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Messages - CarcAddict

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General / Re: Worst Carcassonne expansion to date
« on: January 10, 2019, 08:01:51 AM »
3. Carcassonne Minis - I more or less consider them as one big expansion. To me most of the mechanics were not fun, not well balanced and added a lot of fiddlines for very little benefit. The only good part were Crop Circles.

Maybe you don't like them because you consider them as one big expansion? Despite the fact that they all come in the same Big Box that's not really how they're designed to be played. I can't speak too favourably of Messengers or Robbers as I've never really played them, but Fliers, Mage & Witch and Goldmines in particular are great little expansions in their own right in terms of how they change the game and the tactics required to take advantage of them as much as possible.



Definitely that's probably the reason, as mentioned I score them as a  whole, especially considering there are Crop Circles and features distribution which ties them together. If scored separately my opinions are more like this:


Crop Circles - Very Good

Mage and Witch - Rather Good

Gold Mines - Mediocre

Ferries - Mediocre

Flyers - Rather Bad

Robbers - Awful

Messengers - Awful

So if considered separately, the only Minis which would make my worst list would be Messengers and Robbers.
 
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I agree that the disruption to the flow of the game caused by bazaars is a weakness here, but I don't think bridges or castles are poorly designed, convoluted or ugly. I actually think the bridges look pretty cool and I like the castle tokens too. Again, they provide the players with extra options that they didn't have before and introduce new challenges/ risks to be considered and evaluated. Don't underestimate the impact that these can have in games of Carcassonne; it's what expansions do!

Extra points are nice, but I dislike expansions which make features easier to complete or steal. Bridges makes joining fields to easy to my taste, they also seem to be overpowered with Barns.
Castles were nice in theory, but in practice they were difficult to track and we had too many situations were we forgot to score them and that was difficult to backtrack and overall lowered fun of  the game.

In the end it is really nice to see different opinions and points of view. It helps to get a better perspective and maybe revisit some expansions which weren't that hot in the first place.

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General / Re: Worst Carcassonne expansion to date
« on: January 07, 2019, 05:29:33 AM »

3. Carcassonne Minis - I more or less consider them as one big expansion. To me most of the mechanics were not fun, not well balanced and added a lot of fiddlines for very little benefit. The only good part were Crop Circles.


Wow really?  I agree with everything else you said, but Mage & Witch, the Flyers, and The Ferries get more play at my house than Inns & Cathedrals.

For me it is mostly balance reasons for those 3 and the fact that minis mix poorly with 2 evergreen expansions T&B and I&C:

Mage and Witch - Simply too many points out of nowhere, Mage is like a free Cathedral for you city but without drawbacks. When combined with T&B Builder, you can sometimes complete the city in the same turn. In 3+ players games there is very little incentive to use Witch, but if situation arises it is truly brutal and chances of removing it are slim.

Flyers - Too easy to steal big cities very easily, with minimal drawback, especialy when using Big Follower from I&C.

The Ferries - Looks a quite innocent at first, but when you combine it with Inn tiles from I&C the craziness start. Scoring the same road network with Inn multiple times can give ridiculous points.

Gold Mines - Too unintuitive distribution and scoring of gold.

Robbers - Ads a lot of fiddlines to the scoring board without much benefit as the Robber can be very easily played around

Depeches - Ads a lot of fiddlines to the scoring board, the bonus tiles are easy to achieve they they are again extra points out of nowhere.


I have to say there are definatelly better and worse ones here, but they are encourage to be played together (excepted of Depeches) as playing with only some of them will break the balance between number of road/city/cloister tiles. So in the end I eveluate them as whole.


Maybe I had too much expansions for them. I was really hyped about them when thay were announced, but when I actually played with them I was very, very dissappointed. Also, the fact that you had to get all of them for the complete set of Crop Circles was bummer. In the end Minis were one of the reasons why I lost interest in Carcassonne for few years.

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General / Re: Worst Carcassonne expansion to date
« on: January 07, 2019, 04:17:52 AM »
I will just focus on major releases, there are simply too many horrible niche mini-expansions. So my list of the worst ones:

1. Catapult - Why, simply why...


2. Wheel of Fortune - I understand they wanted to make roads more interesting, but the incentive to actually use the wheel is minimal. Having a meeple stuck on the wheel is more of a hindrance than benefit.


