Hello.
My name's James, incredibly I won the tournament at UKGamesExpo. Thanks to Dan for giving me the heads up about this forum.
I only started playing Carcassonne two years ago - in fact it was at Expo in 2013 (my first) that one of the PlayTest guys - Dave - suggested it'd be something I'd like. I bought a copy of the base game almost immediately (because I trust Dave) and, what do you know, he was right.
I enjoyed playing the game over the following 12 months with my wife (who usually beats me) (at Carcassonne) and my Dad (who doesn't), and I introduced it to some non-gaming friends, who all seemed to like it. I also wasted hours and hours playing on the iPhone app - and then at last year's Expo I entered the tournament expecting to come last, but having a lovely day - and in the interest of full disclosure, to try and get a story out of it for a show I was writing about board games that I eventually took to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2014, also the Leicester Comedy Festival earlier this year
http://www.chortle.co.uk/review/2015/02/15/21851/james_cook:_always_be_rolling and then finally, at UK Games Expo this weekend just gone.
In that tournament, I managed to win 2 out of 3 'group' games, but came 4th in the other - so I ended up on the second table, where I came second. So I was wrong about coming last, but right about having a lovely day - and a solid five minute 'bit'.
It was great fun - so I was eager to enter again this year.
This report will smack of false modesty, so I will say this - I reckon I'm a pretty good Carcassonne player. BUT I got a stupid amount of luck in the tournament yesterday...
Game 1. I won by 3 points.
Game 2. I won by 1 point.
Game 3. I came second. A long way behind the winner, and the only reason I beat the 3rd and 4th place players was that it was advantageous for the eventual winner to share a large city with me early on - essentially relegating the other 2 players to 3rd and 4th, while giving herself a massive lead.
After that - I was ranked #1, and went into the semis, expecting to be found out.
When the player who'd won game 3 saw that I was on the top table (and she wasn't), an understandable look of confusion was on her face.
In the semi-final, it was fairly even and it all came down to whether my opponent could draw the tile which would connect 2 fields, giving him the win. No such tile emerged in the final 3 or 4 turns - so we scored the game and it transpired that I had sneaked a victory. By 2 points. 3 wins, total net margin of victory: 6. Including Game 3 (when I'd come second) I was going into the final with a 'negative' points difference.
The other finalist, John (who I believe is a previous winner), had won his semi-final by a considerably higher margin - and with way more points, so SURELY, I thought, this was when I'd get found out.
THIS NEXT BIT MIGHT NOT MAKE ANY SENSE BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW THE TERMINOLOGY...
Quite early on in the game, a large city started to emerge - in which John went 2 - 1 up (in terms of meeples in the city), then I managed to pull it back to 2-2 as the city expanded.
He added a third, but I had position two more in adjacent tiles - all I needed was for the right tiles to emerge - before too long they did, and I was 4-3 up.
The city was now over 15 tiles big, and with only two incomplete parts of the wall. Over a couple of turns, John managed to position two extra meeples around one incomplete section, and was waiting on a tile with 3 city sides and one field side - which he drew THE VERY NEXT TURN.
He was now 5-4 up in the city, and needed only to close one wall to take 58 points!
There were around a dozen tiles left at this stage, I tried to position a meeple adjacent, but the tiles weren't coming for me - so instead I took my one remaining meeple (we were sharing a field AND a smaller incomplete city elsewhere) and tried taking as many 'bits and bobs' points as I could.
Thanks to a couple of easy-to-complete cloisters, I'd accrued a lead of around 30 points - so the game all hinged on whether John could draw the tile he needed to complete the mega-city. Had he done so he would have won, if not - the city would be worth only 28, and probably not enough for him to take the lead. Probably.
It came down to the final two tiles. John had first pick, and it wasn't the one he wanted. I took the remaining tile which would have won John the game - but also helped me complete an 8 point city - so in the end I won by 9.
But it was all on that last tile.
John was incredibly gracious in 'defeat' (although second in the tournament is till pretty good!) - as indeed was everyone else, and friendly and warm too.
So I'm off to Essen then, and I may even get another show out of it.