Carcassonne Minis League: Fliers

[MrNumbers]

Fliers:

• MrNumbers
• Leven
• danisthirty
• thodekey
• Chooselife
• Rosco

If you are new to the competitions, please, carefully read the following tournament notes/guidance/rules before continuing.
If you already participated in some Carcassonne Central competitions before, the following rules are pretty much the same as always, except final stage (points 9-10). Let's try this format this time and see how it goes.

1. Players have already been divided into three different groups (Fliers, Goldminers, Wizards). Each player will play one game of Carcassonne against every other player in their group individually via a series of 2-player/ head-to-head games. The winner of each game will be awarded two league points whereas the loser gets nothing. If the game is tied, both players receive one league point each.

2. Players in each group will be ranked according to the number of league points they have scored. PD (Points Differential) will be used as an initial tie-breaker if there is no clear winner based on league points alone, and total combined score (from all games) will be used as a second tie-breaker if necessary. Your PD is calculated by taking the total number of points scored by you and subtracting the total number of points scored against you (combined across all games).

3. Games will be played online through the latest stable version of JCloisterZone (currently 3.4.3). Please ensure you have downloaded this and are familiar with its controls and features before the competition begins. It is also recommended that you have played at least one practice game against a live opponent in order to identify and resolve any technical problems before your first game.

4. JCloisterZone includes a number of artificial aids such as farm hints, projected scores and even tile-counting assistance. We all are busy people, and time is valuable for all of us. Many players spend decent amount of time anyway to count points for farms and uncompleted features, so with the purpose of speeding up our games, I allow to use "projected scores" feature. Other aids are still prohibited. I can't stop you from using them anyway, and won't know if you do, but I do urge you to play as fair as possible. I know it's a competition and we all want to win, but let's keep it fair, fun and friendly as far as possible...

5. Each game will include the basic tiles plus four expansions: Flier, Goldmines, Mage & Witch and Crop Circles. This is 102 tiles including the start tile, so 101 tile will be shuffled and randomly drawn for you and your opponent in turn. The starting player should be chosen at random through JCZ by selecting the "Randomize seating order" checkbox on the pre-game screen.

6. If any unexpected behaviour occurs during your game (for example if you think you have discovered a bug within JCloisterZone which may have altered the course of the game for you), please consult with your opponent and the CAR/ anyone else who happens to be in the chat room at the time to determine whether it appears to be a genuine bug. If it is, please save your game and post details of the bug along with anything else relating to how it came about on the forums. If however, you and your opponent are both happy to continue with your game despite the bug then feel free to do so, but don’t forget to mention the bug afterwards no matter how minor it may have seemed!

7. Please post a screenshot of your game, including final scores and score breakdown, back to your group thread as soon as your game is complete. It's always interesting to hear what happened during the game too, so please feel free to post any thoughts/ comments at the same time if you wish. If you're not sure how to capture/ post screenshots, please ask on the forums and either myself or someone else will explain how to do this (we're a friendly bunch!)

8. It is the players responsibility to liaise with their fellow group-members in order to find a mutually convenient time to play their game. This is expected to be done predominantly through Private Messages but feel free to use your group thread (here) too if this is easier. Please do keep any appointments you make, or at least give your opponent as much notice as possible if something occurs which prevents you from playing at the agreed time (more on the "Unwritten Rules" is available here).

9. Each of the 3 initial groups contains 6 players so the first stage of the competition will end when every player (all 18 of us) has played 5 games. At this point, the pool will split again into 3 groups of 6 depending on finishing position in the initial groups. So, the 2 top-ranked players from groups will form group F1, those who came 3rd and 4th in each group will form group F2, and 5th and 6th - group F3.

10. Play in groups F1 to F3 will constitute the second stage of the competition which will run in the same way as the first. League points, PD and total score will be reset at this point (but remembered for overall stats) so that no single player in any group has any kind of advantage. Finishing positions in groups at the second stage will determine overall rank: 1st=F1-1, 2nd=F1-2, 3rd=F1-3, 4th=F1-4, 5th=F1-5, ..., 15th=F3-3, 16th=F3-4, 17th=F3-5, 18th=F3-6.

Finally, you may find the following links helpful: Carcassonne Central IRC Chat and JCloisterZone.

Good luck everyone!

Linkback: http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=3403.0

[thodekey]

Phieeew,

Seems like there will some heavy competition amongst the Fliers!

I'm available next Tuesday evening from 20:00 CET.

Cheers!

[Chooselife]

Hi Guys,

I'll be, mostly, able to play during work hours all week. Will try to pop up on the evenings.

[danisthirty]

Good luck everyone. Really looking forward to the competition (especially since this looks to be such a tough group!)...

I'm based in the UK and the majority of my free time will be weekday evenings between 8pm and midnightish.

I will visit the chat room most evenings to see if anyone is available, but otherwise will send out some PMs.

 

[danisthirty]

No games played yet? If it helps to spur others on, Chooselife and I plan to play our match on Thursday evening after our basegame league match. It's going to be a long Carcassonne night for me! (and I can't wait)

[ARabidMeerkat]

How do I get into a competition? I've been on the forum for so long but never entered one!

[MrNumbers]

How do I get into a competition? I've been on the forum for so long but never entered one!

