arbitrary mistakes guide and shape game play.


Offline MrNumbers

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Re: Tower and Builder, and Shepherd questions
« Reply #9 on: May 28, 2014, 11:33:59 AM »
BTW, in "Carcassonne: South Seas" the fisherman can take the fish fulfilling one of the two conditions: placing a boat to corresponding part of the sea, or closing the sea area.

Offline ny1050220

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Re: Tower and Builder, and Shepherd questions
« Reply #10 on: July 07, 2014, 11:34:29 AM »
I don't think you can capture your own followers to gamble this way. The rule of the Tower reads "Whenever a player places a tower piece, he may immediately take one of his opponents
« Last Edit: July 07, 2014, 11:37:03 AM by ny1050220, Reason: original post got cut off »

Offline kettlefish

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Re: Tower and Builder, and Shepherd questions
« Reply #11 on: July 07, 2014, 11:53:11 AM »
ny1050220,
welcome to the CarcC forums.

Some of the special signs don't work - that is the reason why some parts of your posting get lost.


Offline kettlefish

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Re: Tower and Builder, and Shepherd questions
« Reply #12 on: July 07, 2014, 12:04:28 PM »
The tower can also capture an own follower.

see the CAR v7.0-2  - pages 65-66


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