Author Topic: Catapults, crop circles and robbers (Read 2454 times)

Curt194 · « **on:** May 21, 2015, 02:39:41 PM »

So I recently made a purchase of the catapult, mostly to make my collection complete, but I figured I'd paid for a copy so I may as well give the expansion a go. I invited a couple of Carcassonne loving friends over as they were also intrigued to try the expansion out and we dove in with low expectations.

Surprisingly, we all really enjoyed the session. We had a couple of other expansions in there, the flying machine, German castles, Crop circles and the robbers (it was our first time playing with the robbers well).

I pulled a couple of catapult tiles early on, as the board wasn't very big I went for target and also catch rounds. Catch we decided was a bit of a cop out as it doesn't involve the board in any way and we quickly learnt that placing the token halfway down the catapult, instead of at the top makes for better aiming. As the game progressed I realised I'd been ignoring farms too much and my opponents were going to take the game from me if I didn't do something so I worked on joining some farmers onto the main field but I was already three down at this point.

That is until I pulled another catapult tile. I went for seduction and was successful in swapping one of my opponents farmers for my big maple. Suddenly with the earlier farmers I'd joined on to the field I was in with a chance of having a majority. The next few catapult tiles were drawn by my opponents and watching them deliberate over whether to risk knockout or seduction to take the field back from me was really fun. Couple this with a crop circle meaning my opponents added big meeples to the field as well and the game got very tense.

This also lead to a funny situation where a city me and one other player had been fighting over suddenly went to the control of the third player thanks to some seduction tokens. In the end I managed to get a majority for the farms and won the game.

I was really lucky with a couple of catapult throws but we actually found the decision making for which round to play surprisingly tactical (none of us really wanted catch) and really had fun with the game, even if it was a little random.

It's not something I'd add to every game, but I actually think we will play with it again. I feel we are in a minority there though!

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=1775.0

Guy · « **Reply #1 on:** May 21, 2015, 10:35:52 PM »

Excellent report. Some great details in there. I had never really thought of the crop circles as being an expansion which could balance out the removal of followers (I guess because the crop circles themselves could also be used in that way.

My dislike of the catapult stems only from the poor quality of the catapult itself. If the catapult was better I'd probably play it more because the knockout and seduction tokens are great fun tactically.

Curt194 · « **Reply #2 on:** May 26, 2015, 02:23:40 PM »

Thanks

I do understand peoples frustration with the actual catapult but I find the crudeness part of the charm. I can understand the unpredictability as something frustrating but I sort of enjoy that aspect of it.

I was actually quite surprised at the crop circle usage. I think it works best if you're playing with big followers or some other special followers.