New variant: The Constable

[kissybooboo]

Greetings,

First time on the site. A friend suggested I post one of my variants here and rifle through other peoples ideas. There's a lot of good stuff here. Thanks to all those who have contributed.

The new meeple and rules offer a neat way of 'attacking' your opponents in a more limited fashion than, say, the Tower or the Dragon. It takes away an opponent's road and gives it to you. It interacts in interesting ways with existing road-related strategies, such as robber-builder engines, forming the longest road and limiting the final value of the robber-captain.



The Constable

The constable is not a follower, but a special unit.

Each player adds a single Constable meeple to their stock at the beginning of the game.

The constable can only be placed on a road that already has a robber (whether a standard follower or the wagon). That meeple is removed from the road and returned to the owner. No points are scored by that player for that road. Should a road with a constable connect with another length of road which has a robber, that follower is also removed, with no points being scored. This same is true for any builder on the road. Should two road sections with constables be joined, nothing happens. At the end of the game, both players receive the full points.

The constable remains on the road until the end of the game.

The constable is not affected by the tower (being a royal servant itself).

The constable can be eaten by the dragon. If the dragon consumes the constable, return the dragon to a volcanoe and end the current movement phase for the dragon (it has retired to its lair to licks its wounds). The constable is returned to the players stock and made be played again.

A player cannot place the faerie in a tile containing her/his constable.

As the constable is not a follower, you cannot place your builder on a road with your constable.

Roads completed with a constable on them are not considered when determining the 'longest road'.

At the end of the game the constable scores VPs equal to the normal value of the road. If the road connects to one or more cities (complete or not) then the player scores one point for each tile that makes up that/those city(ies). If the road connects to a cloister, it scores an additional 5 points. (The tile with the well now becomes very valuable for the Constable, as it creates three endings and potentially more points).

Roads with a constable on them do not count for a point toward the value of the Robber Captain.

[jalle]

I think there are major similarities with the fan-made Prison expansion.
Have you read the rules for that ?

[kissybooboo]

I hadn't until now.

I see the similarlities, but I see differences, too.

The biggest difference to me is that the Constable is a simpler mechanic. It doesn't require you to connect the road with the knight to a road with a thief. You lay the tile, place the Constable, and the the robber is evicted (even if it's yours).

I haven't played with the Prison, but my intial response is that it's a bit fiddly for the degree to which it impacts the game.

The Constable also has interesting interactions with the tower and the dragon, although these are minor things.

I really like the Trading Post variant I found on the same site, though. I feel certain that one will get some play.

[Novelty]

Welcome to Carcassonne Central kissybooboo.  Please do post your ideas.  There's no harm creating a similar expansion to something that has already been done before.

You may also want to have a list of expansions we have hosted on this site at the Public Downloads page.

Edit: I just read through the rules and I'm a bit confused.  Can you explain to me what is the purpose of making the constable stay on the road until the end of the game?

Also, I've added this expansion (because it has a new piece, a variant is just a different way of playing) to the in development thread.  Welcome again to CC

[kissybooboo]

Thanks for the welcome.

The idea with the constable is that he's a one-off.

If you could play the constable mutiple times the value of playing robbers at all becomes greatly reduced, because the next player with a road tile and a free constable will take it from you.

So, this is the limitation to prevent abuse, much like having only one Abbey.

Like the Abbey you need to be judicious with the use of the Constable: it's important to remove a robber on a more valuable road. This also has players hedging their use of robbers while there are still constables to be declared.

The flavour behind this was to create a Royal Road, one protected by the king and free from robbers (for good).

[jalle]

Royal Road (Royal Highway), that also is a term already used in the Treasue Hunt expansion.
It's getting a bit difficult to keep the fan-made expansions apart.
Is there anyone keeping an overall view of this.

Novelty: The link for "The Constable" on the development thread leads to Meeple Upgrades: http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/forum/index.php?topic=584
Copy and paste, is good sometimes.

[Novelty]

Novelty: The link for "The Constable" on the development thread leads to Meeple Upgrades: http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/forum/index.php?topic=584
Copy and paste, is good sometimes.

Oops... my bad.  Thanks jalle.  It's now fixed.  And I agree, jalle, the expansions get a bit confusing after a while, but hopefully the better ones will stand out.

I'm still not sure I "get" this expansion - does everyone get a constable?  If so, then there can be as many constables on the board in play as there are players.  Personally, I doubt I will play with this one because even with scaling up and mega-carcassonne, roads, well, score less than a city or a farmer.  Granted farmers stay until the end of the game, so knights in cities will really be the focus before everyone places their constable.  In the games we play, a thief on a road is seldom used, because we favour cities.  If we draw a tile with no cities, it's either quick points for a 2-point road (if possible), or the tile is used to extend a farm.  Losing a thief is no biggie, the potential score for that road will not be more than 20.  Losing a farmer on the other hand, especially in big games where lots of expansions are used, could mean losing upwards of 20-50 points.  Now that is a biggie.

Also, eventhough I can understand why roads with constables aren't counted for the robber baron, but that just makes this expansion less attractive than it could be, and that is another flaw that needs to be factored in.

However, this expansion might come in handy if playing with expansions that up the value of the road such as the Inns on a Lake variant.  Perhaps one should explore along these lines.  Don't get me wrong, I see the potential in this expansion, but as it is currently written, I think The Prison is better.  Hmm... now that I've taken a closer look at the Prison...

[kissybooboo]

Interesting comments.

There are definitely different styles of play from group to group, and it also depends on the size of the game you play and the expansions you use. We always play with Inn on the Road, for example.

I agree that roads are the poor cousin in Carcassonne. Personally, I think that roads ought to earn more if they connect with cities, as a way of enhancing their value. (When a road is scored it gains one additional point for each tile of each city to which it is connected, even if those cities are not complete.)

That the Constable roads do not contribute to the Robber Captain seems necessary from a thematic point of view, although sometimes flavour needs to give way to function. All-in-all though it will only 'cost' the Robber captain one point per player, a tiny number of points in the grand scheme of things.

No being able to use them to form the longest road needs to stay. We found that people simply stole your road when it got to a good size, so there was no incentive to make very long roads. (There already isn't much).

Perhaps, because the road is protected, the value is always 2 per tile. However, this is just a further discouragement for players to meeple their roads, knowing that it can be taken by the Constable. That said, players can use the constable against their own robbers.

And, yes, each player gets one Constable piece.

One of the reasons we like this variant is that it is a small addition, not a major change. I am not drawn personally to big expansions and game altering variants. I like the Trading Post for this same reason. One meeple, some extra value and a little more strategy to consider, but without the game being turned on its head.

[Novelty]

Personally, I think that roads ought to earn more if they connect with cities, as a way of enhancing their value. (When a road is scored it gains one additional point for each tile of each city to which it is connected, even if those cities are not complete.)

I like this idea.  I think you should incorporate it to this for the sheriff roads.

[kissybooboo]

It was actually one of the original ideas for this variant, that instead of scoring for the length of the road it scored for the features it connected: a point for each city tile and 1 per point of a Cloisters.

I throw it back in there.