Carcassonne Central
Carc Central Community => General => Topic started by: Halfling on May 21, 2016, 12:57:54 AM
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Carcassonne is a great tile laying game with infinite expansionability. It has been reduced to a travel version, reinvented as Carcassonne II, colour changed for the Winter Edition and had luck added in the Wheel of Fortune. But these are all different flavours with the same playability as the vanilla version we all love and return to again and again.
Variants on a theme are all very well but the tile laying concept can be taken much further, and has been by Hans im Gluck and other companies too. This series of polls is for the forum to offer thoughts on which is their preferences and why. I am only including spinoffs by Hans im Gluck through various distributers in this series.
The poll is open for 7 days and then another will be offered up for comments. It may well be that the 3rd option gets most votes but it'll be the spinoff with the majority that progresses to the next round.
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I voted for the Castle, because it's my favourite spin-off. I've written plenty elsewhere about why I like it, but most of it is related to the ingenious design of the castle wall being the scoreboard and the wall tiles that go along with it.
I was a bit underwhelmed by H&G, though I'll admit that I've only played it once. H&G seems to be a lot of people's favourite spin-off and I hear people say that it's a better version of vanilla Carcassonne than the original. But I prefer Ark of the Covenant for this. In H&G, it seems too easy to tie up the river systems and make them a non-factor. Plus I'm not interested in prehistory, so the theme isn't great for me (and as you all know, theme is more important to me than it is for most players).
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Wow! You have moved from two quizzes where I hadn't played one of the games to my two favourite spin-offs. ACK! Death! I decided to vote for Hunters & Gatherers despite my better judgment. These games are unique in that they both have expansions (although I guess most of the new games do too, now). I imagine whenever I get back to the US and can try out The Falcon, I will switch to liking The Castle more, but until then, H&G it shall be. My partner also likes H&G much more – she doesn't like the restrictive nature of The Castle as much. Oddly, I like The Scout expansion a ton, but she prefers the game without it.
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I didn't play castle yet but I read the rules and I can imagine how it works. But I love H&G :)
Only thing is I think that some tiles from the scout Expansion are a bit OP, like the agriculture one, hard to counter and was worth 50+ on my last game, there is also the shrine tile on the bonus deck which I find game breaker. But overall love the theme and design :)
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I don't mind H&G and its our second most played version but I personally much prefer The Castle.
One issue for me is so many spin offs are too similar to basic Carc. While I agree the tiles in Castle might not be as aesthetically pleasing, I really like the scoring track elements and the game play differences.
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I've voted for Hunters&Gatherers. I like the game play and the graphics.
The Castle has great wooden pieces (the wall) but the graphics are awful - so I decided not to own that spin-off game.
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Not played any of them, nor own them. But the board game community I joined a few weeks ago has both hoping I can get some someone there to play them with me. :)
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The Castle has great wooden pieces (the wall) but the graphics are awful - so I decided not to own that spin-off game.
That's the City, not the Castle.
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I voted for The Castle. I've only played it once (at the Oxford meetup) but I really enjoyed it. Lots of different strategic elements going on. I particularly like the bonus tiles on the corners which can affect your goals and how you play.
Hunters & Gatherers is also good, but the unique elements of The Castle wins it for me.
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The Castle has great wooden pieces (the wall) but the graphics are awful - so I decided not to own that spin-off game.
That's the City, not the Castle.
Thanks jungleboy...
the result is almost the same for me:
My new text:
The Castle:
It is only a 2 player game - and I don't like the graphics. - so I decided not to own that spin-off game.
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In H&G, it seems too easy to tie up the river systems and make them a non-factor.
I agree on that: if the board generates a big river network, then more likely then not all players will get both huts on that network, in particular in a 2 player game. I didn't play a lot H&G yet, but it happened quite frequently. However in my last game, there was no big river system, and all four huts ended up on individual streams, worth 9, 6, 6 and 2 points, with a final score of 12:11 in my favour, so not a big factor at all as well. (I could have easily tried to get into the 9 point system, but the other two seemed promising, that I might get more out of them, and the other player laid down the 2 point hut very late and would have probably won back the 9 point system otherwise, so it was a good choice to not go into battle for this one.)
Still, there is a bonus tile, acting like the RRRR from I&C, and this one can be particular handy to split one of the opponents huts from the "big network", and then it's good to try, to make this split up hut as value less, as possible. Worked out fine for me at least twice. Still, you should not see the huts like a barn, it is more of a small tweak.
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Definitely Hunters and Gatherers for me.
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A win for The Castle. Amazing.