Before every competition there is a sign-up topic (for example, this). Participant should simply reply to such topic to enter a competition. Usually, sign-up topic is opened for 2 weeks, which is quite enough for potential participants to register.
So, just follow for new topics and reply to them opportunely

[danisthirty]

How do I get into a competition? I've been on the forum for so long but never entered one!

I'll drop you a PM the next time one starts!

[danisthirty]

I got the ball rolling this evening with a game against Chooselife. I've been lucky enough to have had a couple of practice games using these expansions against the likes of khalid and jma03 so I knew what to expect, whereas this was Chooselife's first time with this combination of tiles. This did give me a bit of an advantage but it was still a great game with a lot of fierce battles and what seemed like a fair share of luck (good and bad) for both of us...

Dan 197
Chooselife 141



The final margin was a lot bigger than I was expecting; 28 point swing in my favour from a mere 4 gold bars (10 vs. 6)!

[Leven]

Thodekey and I have just played our first game in this league.
The outcome of the game was largely affected by an unintended meeple placement by Thodekey. After drawing a crop circle tile I chose the option that each player may deploy another knight, but my opponent thought the opposite, so instead of removing one of his meeples from a relatively small incompletable city where he already had two knights, he deployed a third one, too, and he was suddenly out of meeple in the middle of the game. It was a very unfortunate moment for Thodekey, needless to say, how big advantage that lost meeple was for me, So be careful everyone with the crop circles in JCZ!

Thodekey vs Leven 113:155

[thodekey]

I learned it the hard way there. From then on, it was clear i wouldn't win this one...the only thing on my mind was damage control. Nevertheless, well played Leven! Seems like you're becoming my unbeatable opponent in those leagues.

PS: if another Flier is available tomorrow evening, let me know because after this week, i'll be on a no internet holiday for 2 weeks. 

[Leven]

MrNumbers vs Leven 120:156

A very lucky game for me. Right at the beginning I got the proper tiles to trap two of MrNumbers' meeples: a knight in the 3 pt city in the middle plus the thief on the neighboring road (my thief got there at the end of the game by a flying machine). Besides, one of the "shield" crop circles (the CCCC one) has been removed from the game because it could not be placed anywhere, which meant that MrNumbers had one less opportunity to escape his knight, and he also lost the advantage of being the starting player. Moreover, I drew all the "club" and "shield" crop circles during the game, so the two meeples remained trapped for the rest of the game. Then poor MrNumbers lost a third meeple (the knight in the 3 pt city in the west) when I drew the last CFFF tile. If he had drawn that tile then he would have gained 3 gold pieces as well. At another lucky moment I could fly into MrNumbers' longish city in the NE which included the mage, too. I needed to roll "1" with the dice, and I succeeded. In the final phase of the game MrNumbers used his remaining meeples to win the most valuable farm but I could compensate that with other farms.

Thanks for the game, MrNumbers, I wish you more luck in your forthcoming games.

[Leven]

Chooselife vs Leven 153:154 (!)

My goodness, what a game.
Both of us had our ups and downs during the game, and it could have easily ended the other way. I was really lucky to win this one by 1 point.

The start wasn't bad for me: my very first tile was a tile from M&W and the Mage gave me some good extra points having completed my first city. Then I tried the same strategy that worked in my previous games, that is I made intensive trapping attempts, particularly by that "Madagascar-shaped" city in the West. There was a moment when I felt that I will succeed therefore I didn't even placed the witch into the city when I had the opportunity to do that. But every game is different, this time Chooselife cleverly escaped from the trapping and he could soon complete the city, gaining two gold pieces as well. What didn't work for me, worked for Chooselife: I couldn't avoid the trapping of two of my meeples in that 12 pt city in the North (Chooselife also had a knight there which were later removed by a crop circle). As Chooselife started farming early, he had a comfortable lead approaching the middle of the game.

Then the turning point: again, the crop circle problem. Chooselife made the same mistake that previously thodekey did: he thought that he had to remove a farmer while I chose the other option. So he unintentionally deployed another farmer.
Please, every player in this league, be careful! If you don't see this image in the area of available actions then you can't remove a follower:


Then there were some good battles for gold pieces. Chooselife had a long road leading through a field of gold (the one where finally the Mage landed), I had to make sure he couldn't finish it. Having the Mage there the road was still quite valuable (more than 20 pts), so I was lucky enough to have drawn a tile with a "club" crop circle, and so I could force my opponent to remove his thief from that road. Meanwhile, Chooselife started building another city (the one in the East). At first I only tried to prevent him from completing it by placing a CCCR tile next to it, but soon things were becoming dangerous so I decided to make an attempt of joining in the city. Chooselife avoided this by the CCCC splitter tile with the shield crop circle which also allowed him to escape his knight from the northern city. After this, he only needed the last remaining CCCF tile to complete this big city. He drew it right after my previously mentioned club crop circle tile, so he could quickly recover from the loss of his valuable thief.

In the end I desperately needed to join a meeple to Chooselife's valuable farm in the SE. I placed two farmers nearby, but didn't got the proper tile... right up until my last tile.

Thanks for this great game, Chooselife, you would have really deserved to win it, especially considering you had one less meeple for the second half of the game.

[ARabidMeerkat]

Go careful Leven... with all of these victories, you might make yourself a target! Great gaming and maybe we could play in the future over JCZ, even though I've never used it!

[MrNumbers]

Current standings.
4 games played, 11 left.