3. Carcassonne Minis - I more or less consider them as one big expansion. To me most of the mechanics were not fun, not well balanced and added a lot of fiddlines for very little benefit. The only good part were Crop Circles.


4.Bridges, Castles and Bazaars - Poor design x3. None of the modules made much sense from design standpoint. Castles - easy to miss the scoring moment, difficult backtrack. Bridges - ugly as hell, breaks balance by making joining fields too easy, ridiculous with Barns. Bazaars - breaks a game flow for a bizarre and unintuitive auction, absolutely awful.


5. Count, King and Robber - a collection of mini-expansions and as typical for mini-expansion, generally poor design everywhere. River II - this one is ok, but doesn't add much above the regular River, only interesting if you play with Princess and Dragon. Count - absolute nightmare to play with, changes game so much it doesn't feel Carc anymore + very exploitable interactions with other expansions. Cult - too fiddly rules for very little benefit, in short it should be: "shrine cannot ever be next to cloister", because generally that's what it boils down to. King & Robber - difficult to track, but probably ok in smaller games.

4
Due to financial difficulties I have to sell one of my copies of Die Katharer expansions.

I put it on ebay:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/331729088871?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Auction is now open only for people from EU, but if you are interested and live outside EU, please contact me and we can discuss shipping options.

5
There are still some stilted phrases, and I'm not really familiar with Catan - but it seems to make sense.

Yes, this translation is enough to understand the rules.

Yes, that's great. Thanks a lot!

6
It's a bit off-topic, but could someone post the pictures and rules for Settlers of Catan Darmstadt expansion?

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General / Re: The Pig – Element of the Week #3
« on: September 27, 2014, 12:34:06 PM »
I think that interaction of pig and barn has broken game too much. Really, all other aspect lost value, it was all about joining fields with barns, especially in larger games with multiple expansions.

That's why I hope that future expansions for Carcassone II will be a bit more well tought and designed to integrate with eath other without breaking the game or changing it drastically.

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News and Events / Re: Carcassonne - new Edition - Is that true?
« on: September 27, 2014, 12:29:54 PM »
I loved old edition, had many expansions for it.

But unfortunatelly I've lost all my collection to a dishonest (ex)friend.

Now buying everything back and catching up with new and limited expansions looks like overwhelming task (How could I buyback Tunnels ans Cult, Siege and Creativity for reasonable price ?).

I look forward to new edition as a fresh start and new life of Carcassonne for me.

I really love that new base game includes features that could be used by future expansions (gardens, piggsty, cottages and towers ine cities). This was always the problem with "old" Carcassone, no matter how many expansions you added, you still had those 72 boring tiles from base game :(.

New art looks good and I feel it might be a change for a better. I hope that future expansion will be more playtested and interact better with each other.

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General / Any news about Corn Circles I availability?
« on: March 03, 2013, 08:46:35 AM »
Are there any information about when this expansion will be available again, if ever?

I see that some forum members have good contact with HiG, so maybe you could ask if they have any plans to reprint it:)

Thanks in advance!

10
Official Rules / Re: How to combine Robbers and Messages minis?
« on: March 03, 2013, 08:41:25 AM »
Thanks for your replies. So as I thought they don't work so well together. I was thinking about passing on Messages (as they don't add any landscape tiles) but  I'll propably buy all of them just to get complete set of Corn Circles!

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Official Rules / Re: ZMG vs RGG Rule Booklets
« on: March 03, 2013, 08:37:10 AM »
At least Polish edition by Mindok fixed this issue :). They traslated it into:

"Count, King and River".

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Official Rules / How to combine Robbers and Messages minis?
« on: February 26, 2013, 02:03:15 PM »
Hello I'm new here but I've been a follower of the site for some time.

After some break from Carcassonne, I want to bring some new life to the game. I strongly consider buying collection of minis, as they look like decent expansion ( at least when compared to previous expansions, minis and promos). Only think that bothers me is how to effectively combine Robbers and Messages.

After reading rules it looks like Messages and second follower on score board almost completely removes ant potential benefit of robbers. Player with robber over his head will just use second follower until he could score something very small and get rid of robber with minimal loss.

What's your opinion on the matter? Do I understand rules correctly?

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