Author Topic: New Player, New to Forums, With a Couple Dumb Questions  (Read 8942 times)

Offline Fellwarre

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New Player, New to Forums, With a Couple Dumb Questions
« on: February 03, 2014, 02:39:39 PM »
So, I actually bought this game about two years ago, and it sat in a dusty pile of games in our closet until about 3 months ago when my friends and I went, "Let's give that one a try..."

Holy cow.  We've played it just about twice a week ever since.  We've also picked up the River II, the Count, and Builders and Traders.

We're pretty sure we know what we're doing as far as game rules, but I wanted to ask you guys a couple... behavioural questions?

I'm noticing that in my group, a lot of the group members tend to go what I JOKINGLY refer to as "Commie Style."  That is, someone will start a city, and if someone puts another city piece nearby, instead of trying to keep the city for themselves, they'll enter a 'pact' to make a bigger city.  Any time someone gets near their city, they'll get all inclusive and get the other person "in" on the city.  Lord help you if you put a big guy near the city, because the entire table will turn against you.

I've tried to convince the others that this basically makes the game A) a popularity contest, and B) it ends up that the only real competition is between those who are in the massive city.  And these cities can become SERIOULY massive.  Recently we played a game where (oddly and thankfully) every single player had one meeple in the city, and it was 19 tiles.  With a cathedral.  It was insane.  Does anyone else play with players that do this?

Also, and I apologize if this has already been discussed, possibly to death, but we were thinking of trying a rule variant.  Instead of picking and placing tiles one at a time, everyone's going to keep a 'bank' of three tiles, picking one and laying one per round.  Just thinking this might add a little 'thinking ahead' and more strategy to the game.

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=606.0

Offline Carcking

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Re: New Player, New to Forums, With a Couple Dumb Questions
« Reply #1 on: February 03, 2014, 06:22:00 PM »
Hello Fellwarre! Welcome to the CarcC forum. We're glad to have a new member on!

You've got some good questions there. In your first scenario what I would probably do is very early on in the building of the city, try to play tiles that would prevent the growth or completion of the city. If that fails I would definitely try to glom in my big guy and steal it. The "Commie" play style does rear its head in our group sometimes and a good example is when we play with the Dragon. No one wants to eat each other's meeples (I guess for fear of being attacked themselves?). So we end up playing with what I call a toothless dragon - which really just increases game time pointlessly. Of course I eat every meeple I can get to (and become the evil one). We started awarding 3 points per meeple you get to eat - just to try to create some more meeple eating.

We also generally play with holding two tiles, playing one on your turn, then drawing back up to two tiles. If we play with the Builder, the second tile you get to play on your extended turn is the second one you are holding, then you would draw back up to two tiles. We do this in an attempt to speed up the game - so you can plan your next play(s), and also don't spend time during your turn to draw (and figure out) your Builder tile mid-turn. It really does help speed up the game.

Well, welcome aboard!
I just drew the perfect tile for my MonKnighThieFarmer!

Offline danisthirty

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Re: New Player, New to Forums, With a Couple Dumb Questions
« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2014, 02:32:53 PM »
Welcome Fellwarre.

I'm quite interested in the social side of Carcassonne and I love your question! It seems like your games of Carcassonne must be very friendly if everyone is prepared to share nicely and any attempt to take all the points for yourself is frowned upon!

The games I play tend to be slightly more competitive although people do share features if there's a mutual interest for all parties. This won't stop someone from breaking any pacts that form in favour of taking the entirety of the points for themselves though which seems a bit ruthless but most of the time we all recognise that we'd all do the same to each other and that that's just part of the game!

If everyone else is concentrating on one or two big cities then hopefully it shouldn't be too tough to ensure that it can't be closed once you've got used to the tile layouts. Obviously an incomplete city with a cathedral is worthless so you could be mean and attempt to ensure that all that effort on their part doesn't win them any points in the final scoring! I guess it all depends on how much you want to win as you ought to be able to dominate the rest of the game since you won't be concentrating on the big cities so much.

Personally I prefer to keep things simple and just draw one tile at a time straight from the bag. Having three in your hand at any one time would certainly increase your chances of getting the tile you need though and Carcassonne feels so much more rewarding if you're actually able to complete things from time to time so stick with it if it's working for you!

All the best.

Offline Scott

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Re: New Player, New to Forums, With a Couple Dumb Questions
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2014, 11:55:57 AM »
I don't think I've ever seen or heard of communist-style Carcassonne before today. It has happened that all players ended up in the same city, but not intentionally. We had two cities near each other that each had two players in it, and then some clown decided to join them together. At that point, the feature becomes essentially worthless because everyone scores the same amount of points.

The group I used to play with generally had a play style of "you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone" where each player focused on their own features. If one player upset the balance, the other players would then form an alliance and create a shared city to make up the difference. This always led to close games, which was a lot of fun for us.

The draw-three variant is almost as old as the game itself. Some people even made Scrabble-style tile holders in the shape of castle walls.


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